Introduction
Discussion in, and proliferation of, sustainable, or "green", building is growing worldwide. Because of this, standards for green building adoption are growing to follow suit. There are a number of excellent and well proven environmental evaluation schemes already in existence, these include: LEED in the USA, BREEAM in the UK, HQE in France and CASBEE in Japan.[1] Each country’s standards have different method to evaluate a sustainable building. This report will look at the “differences between LEED in the United States and CASBEE in Japan. Each have a similar goal to promote sustainable construction and higher environmental standards, but are developed from fundamentally different approaches.”[2]
Doing business with Japan
According to Professor Garrity, “the misunderstanding of the importance of cultural values is the major cause of cultural problems between the United States and Japan.”[3] Additionally, Professor Garrity states that “Harmony with the environment is also part and parcel when it comes to Japanese culture. Control over the environment is the way American’s think.”[4] While the majority of Americans may not be on the global bandwagon for ‘harmony with the environment,’ there are notable groups and organizations that have made not only the environment a priority in their business model, they seem to have, through environmental work, successfully tackled cultural misunderstandings with the Japanese that has eluded some business professionals for years.
A Business in Green Buildings
The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) based in Washington, DC has made their LEED rating system for buildings, the gold standard for ‘green’ development projects around the world. Since its founding in 1993, the USGBC has gone from a small nonprofit in the nation’s capital to one of the most prominent ‘green’ building certification and education institution in the world.[5] With a community comprising “78 local affiliates, more than 18,000 member companies and organizations, and more than 140,000 LEED Professional Credential holders, USGBC is the driving force of an industry that is projected to contribute $554 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product from 2009-2013.”[6] According to the USGBC website, buildings in the United States are responsible for “39% of CO2 emissions, 40% of energy consumption, 13% water consumption and 15% of GDP per year, making green building a source of significant economic and environmental opportunity.”[7] Not only is the work that the USGBC do offer environmental sustainability, it offers economic sustainability as well. Among other ‘green’ building options, greater building efficiency can meet “85% of future U.S. demand for energy, and a national commitment to green building has the potential to generate 2.5 million American jobs.”[8] This means that there are huge money making opportunities in the sustainable building economy. Opportunities that have global implications.
CASBEE – Japan
Although “LEED is the most prominent standard for green building design, it is not the only standard.”[9] In Japan, energy efficiency and ‘green’ buildings are nothing new. Ever since the 1970’s “oil supply shocks, the Japanese government has implemented aggressive energy efficiency polices. In addition to regulations, consumer demand has driven energy efficiency because residential electricity rates are much higher in Japan. According to the International Energy Agency, Japan’s residential electricity rates are around 24 cents kw/h, about double the US average of 12 cents kw/h. More expensive electricity means higher costs to heat, cool, light and operate a building, and therefore a greater incentive to use electricity as efficiently as possible.”[10] According to the CASBEE website, “promotion of sustainability is one of the great challenges facing humankind. Since the building industry started to move toward the promotion of sustainable building in the latter half of the 1980's, various techniques to evaluate the environmental performance of buildings have been developed.”[11]
USGBC - US
The USGBC’s strategic plan emphatically states that ““Green” is booming.”[12] The plan, which runs through 2013, details the ‘green’ becoming more and more mainstream. Sales of “green products, hybrid vehicles, and organic foods, for example, are growing rapidly. Carbon regulation will dramatically alter energy markets, driving innovation and efficiency across the economy. Legitimate concerns about faddishness and “green‐washing” aside, these trends reflect long‐term shifts in societal mindset.”[13] While a shifting mindset in the American society with environmental and sustainability inclinations is a remarkable feat, the USGBC seems intimately aware that “achieving sustainability on a large scale is still very far off. Green buildings and other green products remain very small percentages of total market shares. USGBC has achieved tremendous success in recent years, with LEED playing a particularly strong role in driving green building. Yet, only 3% of new commercial buildings in 2007 met at least a minimum green standard and only 0.2% of new residential construction is built green.”[14]
LEED vs. CASBEE
As of 2009 there were 8 registered LEED buildings in Japan.[15] The USGBC established itself as a non-profit in 1994 and released the first LEED rating system in 1998. The organization has grown significantly from a handful of individuals to now more than 78 local affiliates, 20,000 member organizations and more than 100,000 LEED Accredited Professionals.[16] The organization has “more than 200 employees and is very influential in the industry. LEED has successfully created a new and expanding market for green building products, driving innovations in technologies that adhere to its rating system. There is no doubt LEED has been responsible for the dramatic market transformation in the last ten years since its introduction.”[17]
The LEED system has a “systematic approach, based on a checklist that helps to keep evaluation relatively simple. Creating a checklist for sustainability makes it easier, but it may risk the overarching goal of sustainability, by keeping too focused on a guideline rather than an ideal.”[18] Author Daniel Brook cited, "the point system creates perverse incentives to design around the checklist rather than to build the greenest building possible.[19] He cites an example where a $395 bike rack is worth the same as a $1.3 million environmentally sensitive heating system. A building may achieve a high LEED rating, but still may not make environmental sense depending on how it is incorporated to the wider community.[20] While his argument is not without merit, it is perhaps shortsighted and ill-informed.
CASBEE, on the other hand, was initiated with the support of a government bureau (MILT), as a joint industry/academia/government project.[21] It is “evident in the conceptual design of the Japanese model, as the approach is more theoretical, and less systematic. There is a comprehensive and holistic approach, that may seem more abstract in some ways, but it enables the concept to easily be applied to the urban scale.”[22] In addition, “new products that come to market will not be heavily influenced by the CASBEE system, and will still come from Japan’s long history of designing energy efficient and sustainable products. There are no checklists or point-ratings to meet; rather there are broader goals of improving environmental quality and reducing environmental load.”[23]
Conclusion
Green building proliferation and interests in energy efficiency will only grow in the future. Business interests in this field will grow to keep pace. More importantly the race for the international standard in the green building industry is a prize that is something organizations all over the world are vying for. While there are notable differences in approach and implementation, “LEED is a systematic checklist created and promoted by industry professionals, whereas CASBEE was a government initiative with a more holistic approach to sustainability,”[24] There is still room for any organization to gain the lead in an international setting. While, the USGBC is making leaps and bounds in internationally, “the US has an opportunity to learn from Japan’s experience in both technology and policy. Japan’s long history of energy efficient and sustainable building materials provides a host of new green building technologies, including many products that have been proven in Japan for years. Many rank well in the CASBEE system and qualify for LEED points.”[25] As the USGBC grows and changes to an international business perspective, it is important to remember that “LEED is the most prominent standard for green building design” right now. While there is still much work to be done, the USGBC and is positioned to continue to lead this industry and subsequently, make enormous ‘surpluses’. With all this success hopefully America will no longer be known as the country that does not ‘live in harmony with the environment’.
No comments:
Post a Comment