Buildings
Green Pays Its Way—Performance-Based Fees
This article explains how giving building and design professionals a financial incentive to create energy-efficient schools can be a winning strategy for both the firms that design and build schools and the students who learn in them. Performance-based fees offer benefits for the building owner, the architect and engineer, the…
Introduction to Green Building: Resource Efficiency
This article, originally published in RMI Solutions, introduces the concept of green building. The author argues that green building enhances the natural environment while benefiting humans. According to Karolides, green building takes a holistic approach to planning, designing, and constructing buildings. Choosing “green” building materials is not a cut-and-dried process.
Water Efficiency: The Next Generation
This paper from 1998 describes different technical methods by which households can save money and save water. These methods include low-flow toilets, low-flow faucets and showerheads, graywater systems that funnel water from homes for use in landscaping or flushing toilets, composting toilets, smarter water meters that provide feedback to customers,…
The Superefficient Passive Building Frontier
This article suggests that integrated whole-building design can yield superior comfort with about three to 30 times less mechanical energy and often with lower capital costs, but that achieving this poses fundamental challenges to professional education and practice and to compensation structure. The article provides a case study of the…
Greening the White House: a Comprehensive Energy and Environmental Retrofit
This report describes RMI’s experience with the “Greening the White House” project. In this initiative, the Clinton administration analyzed, designed, and implemented a program to improve the energy use in the building. The White House has had a long tradition of demonstrating technological innovation. In keeping with that tradition, the…