Green Building Technologies that Could Change the Game, Brad Pease - Daily Journal of Commerce

Green technology can help stimulate the economy, reduce carbon emissions and build a clean-energy future in the U.S. The American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act included almost $100 billion for investments in clean energy, energy efficiency and green job training.

With buildings accounting for 40 percent of carbon emissions in the U.S. (and 72 percent of total electricity consumption), it is expected that buildings will need to reach increasingly higher levels of performance to meet carbon reduction goals.

Part of the ARRA investment includes funding of innovation and development in areas such as controls, building envelopes and HVAC, with grants such as the U.S. Department of Energy’s $75 million Advanced Energy Efficient Building Technologies awards. Organizations like ASHRAE and the Department of Energy are mobilizing around ambitious goals such as net-zero energy use.

Green building technologies have potential to spur economic recovery and contribute to a sustainable future, but there is a distinct difference between building technologies that can change the game and ones that simply offer incremental improvements.

Design teams need to be able to identify the truly innovative technologies in order to recognize how and when to integrate them into a design, improve their rate of adoption and realize their full benefits.

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