News Sustainable Biz Making that green: Construction industry looks to gauge impact of green construction locally
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By Nathan Peck | MiBiz
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WEST MICHIGAN — The West Michigan coast has picked up a deserved reputation as a center for green building with Grand Rapids boasting the greatest number of LEED-accredited buildings per capita.
With 130 certified LEED buildings in West Michigan, the area’s owners and construction industry has heard the green gospel and has seen the sustainable light. While the industry has slowed in the wake of the credit crisis in 2008, interest in green building has grown, said Tom McGovern, president of Rockford Construction Co.
“There is an expanding market for sustainable construction,” McGovern said. In the mid 2000s, LEED started appearing on an increasing number of RFP documents, and Rockford Construction began getting their staff certified as LEED APs. “We always had conversations around building efficiency, but it became very apparent in order to be competitive, that we needed this expertise. Larger clients started realizing the opportunities, and it has impacted everybody. It just boomed.”
The investment has paid off, in McGovern’s mind, as Rockford has completed 50 LEED certified projects over the last decade. He expects that number to continue to rise as the price of sustainable construction comes down.
“Initially, the (high) cost of LEED and sustainable initiatives were due to their cutting edge and sometimes bloody edge practices. Now that it has been proven and has been around a while, the technology and good practice is being repeated, refined and enhanced. The cost of these initiatives is not as significant anymore,” McGovern told MiBiz. “The payback period is down, even from an accounting standpoint, and it makes sense to do it now.”
Nationally, the U.S. Green Building Council recently presented a report completed by consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton looking into the economic impact of green building. The USGBC, responsible for the formation and implementation of its LEED building standards, found that from 2000 through 2008, green construction generated $173 billion in economic activity and supported 2.4 million jobs. The LEED building standard, they found, generated $830 million in economic activity and 15,000 jobs.
Separating out the new green jobs from those already in the economy is difficult — but the USGBC included traditional jobs that had been “upskilled” to meet the needs of green construction.
Renae Hesselink, chair of U.S. Green Building Council West Michigan, said the organization is working to collect similar data for the 130 LEED certified buildings in the region.
“We looked to see if anyone is tracking this data as we don’t want to be duplicating our efforts. I am assuming at this point the data does not exist — I think it needs to be done,” Hesselink said. The next step after gauging the economic and jobs impact of green building, Hesselink explained, is getting the word out about the businesses that offer green products and services. “We have proven that we are willing to go down that path, and now we need to support those local businesses. I believe we have a way to go. Look at the furniture industry for instance. For the big three here, (sustainability) is just the way that they do business, but they have been working on that for 20-something years. In the construction industry, even though LEED has been around 13 years, the supply chain still has a ways to go.”
For Buzz Holtvluwer, owner of Standale Lumber, the sustainable journey has been a mixed bag. The company had attained Forest Stewardship Council certification for its lumber in 2008, but let it lapse in 2010 due to the cost of keeping the certification current and a lack of interest in the construction industry.
“It was very expensive to get FSC-certified lumber for a LEED job and owners only got one point for it,” Holtvluwer said. “An FSC stud is $3, whereas a regular stud is $1.50. There are easier ways to get LEED Platinum or Gold standards than getting FSC-certified lumber.”
Holtvluwer, however, is not turning away from the sustainability path. Standale Lumber is partnering with Habitat for Humanity on the organization’s first Net Zero homes, that create as much energy as they pull off the grid. He looks beyond the Zero standard to the Passive Home, which puts the standard on steroids, building such a tight building envelope so that a home doesn’t require heating.
“We still sell a lot of the lumber, even though we don’t carry the current paperwork. It is still FSC-certified — we are not paying for the documentation and the paper trail — and it is still the same lumber,” he said. “The biggest problem with green building right now is the (small) number of people building sustainably driving costs up. We have not lessened that drive in what we’re doing in terms of recycling or building practices.”
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