LEED CoreConcepts&Strategies_3rd edition - Page 023

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Regenerative projects support the health of the local community and regional ecosystems, generate electricity and send the excess to the grid, return water to the hydrologic system cleaner than it was before use, serve as locations for food production and community networking, regenerate biodiversity, and promote many other relationships that link the projects to the whole system of life around them.

Regenerative projects strive toward “net-zero”—using no more resources than they can produce. For example, net-zero energy projects use no more energy from the grid than they generate on site. These projects may be connected to the grid, drawing electricity from it at night and contributing energy from onsite renewable energy systems during the day, such that their total energy cost is zero. Other projects strive for carbon neutrality, emitting no more carbon emissions than they can either sequester or offset. Still other projects are designed to achieve a more even water balance: they use no more water than that which falls on site as precipitation, or they produce zero waste by recycling, reusing, or composting all materials.

Not all projects can achieve those levels of performance. Nevertheless, on average, green buildings save energy, use less water, generate less waste, and provide more healthful, more comfortable indoor environments. Specific strategies will be discussed in Section 4 of this guide.

Getting to green and beyond requires more than learning about new technologies and strategies. It requires more than learning to apply LEED checklists. Achieving true sustainability requires a new approach to creating and caring for the built environment.

GREEN BUILDING EXPERTISE

Green building requires new skills and new knowledge, as well as new attitudes and new mindsets. In a linear and hierarchical practice, each participant does his or her part and passes the job on to the next in line. There is little interaction, and people are compartmentalized by discipline or profession. By contrast, the green building process is interdisciplinary, iterative, and collaborative. Teamwork and critical thinking are valued. Everyone needs to learn to ask the right questions and to participate in developing the solutions. Feedback loops are built into the entire process.

The new skills required for a green building practice are not just knowledge of new strategies, materials, or equipment, although these are necessary. Green building practitioners need to learn how teams work, how to facilitate or participate in a productive discussion, how to work with people with different backgrounds and skills, and how to think outside their normal comfort zones when developing ideas. They need to be able to understand an ecologist’s report on the proposed site, or better still, participate in walking the site and contributing to the assessment. They need to be able to question one another—Why should something be done the way it always has been done it in the past?—and then consider, what if…?

These are not skills and knowledge that most practitioners traditionally receive during their professional education and training. Most architects, engineers, landscape architects, planners, and business managers learn skills on the job and through trial and error, such as by facilitating meetings with team members and stakeholders. These opportunities will be explored in greater depth in Section 3. Additionally, training programs can help build these skills by combining experience with more formal classes, workshops, and online education. University curricula are beginning to incorporate these skills, but it may be several years before green expertise becomes the norm.

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