Campus green building yields extra credit

Some of the earliest adopters of green building practices, colleges and universities have produced numerous examples of leadership, innovation and market transformation in the green building sector. Despite shrinking operational budgets and the increasing expense of capital construction, schools have built new green residence halls, student centers, laboratories and classrooms, many of which have garnered media attention and bragging rights, as each school attempts to outdo the others.

The trend is not entirely surprising. The campus setting provides an ideal constituency for green buildings. In an environment where cost-effective project delivery and conservative, risk-adverse approaches to building projects are the norm, green buildings make good business sense for college and university campuses—and offer excellent learning opportunities for students and staff.

Green building projects employ many of the values consistent with higher education facility planning. While some of the technologies and architectural expression in high performance buildings may be innovative, the values inherent in green building projects are often based in good, common sense. Thoughtful decision making, lifecycle consideration, attention to long-term maintenance, and taking a conservative approach to resource consumption are all hallmarks of green building that have been embraced by educational facilities planners for many years.

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For example, colleges and universities are accustomed to paying careful attention to the consumption of resource commodities such as energy and water, and most campuses have entire departments charged with assuring the judicious use of space. In terms of design and functionality, green building practices offer a measured way to account for building features that have long-concerned the education sector, such as compact development, flexible and adaptive furniture, spaces that can respond easily to quickly changing academic program needs, and “right-sizing”—not over-sizing—for building mechanical and electrical loads.

The exercise of reviewing projects and evaluating them for environmental performance is nothing new for many colleges and universities. For example, many university planners have long-considered factors that contribute to ‘indoor environmental quality’ as a means to ensure quality learning environments for students and professors. Attention to lifecycle and product durability, now a ‘materials and resource’ issue, reflects a long-standing struggle familiar to all educational facility departments to find the appropriate balance between first-costs and lifecycle costs.

The accountability that goes along with a formal decision-making process, whether through internal review procedures or via third-party certifications such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, leads to better building performance as well as a common language that bridges the interests of both capital and operational groups at schools. Moreover, building to a green building standard offers immeasurable benefits to the student body. The higher education sector is fortunate to know its building end-user.

And at many schools, including the University of California, Berkeley, the end-user is often a key advocate for green building practices. The Berkeley student body has had a significant influence on the school’s green building movement—from policy development to operational practices. An active and engaged student body provides the school with opportunities to test new products and methods through pilot projects and service learning classes.

As building owners, colleges and universities have the opportunity to model best practices for environmental stewardship. Berkeley’s residential building program was one of the nation’s first to embrace the LEED standards and the first group at Berkeley to achieve a LEED-certified building, with the Haste Street Child Development Center receiving a LEED Silver rating this January. What has become the living environment for thousands of students showcases building features such as operable windows and day lit spaces, food composting, recycling, energy conservation and locally grown, sustainably farmed organic produce. Following the success of its residential green building program, Berkeley is also working on similar initiatives in laboratory buildings and classrooms, as well as in waste management, disposal of excess materials, and moving and relocation services for campus departments—all initiated through what many would call green building discussions.

Berkeley’s Green Classrooms program works to develop learning environments that reflect students’ values as well as provide the best possible environment for learning and teaching. The program led the school to invest in energy-efficient lighting, new classroom waste management and recycling programs, unparalleled reuse of classroom furniture and energy-efficient AV equipment. An upcoming research project will assess user satisfaction in so-called “green classrooms” compared to user satisfaction in traditional classrooms.

More than nine campus departments participate in this informal yet collaborative program. Over time, this approach is expected to result in almost $100,000 in projected energy savings, and avoid disposal fees by reusing, rather than discarding, surplus classroom furniture. In fact, the expense of reusing furniture is often equal to or greater than the cost of purchasing new furniture, because of the labor involved with moving, repair, rebuilding and re-installation.

Thanks to student involvement in Berkeley’s green building movement, the school has been able to push beyond typical bureaucratic boundaries to come up with best-practice solutions that benefit both building owners and building users. Pioneers of the green building movement, Berkeley and other early adopters have the opportunity to continue fostering innovation through an ongoing green building discussion.

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Judy Chess is a LEED-AP and the assistant director for green building programs at the University of California at Berkeley.