There was quite a fuss made about the Golisano Hall LEED building which is now finished at Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY. In order to make room on the terraced slope of Oyaron Hill, they took down the college's second oldest building. To meet a certain amount of LEED points, only 18% of the building needed to be recycled, and the rest was added to the landfills.
The question that everyone had was: Is it more sustainable to add a $16 million LEED building while landfilling an old one, or put that money towards renovating the old building to become efficient. To my understanding, LEED certification cannot be applied to existing buildings, which is likely why that option was not seriously considered. In my opinion, LEED certifications need to be completely overhauled. If it's true that many of these actually use more power than conventional buildings, that confirms that this system is highly flawed. The problem is that most of these buildings are not going up for sustainability reasons, but for marketing. College like Hartwick can now say "Look! We are sustainable with a LEED building!" But I can assure you that Hartwick has little care in the way of sustainability. -Andy Jenifer Wightman wrote: > Hey folks, > > so Henry Gifford gave a talk last night and has written a critique on > LEED/Green building certification. thought it might interest. > for the article he wrote which is a little redundant, go to > www.henrygifford.com > > and scroll down to: > Building Measuring Systems: My favorite way to rate the energy efficiency of > buildings: > By how much energy they actually use. Click Here for the > article<http://www.energysavingscience.com/articles/henrysarticles/BuildingRatingSystems.pdf?attredirects=0> > > Read the e-mail the US Green Building Council sent to each chapter leader > in response to the revelation that LEED buildings use more energy than > comparable buildings: Click Here for e-mail, with > rebuttal<http://www.energysavingscience.com/documents/DearChapterLeaders.pdf?attredirects=0> > *** > > the second document is the USGBC answer to his article with Henry's rebuttal > in red. > > amazing how there are 6 billion ways of seeing this single world. what is > the path to global rationality through locally contextual logic? > j > _______________________________________________ > For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please > visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ > > RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: > [email protected] > http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins > free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org > > > -- Andy Goodell Assistant Director www.IthacaCarshare.org 607.277.3210 _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
