John Koulet­sis – Buildings

Build­ings will have car­bon foot­prints of zero by the year 2030 – or at least that’s the call to action for archi­tects and build­ing man­agers from the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Archi­tects. Although this doesn’t seem pos­si­ble now, there are a num­ber of ways – new and old – to develop sus­tain­able buildings.

1. Bor­row from Indus­try Lead­ers
Quicken your sus­tain­abil­ity efforts by bor­row­ing ideas and research from the best com­pa­nies striv­ing to be car­bon neu­tral. Con­tact those com­pa­nies and see what they’re doing and how you can repli­cate it. Gun­der­sen Lutheran and Geisinger Health Plan® both have aggres­sive plans to slash their car­bon foot­prints well before 2030.

2. Look at the Past
Look back 60 years in the United States and you’ll see that the tra­di­tional hos­pi­tal had a smaller foot­print and caused less envi­ron­men­tal dam­age; how­ever, after the 1950s, things changed, and coun­tries like the United States and Aus­tralia started build­ing big­ger, her­met­i­cally sealed build­ings devoid of nat­ural light and arti­fi­cially heated and cooled. Some coun­tries, such as Ger­many, Den­mark, and the Nether­lands, always pro­vided oper­a­ble win­dows and thin footprints.

The rest of us need to con­sider rewiring to that model. In addi­tion to build­ing smaller, it’s impor­tant to build med­ical facil­i­ties close to where peo­ple work, live, and have access to pub­lic trans­porta­tion. Design­ers of one Ger­man town, Vauban, built it to be car free. Res­i­dents ride bicy­cles and walk, which pro­motes phys­i­cal activ­ity and reduces air pol­lu­tion and green­house gases. Kaiser Per­ma­nente is look­ing at three future hos­pi­tal sites with a mixed-use approach so that care can be deliv­ered next to hous­ing, shop­ping, and mass transit.

3. Sus­tain­able Prod­ucts
Light­ing is one area where new prod­ucts pro­vide energy-efficient options. The next gen­er­a­tion of LED light­ing now costs less, is more reli­able, and can be an option in health­care set­tings. Using a com­bi­na­tion of task light­ing, LEDs, light con­trols, pho­to­sen­sors, and smaller floor­plates designed with day­light­ing to bring in sun­light is some­thing you can do now.

4. Loca­tion Makes a Dif­fer­ence
Sev­eral sus­tain­able oppor­tu­ni­ties may exist, depend­ing on your loca­tion. If located next to a river, you might be able to use hydro­elec­tric power. If you’re in a windy area, wind tur­bines could be an option. Geot­her­mal power is cost effec­tive, reli­able, and envi­ron­men­tally friendly; how­ever, it’s avail­able only in lim­ited areas. If your site is on or near a pre­vi­ous land­fill with large amounts of organic mate­r­ial, you could cap­ture the methane and use it as a fuel source. Pho­to­voltaics are also an option.

5. Water Con­ser­va­tion
Con­serv­ing water takes a com­bi­na­tion approach. Con­vert­ing from wet-process imag­ing equip­ment to dig­i­tal imag­ing machines can save approx­i­mately 925,000 gal­lons of potable water per year and elim­i­nate the use of harm­ful chem­i­cals. Other small things you can do include sensor-operated faucets and dual-flush toi­lets. Plant­ing drought-resistant plants and plants native to your loca­tion reduces the need for sup­ple­men­tal irri­ga­tion. No mat­ter how much rain­fall you get, har­vest­ing rain­wa­ter helps as well.

6. Build Uni­ver­sally
Build in such a way that the build­ing is self renew­able. The typ­i­cal life-cycle of a build­ing is about 30 years. A flex­i­ble and adapt­able build­ing plan per­mits the incor­po­ra­tion of new tech­nol­ogy. Build small, build just what you need, and con­stantly renew build­ing systems.

7. Tech­nol­ogy Advance­ments
Tech­nol­ogy is replac­ing a high num­ber of in-person vis­its with vir­tual doc­tor vis­its. Elec­tronic med­ical records and pro­vid­ing web capa­bil­i­ties are other ways to reduce car­bon footprints.

8. Join Oth­ers
Join groups, such as the Global Health and Safety Ini­tia­tive, to work with health care orga­ni­za­tions to advance envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity. Ban­ning together can make a dif­fer­ence and could result in changes like new ENERGY STAR® appli­ances for hospitals.

John Koulet­sis is exec­u­tive direc­tor of strat­egy, plan­ning, and design, national facil­i­ties ser­vices, at Kaiser Permanente

Related posts:

1. Retool­ing your home for the green rev­o­lu­tion The National Round­table on the Envi­ron­ment and the Econ­omy estimates…
2. Minto’s green dream team The green court­yard helped Minto­Mid­town in June become the largest…
3. Ontario adopt­ing leed stan­dard and pilots green roofs to fight cli­mate change All Ontar­i­ans have a role to play in mak­ing our…
4. How to build green for a healthy future Cana­di­ans know that our built envi­ron­ment — homes, offices, factories,…
5. Home sell­ers face $300 green audit Ontario res­i­dents won’t be able to sell their houses or…