What is Open-Sourced Green Building?

Open-sourced green building sounds like an oxymoron. However, FreeGreen.com provides open-sourced green building designs. Started in April 2008, the year-old company opened up its website for architects to upload their designs and set the price for them. 

A New York Times blog post characterized FreeGreen as a “service that offers what most developers won’t: green home plans to home-buyers.” The blog post also called it a "bottom up approach to innovation."

Every design on FreeGreen is created to reduce energy usage 30 to 50 percent of local building codes. “We made a ubiquitous decision in the way we handle the company,” said David Wax, co-founder and CEO. “We were not going to be the arbiters of green design. We don’t want a FreeGreen standard. That's not what we are. We are an information provider.”

The website is blunt about FreeGreen revenue source, “FreeGreen would not exist without paid placement from product manufacturers, and all product or service provider placements should be considered advertising.” Most of company’s revenues come from paid product placements in the free building designs. 

The company is selective about the products they choose. The open sourced building designs that architects upload are also a revenue source. FreeGreen receives 20 percent of the sales revenue. Information is provided about every product listed in a plan, including its point ratings in the LEED-H, and NABH Green Building standards.

Make the Building Sector More Energy Efficient

Buildings account for 40 percent of global energy use, according to a recent report for the Energy Efficiency in Buildings (EEB) project by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The EEB project, which began in 2006, focuses on six world regions: Brazil, China, Europe, India, Japan, and the U.S. The six world regions represent nearly two-thirds of the world's energy use. The estimated growth in all six EEB is 76 percent. 

The International Energy Agency calls for buildings globally to contribute 17 percent of emissions reductions below business-as-usual (BAU) by 2050. The U.S. will need to be at least 80 percent below BAU by 2050 to meet the goal. The report suggests six ways the building sector can take action to reduce its energy use:

• Strengthen codes and labeling for increased transparency
  
• Incentivize energy-efficient investments
  
• Encourage integrated design approaches and innovations
  
• Develop and use advanced technology to enable energy-saving
  
• behaviors
  
• Develop workforce capacity for energy saving
  

Cutting energy in the retail sector will help the U.S. meet the IEA's goal. The report lists recommendations, including the following:

• Audit the energy performance of retail buildings
  
• Enforce building codes
  
• Introduce subsidies for achieving high performance in buildings
  
• Regulate to phase out low performing buildings
  
• Get retailers to participate in energy awareness campaigns
  
• Use R&D to lower first cost and increase energy savings
  
• Introduce process incentives for developers so they will adopt integrated design approaches which achieve high energy efficiency
  
• Promote onsite renewable generation for all new retail developments
  

The sheer number of shopping malls in the U.S. means energy use needs to be cut in that sector. The report recommends the following:

• Smart metering will make stores in the mall aware of their energy use and motivate them to take action
  
• Install solar photovoltaic (PV) panels to replace some electricity from the grid
  
• Make changes to lighting inside and outside the mall
  
• Improve the cooling and ventilation systems
  
• Shade external glass

Green Office Buildings Save Money, Make Money

A recently published report titled, Doing Well, Doing Good: An Analysis of the Financial Performance of Green Office Buildings in the USA by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) concluded that green buildings with Energy Star ratings generate premium rents. However, the report did not find that LEED-rated buildings generated premium rents. The report suggest that tenants and investors will pay for for an energy-efficient building, but not for one that is "advertised as sustainable in a broader sense."

The building sector accounts for about 40 percent of raw materials and energy consumption, and  for at least 30 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions. Constructed buildings use energy, and energy is 30 percent of office building expenses, "the single largest and most manageable operating expense in the provision of office space."

Green buildings result in an aggregate premium of three percent per square foot compared to identical (average) buildings. Effective rents, rents adjusted for building occupancy levels, result in rent premiums of over six percent. This implies, according to the report, that greening an existing building increases its value by "some $5.5 million."

Increasing energy efficiency by 10 percent is associated with a 0.2% increase in effective rent. This is in addition to the six percent rent premium. A $1 savings in energy costs from increased thermal efficiency results in about $18 worth of "increased valuation."

The report cites four economic benefits from investing in green buildings:

1.  Saves money spent on energy, water and waste disposal, insures against future energy price increases

2.  Improving indoor environmental quality may result in higher employee productivity

3.  A green corporate building might create a positive corporate image

4. Green buildings may have longer economic lives due to less depreciation and lower volatility in market value