[Greenbuilding] Article about report released this year: “The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse”

[Reuben Deumling]

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 8:34 PM, <molasses at q.com> wrote:

> ...It found that 10 to 80 years are needed for a new building 30 percent
> more efficient than an average-performing existing one to overcome the
> negative climate change impacts related to construction."
>

And wouldn't you know that if we distance ourselves from this notion of
'average-performing existing one' we would discover that, generally, older
buildings correspond with lower energy use. For more on this, see the
linked paper below:
...interesting piece on how newer residential buildings have a higher
temperature response (defined as percent increase in electricity
consumption per unit temperature increase) than do the older ones…
concluding that a turnover in building stock (residential) will tend to
increase peak loads, “despite” california’s aggressive energy standards.

*California's Building Standards: New Homes Use More Electricity*


California's per capita total electricity sales have been flat since the
mid 1970s when landmark legislation for energy efficiency was passed, while
sales for the rest of the United States over this period have gone up by 50
percent. California's aggressive building code standards have often been
credited with achieving much of these electricity savings. But are new
buildings, new residential homes in particular, more energy efficient? How
do they compare relative to houses built before the building codes were
enacted?
* http://ei.haas.berkeley.edu/pdf/newsletter/2011Fall.pdf *

>
> Problem is, it can be expensive to do the seismic upgrades, and people
> usually opt to build new.
>

...and which people would those be? :-)
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