Technological Applications for the Green Problem

The term technology refers to the application of knowledge for practical purposes.The field of green technology encompasses a continuously evolving group of methods and materials, from techniques for generating energy to non-toxic cleaning products.The present expectation is that this field will bring innovation and changes in daily life of similar magnitude to the �information technology explosion over the last two decades. In these early stages, it is impossible to predict what green technology may eventually encompass.

Back in 2000, all the world's sights were on the incredible rise of the Internet and how it was going to radically transform the way we lived, worked, traded and interacted with each other. The Internet announced the beginning of a new era, one where problems would be solved with further amounts of technology. Concepts such as "green" and "sustainability" were not unheard of, but were still relegated to the realm of inconvenient problems that could be dealt with later.

We know today that the Internet clearly brought about important changes to our lives, but we also realized that technology was not the answer to all of our problems. At the same time, the complex issue of how to mitigate the long-term impact of our society to the planet remains unsolved.Interest in sustainable development increased across the globe as topics such as energy conservation and global warming took center stage. People are increasingly concerned with today's environment, and how our actions affect the future.

In 2000, the US Green Building Council (USGBC) launched its rating system for new construction. The USGBC's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system since then became the standard for green building in the US and close to 70 countries. The LEED rating system for new construction considers seven different categories as described in Exhibit 1. According to points assigned to each category, new buildings are then given a rating ranging from "Certified", "Silver", "Gold" and "Platinum" (the latter being the more restrictive rating). Not surprisingly, there are fewer buildings with the LEED-Platinum rating. Although the framework for evaluating the "greenness" of a building has been around for almost a decade now, it took some time for green initiatives in new construction to become the norm and not the exception. According to the USGBC, 10% of all new commercial construction in the US is expected to be green by 2010.

Although this may not appear to be much, it nonetheless translates into an estimated cost of US$60 billion - which by no means is irrelevant. One year ago, in an article in Inmobiliare Magazine we noted that 65% of energy consumption in the US comes from the operations of buildings. It is then easy to see why soaring energy prices have been raising the interest of all those involved with real estate development on subjects such as energy conservation.But at the same time that the seriousness of the problem is recognized by many, the concept of sustainability still meets quite a lot of skepticism (and in many cases suspicion) from others. It is generally assumed that it costs more to build green -and that is a true assessment. However, the cost differential is diminishing over the years. According to data compiled for a recent research report published by Prudential Real Estate Investors , the incremental cost of building green varies from less than 1% for LEED-Certified projects, to just over 10% for LEED Platinum projects. However, developers are claiming to have achieved much less incremental costs in recent projects. The same report notes that the $1 billion new Bank of America building in Manhattan, a LEED-Platinum project, had less than a 2% increase in costs when compared to conventionally built properties of a similar size.

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