Architecture, Construction and Engineering

As the visionary founder of LivingHomes, the award-winning prefabricated homes that combine world-class architecture with an unparalleled commitment to healthy and sustainable construction, Steve Glenn has become a leading voice within the sustainable building movement.

The developer of the nation’s first LEED Platinum home, and with over nine LivingHomes in development that are designed to achieve LEED Platinum, Glenn is one of the more experienced builders of environmentally conscious homes in the United States. While LivingHomes uses the LEED program for external review and validation, the company has established its own Z6 sustainable building goals, which serve as development objectives for each LivingHome, insuring that they have as close as possible to zero negative impact on health and environment. The Z6 goals are Zero Water, Zero Energy, Zero Waste, Zero Emissions, Zero Carbon and Zero Ignorance.

Glenn will share his experiences working with leading architects, including Ray Kappe, FAIA, one the most celebrated modern architects in the US, and KieranTimberlake, the AIA 2009 Firm of the Year, to create LivingHomes. He will discuss the specific elements that go into a LivingHome to achieve the Z6 goals and the process of building a LivingHome - from its factory construction to on-site installation in mere hours. Attendees will gain new insights into sustainable design and prefabrication, and will be able to get any questions answered about building a LivingHome.

This webinar will explain the importance of plants to our well-being and to the environments in which we work i.e. buildings. They are an essential part of any sustainability programme. The webinar will explain why every building should have plants on, in and around them And how these can contribute to the UK Government's Happiness Index and their targets to reduce absenteeism.

In this 45 minute Webinar, experts from the energy efficiency industry will discuss building commissioning for both new and existing buildings. Martha Brook from the California Energy Commission will provide an overview of policies related to building commissioning. Reinhard Seidl, Taylor Engineering, will speak on the commissioning process, operational practices, tools and strategies utilized in the marketplace. Lia Webster, PECI, will moderate the session and cover project costs, programs and incentives, and energy and cost benefits from commissioning.

'A Large Scale Zero Energy Building – Meeting the 2030 Federal Mandate in 2011'

Craig Randock, Design Principal, RNL & Principal, Research Support Facilities, the US Dept. of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

This May, 210 employees at NASA Ames, Moffet Field will move into the Research Center’s first newly built facility in 20 years. The building and surrounding landscape nicknamed NASA’s Sustainability Base (a take on the Lunar Base) was designed to improve workplace effectiveness by maximizing daylight and fresh air and extensive water re-use. The result is a facility designed for near-net zero consumption for both energy and potable water.

In addition to readily available products, the building will be outfitted with the latest NASA diagnostic and intelligence gathering devices to ensure the optimized long-term resource management. Sustainability Base and its connection back into the existing campus-wide building management system announces a new generation of "smart" infrastructure and integrated computerized system technologies which utilize adaptive intelligence applied to local climate.

Understanding our local environment, monitoring and fine-tuning our resource allocation are paramount. What can technologies tell us about ourselves? What technologies are available? How can we enhance our existing building stock and prepare for a wide regional resource management strategy? How can we design smarter buildings and smarter infrastructure?

Green building is growing exponentially as the federal government and major cities like Chicago and Seattle join private owners in requiring new buildings to meet stringent sustainability benchmarks like the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) criteria. To meet this surge in demand, architects are employing not only proven clean technologies like wind and solar power, but new ones including nanotechnology, biotechnology and other emerging technologies. The convergence of green building and clean technology is creating not only significant improvements in human and environmental health, but major economic opportunities as well.

Our panel of green building experts will provide insights into the costs, benefits and performance of the latest green building technologies. You'll learn about new green building technologies including insulating nanocoatings and aerogels, self-cleaning and depolluting materials, organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and quantum dot lighting, organic thin-film solar cell technologies, and more.

Speakers:
George Elvin, Director, Green Technology Forum
Greg Kats, President, Capital-E
Amanda Tullos, Sustainability Consultant, Green Building Services
Kelly Gearhart, Principal, Triple Green Building Group

Finding a ‘green’ home or commercial building typically means evaluating the sustainable materials used in the structure and the energy footprint. But what about the toxic hazards that could be lurking under your property? There are numerous environmental characteristics that can exist within your property, or adjacent properties, some of which could wash the green right off of your low-energy, LEED-certified building! What’s more, if you’re looking for financing, you should know that lenders, in the wake of the real estate downturn, are placing a great deal of emphasis on factors like environmental contamination that can negatively affect a property’s value and potentially expose them to liability.

Join us for this informative session that will help you to understand the importance of environmental due diligence in your quest for finding a green property.

Speakers:
James B. Stanton, VP of Products and Marketing, Environmental Data Resources
Dianne Crocker, Principal Analyst, Environmental Data Resources

Major projects require huge levels of inter-agency co-operation. Different parcels are designed by different teams and developed by different contractors. How can you simultaneously achieve a green solution, cut costs and ensure consistency between the various elements on such projects? Using examples including the London Olympics and King Abdullah Financial District in Saudi Arabia, this presentation will show how it can be achieved.

The European Federation of Interior Landscape Groups (eFIG) Chairman Thomas Palfreyman presents on the importance of plants in green building and urban design using case studies to highlight the benefits of plant life.

Looking to 2050, the IEA has projected scenarios with various carbon reduction levels, where the “Blue Map” scenario achieves carbon stabilization levels. The carbon abatement cost curve depicts costs versus carbon abated for a rank ordered set of abatement strategies. A carbon cost of $300/ton for all aggregated sectors will bring about the Blue Map result. However, these scenarios estimate the total cost to society, total investments, less costs and savings, not considering who pays the costs and who benefits.

The analysis implicitly suggests that the lowest negative cost options will happen, thereby paying for more costly abatement measures, e.g. Improved insulation results in a net negative carbon abatement cost, which could pay for implementing a more costly renewable energy supply.

A misunderstanding of the carbon abatement curve interprets it as defining the carbon price needed to meet the stated efficiency levels. Rather, we find substantial price insensitivity to carbon and correspondingly, higher carbon prices are needed to influence building sector decision making for energy efficiency measures.

To determine this, the WBCSD Energy Efficiency in Buildings project (EEB project) created a model of building stock turnover to compute energy efficient technology adoption levels based on micro-economic investor stakeholder decisions. Rather than an unacceptably high market carbon price to foster change, we found that only a set of aggressive policy measures implemented together to influence decision making would bring building sector transformation to the levels needed.

Since 2005 Christian is Director of the Energy Efficiency in Building Project (EEB) at the WBCSD. He is part of the GEA and member of the KM on Buildings. He is also Project Director of the WBCSD/ UII – Urban Infrastructure Initiative.