Busting the Myth that Green Costs More Green

James D. Qualk

Director of LEED facilitation sales, SSRCx

Ever since I was a child, I have been interested in conservation and the environment.  Whether I was camping in the back yard, planting trees or recycling, from an early age I understood the interconnectedness of all things and the importance of stewardship.  I agree with Theodore Roosevelt who said, “There can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country.” 

Buildings are one of the largest consumers of natural resources and energy in this country, and are responsible for almost half of all carbon emissions in the United States (see table 1). Between home and work, Americans spend nearly 90% of their lives indoors – clearly, buildings are critically important to our way of life.

For the last seven years, the construction market has had the tools necessary to construct healthy, resource effective and profitable buildings.  The U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system provides us with the means to construct schools, hospitals, office buildings and homes that reduce the impact on our city’s infrastructure and local environmental systems while increasing the health and productivity of those inside.

The most common misconception about LEED is that it costs more to implement vs. using traditional strategies and techniques of design and construction. Complaints often include references to the added expense of the registration fee and the certification fee. 

Every project intending to certify must first register with the USGBC.  To certify, the project team must provide a submittal package to the USGBC to show that they have met certain prerequisites and performance benchmarks ("credits") within each of five categories. Independent verification is essential to knowing if a building is, in fact, a green one. Despite the best intentions, without someone looking over your shoulder, there’s no way to be certain that a building is as green as intended. Even best selling authors have well paid editors to catch their unintended mistakes. As shown in table 2, the fees are minimal and hardly enough to break a project’s budget. 

Another common complaint is that solar panels, green roofs, raised access floors or other perceived “environmentally responsible features” are added expenses to the overall construction budget. 

I cannot deny that these have associated costs, but any decision made in the early stages of programming and design will have economic impacts on the overall cost of the building.  How many floors will our building have?  Will we use marble in the lobby?  Can we use fancy fixtures in the bathrooms?  According to a study performed by Davis Langdon, a well respected construction cost management firm, there was “…no significant difference in the construction costs for LEED-seeking versus non-LEED buildings in any of the categories.” More information on this study, “Examining the Cost of Green,” can be found at www.davislangdon.com.   

More importantly, first cost is only a small part of the total cost of building ownership. Many cost-of-ownership studies agree that first cost only accounts for around 10% of all costs a building owner will spend over the life of the building.  The other 90% comes in the form of operation and maintenance – two areas in which designing for LEED certification can save enormously (see table 3).  Any additional costs for building green are recouped in one to two years on average, with exponential cost savings thereafter that leave traditional construction in the dust.  How can we afford not to build green? 

We no longer have the luxury of avoiding global issues such as pollution, resource depletion and our economy’s ability to compete in the global marketplace. The LEED rating system provides us with a way to significantly reduce our environmental impact while providing building owners with considerable benefits to the bottom line.  If it’s not LEED, it’s not Green, and when we build green, everyone profits.

James D. Qualk, LEED AP, is director of LEED facilitation sales for SSRCx, the commissioning subsidiary of Smith Seckman Reid engineering design and facility consulting firm. www.ssrcx.com