Clarifying the Stats

The editors of DesignIntelligence received an e-mail this week that illuminates a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency statistic reported in our article “Design Leadership and the Environment.”

Edward Mazria, founder and chief executive officer of Architecture 2030, notes:

“I wanted to clarify a statistic you cite in the article: ‘Our buildings account for 39 percent of the country’s total energy use.’ This percentage is for residential and commercial building operations only. It does not include industrial building operations, i.e. HVAC and lighting (about 2 percent), and the annual embodied energy of building materials and building construction (about 8 percent). The total U.S. energy consumption attributed to the building sector is currently at 51 percent. I say this because the design of industrial buildings, building systems and the specification of materials is also our responsibility. Understanding the entire magnitude of our designs and decisions makes the ‘call to faster and wiser actions on the part of the design and construction community’ that much more urgent.

“And I am only talking here about architecture and buildings. If we add in the other design disciplines — planning, landscape architecture, interior design, industrial design, textile, communication, and fashion design — the call is not only urgent, it becomes critical.”

Let’s hope designers of all variety take note.

Calculate Your Building’s Carbon Footprint

The Green Footstep tool allows you to learn how much your commercial or residential building will contribute to global warming. It’s the brainchild of Architecture 2030 founder Edward Mazria and the Rocky Mountain Institute.

The tool can be used on residential and commercial new and retrofit building construction projects, from pre-design through occupancy.  It assesses a design’s total carbon footprint due to site development, construction, and operation and suggests the most effective levers to meet the Architecture 2030 Challenge.