Are more businesses or residential buildings leaning toward green building?
A lot of businesses have moved toward green building because commercial buildings are so energy intensive. Just by switching out lighting to a move efficient lighting pattern can save you thousands of dollars a year. At the homeowner level, what we are finding is that the main drivers are health and efficiency. It’s both the pocketbook and the health of the occupants. In King County, about 20 percent of all new residential construction is certified through the Built Green program. What future impact does building green have and why are people taking this approach? Depending on which measures you are actually putting into the building, it can make it a tremendous difference. One of the reasons I moved from my city job to the Cascadia Region Green Building Council was because of a program they offer called the Living Building Challenge, which tries to get the environmental footprint of a building down to zero rather than being just less bad. Most green-building programs have a lot of inc
