Report Details the Climate Benefits of Green Building

A recent study by researchers at the University of California – Berkeley explores the many climate benefits of green building projects, and finds that green buildings offer “significant potential to reduce GHG emissions through non-energy green building strategies.” The study, which evaluated 100+ LEED for Existing Buildings 2009 certified projects in California, found that common green building strategies including those focused on water use reduction, waste management, and especially location & transportation can provide substantial GHG emissions reduction co-benefits.

The green buildings in the LEED-EBOM dataset produced 50% less GHGs due to water consumption than baseline buildings, 48% less due to solid waste management, and 5% less due to transportation. If applied to the entire California office building stock, performance typical of the certified green buildings would save 0.703 MMTCO2e/yr from transportation, 0.084 MMTCO2e/yr from water, and 0.044 MMTCO2e/yr from waste, for a total potential savings of about 0.831 MMTCO2e/yr relative to conventional construction.

The California Air Resources Board, which supported this study, will host a webcast on Wednesday, December 17th (1:30pm) to discuss findings of the research. For more details, and to sign up for the webcast, visit: WEBCAST: Quantifying the Comprehensive Greenhouse Gas Co-Benefits of Green Buildings. Read the full report here.