Save the Buildings, Save the World
New America Media, Commentary, Richard Moe, Posted: Apr 05, 2008
Editor’s Note: Richard Moe, president of National Trust for Historic Preservation, argues that historic preservation has long been a tool with which to fight global warming. Environment Matters features the views of those working on environmental issues.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Historic preservation has always been the greenest of the building arts because it necessarily involves the conservation of energy and natural resources. Now it’s time to make sure everyone knows it.
It’s all about sustainability.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), transportation accounts for just 27 percent of America’s greenhouse gas emissions, while 48 percent – almost twice as much – is produced by the construction and operation of buildings. Nearly half the greenhouse gases Americans send into the atmosphere is from our buildings. More than 10 percent of the entire world’s greenhouse gas emissions is from American buildings.
Historic preservation must be a key component of any effort to promote sustainable development. The challenge is to help people understand that preservation is environmentally, as well as economically, sustainable.
Buildings are embodied energy
The retention and reuse of older buildings is an effective tool for the responsible, sustainable stewardship of our environmental resources.
Buildings are vast repositories of energy. It takes energy to manufacture or extract building materials, more energy to transport them to a construction site, still more energy to assemble them into a building. If the structure is demolished and land-filled, the energy locked up in it is wasted.
• According to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, about 80 billion British Thermal Units (BTUs) of energy are embodied in a typical 50,000-square-foot commercial building, the equivalent of 640,000 gallons of gasoline. If you tear the building down, all of that embodied energy is wasted.
• Constructing a 50,000-square-foot commercial building releases about the same amount of carbon into the atmosphere as driving a car 2.8 million miles. Demolishing it creates nearly 4,000 tons of waste
• Since 70 percent of the energy consumed over a building’s lifetime is used in operating the building, some people argue that the energy used in demolishing an older building and replacing it is quickly recovered through the increased energy efficiency of the new building – but that’s simply not true. Recent research indicates that even if 40 percent of the materials are recycled, it takes approximately 65 years for a green, energy-efficient new office building to recover the energy lost in demolishing an existing building.
The Brookings Institution projects that by 2030 we will have demolished and replaced nearly one-third of our existing buildings, largely because the vast majority weren’t designed and built to last any longer.
If we were to rehab just 10 percent of these buildings, we would save enough energy to power the state of New York for well over a year.
We can’t build our way out of the global warming crisis. We have to conserve our way out. That means we have to make better, wiser use of what we’ve already built.
Green v Old ‘Energy Hog’ Buildings
The green community emphasizes new technologies over tried-and-true preservation practices that focus on reusing buildings to reduce the environmental impact associated with demolition and new construction.
This emphasis on new construction is completely wrong-headed. We can’t solve the problem by constructing more and more new buildings while ignoring the ones we already have. All green technology used in a new building represents a new impact on the environment. The greenest building is one that already exists.
The United States Energy Information Administration data suggest that buildings constructed before 1920 are actually more energy-efficient than buildings built at any time afterwards – except for those built after 2000. Furthermore, in 1999, the General Services Administration found that utility costs for historic buildings were 27 percent less than for more modern ones.
All historic buildings are not perfect models of efficient energy use – but the marketplace now offers a wide range of products that can help make them more energy-efficient without compromising the historic character.
Buildings constructed between the 1950s and 1980s pose a greater challenge. Many were not built for energy efficiency, and often were not designed to last beyond a generation.
These make up more than half of our nonresidential building stock. Because of their sheer numbers, demolishing and replacing them isn’t a viable option. We must find ways to rehabilitate them and lighten their environmental footprint and protect their architectural significance.
Reforming Regulations is Essential
What we need is a federal effort, incorporating a strengthened EPA and Department of Energy and other federal entities. This new agency should be given a mandate that recognizes climate change as as great a threat to our survival as terrorism, and that commits the nation to combating it with every resource available: the environmental equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security.
National, state and local policies have encouraged developing new suburbs. As a result, an ongoing epidemic of sprawl ravages the countryside, devouring open space, consuming resources and demanding new infrastructure. Meanwhile, in scores of cities, disinvestment has left viable housing stock abandoned and schools slated for closing in areas where infrastructure is already in place, already paid for.
It makes no sense to recycle newsprint and bottles and cans while we’re throwing away entire buildings, even entire neighborhoods.
We need federal policy that stops rewarding unsustainable development. We need policy that maximizes wise use of existing resources by enhancing the viability and livability of the communities we already have.
We need to see state and local tax credits promote the reuse of historic buildings, with building codes that allow flexibility and innovation to make existing buildings more energy-efficient.
Over the past 10 years alone, historic tax-credit incentives have sparked the rehab of more than 217 million square feet of commercial and residential space – and saved enough energy to heat and cool every home in the six New England states for a full year.
In the face of unprecedented climate change, preservation is an essential tool for sustaining the environmental viability of the planet.
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