Sustainability can be likened to the term “Rashomon effect,” from the 1950 Japanese film of the same name, which suggests that the truth of a situation can be difficult to ascertain because of conflicting stories from different witnesses or participants. Despite these challenges though, many involved in the pursuit of a united sustainable state see a future with possibilities and work diligently to join the complicated puzzle pieces to reach a state more sustainable than the one that exists today.

Though many definitions of sustainability exist, it is difficult to pinpoint just one that clearly depicts a sustainable state or the many pieces or paths that get us there. The 1987 Bruntland Report defined sustainable development as “meet[ing] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”¹ While it is widely accepted, it is not very operational.

Others have attempted to define sustainable development in more specific terms. For example, the three-ring social-economic-environmental balancing act was popularized by Agenda 21, the United Nations’ sustainable development plan. The corporate “triple bottom line” movement defines sustainability from a bottom-up perspective, while The Natural Step, a nonprofit organization founded by Swedish scientist Karl-Henrik Robèrt, provides a science-based and top-down definition.

Additional formulations abound, each with its own underlying theory. Users of sustainability principles proceed through stages from conceptualization to measurement, typically framed in strategic planning terms that sequentially specify goals, objectives, indicators, targets, and proposals for action.

For example, “reduce greenhouse gas emissions” is a no-brainer, an action that most people support. However, the consensus falls apart when details appear. Who, specifically, must act? Is the allocation of responsibility efficient and fair? To what extent are the efforts to reach this goal complements or substitutes, independent or interdependent, opportunistic or coordinated, top-down or bottom-up? Are these actions truly sustainable?

To illustrate the different levels of sustainability initiatives, the Rutgers Center for Green Building (RCGB) collected a series of project synapses from its own files, as well as from clients, board members and other organizations at Rutgers University. Each of the following examples illustrate the efforts and challenges in defining and achieving a more sustainable future.

Self-Sufficient Urban Buildings
The promise of a super efficient car has long fascinated both scientists and the general public, but the greater impact of the built environment on global resources is often overlooked. Buildings account for nearly 35 percent of total energy consumed and 65 percent of total electricity consumed in the U.S. today.² Buildings intensify global warming by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through electricity generated by the burning of non-renewable fossil fuels or carbon-based fuels used inside a building. In this manner, buildings account for 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.³

Building construction further accounts for 30 percent of raw material use, while 28 percent of landfill material is made up of construction debris.⁴ Due to inefficient construction techniques and infrastructure systems as well as occupant lifestyles, buildings account for 12 percent of potable water consumption and 30 percent of waste output.⁵

Sick Building Syndrome—the result of poor indoor air quality caused by a combination of toxic construction materials, toxic cleaning agents and energy-efficient, yet problematic, air-tight construction—may affect as many as 30 percent of new and renovated buildings.⁶ This constitutes a significant, if mostly invisible, health risk as the average American spends 90 percent of his or her time indoors.⁷

Such resource and health challenges form the rationale for green building: “the practice of 1) increasing the efficiency with which buildings and their sites use energy, water, and materials, and 2) reducing building impacts on human health and the environment, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal.”⁸

Rutgers recently received a major grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop green building sustainability metrics and to conduct post-occupancy surveys and engineering studies of large green residential buildings in New York City. The project will use agent-based simulation models in which the actions of autonomous “agents” (e.g. building operators and occupants) and their interactions with building systems (e.g., HVAC, plumbing, lighting and glazing) will be modeled to predict system-wide behavior. The models, calibrated against case study data, will be used to analyze human-technology interactions, leading to suggestions for robust green building designs that deliver optimal performance despite variations in occupant and operator behavior.

The motivation for the project is the determination that buildings often fail to perform as designed because operators do not, or cannot, operate the building as intended, or because occupants behave differently than designers expect. Familiar examples include HVAC economizer cycles stuck in the open position year round, improperly used control systems, and blinds closed all day, rather than adjusted according to daylight. (See “Daylighting” article on sidebar)

The Rutgers Center recently proposed a companion project to the U.S. Green Building Council, which would extend this work to commercial buildings and provide information useful for the revision of its green building system, Leadership for Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).

Rural-to-Urban Transect Courtesy of Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company.

Life Cycle Cost Analysis of Green Buildings
There are many barriers to green building, some more challenging than others to address. One often-cited obstacle is the extra up-front costs for building green. While estimates vary widely, there is general agreement that adopting a life cycle perspective of the benefits and costs of building green makes sense.

The New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (NJMC) is the zoning and planning agency for a roughly 30-square-mile area along the Hackensack River, covering parts of 14 municipalities in Bergen and Hudson Counties. The commission is building a new a 9,500-square-foot educational facility with classrooms, a lecture room, laboratory space, administrative offices, and an observatory. This building is being LEED certified and the commission-expects to achieve a Silver rating or better.

To better understand the benefits and costs associated with the decision to make this a green building, the commission contracted the Rutgers Center to conduct a Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCC).

The analysis provides a cost assessment of owning and operating the building over its expected life-span. Accomplished by creating a detailed model of the building based on its materials, plan and equipment, this model tracks the heating, cooling, lighting, ventilation, and other energy flows of the building to extrapolate the building’s operating costs over its lifetime. According to the results, the Meadowland commission’s educational building will be extremely energy efficient, consuming only 70 percent of the energy that a similar building in the same climate zone would consume. This results in a projected savings of as much as $26.42 per square foot over the life of the building.

In another example, the extent to which the building’s photo voltaic (PV) solar system is cost-effective depends heavily on a number of uncertain factors, including the cost of electricity, the discount rate used in the life-cycle calculation, and value of the Solar Renewable Energy Certificates (credits provided to generators of renewable energy for each megawatt hour [MWh] of renewable energy produced). The current value of these certificates is $240 per MWh, but they are expected to rise in value as the trend towards more renewable energy sources increases.

As illustrated by the proximity of this abandoned factory to the established housing of the Allegheny West neighborhood of Philadelphia, the future of walkable communities needs to start in those neighborhoods with significant brownfields.

Green Building along the Transect
Green buildings are sprouting up all over the place and the best ones are designed to fit within their specific local context. LEED includes Sustainable Sites points that recognize some aspects of context—transit proximity, density, landscape features, brownfields—while ignoring or de-emphasizing others, such as local safety, community identity and the need to restore natural environments. Planners have developed a more systematic framework, called transect planning, for characterizing sustainability of sites. It is time to test the value of transect planning’s relationship to green building.

A transect is a cross section of a region that transitions from less dense to most dense development patterns: it can be used to define growth in an area, study urban structure and determine a development’s appropriate fit in its place.

Based on a sample of green buildings located along the rural-to-urban transect, the Rutgers Center is investigating variations in those things that determine energy use, water use and stormwater runoff; best design practices associated with each transect category; and the value of avoided infrastructure costs by transect category. This work takes the green building concept up a level and its results will help refine our understanding of what comprises a sustainable settlement pattern.

Reclaimed Brownfields Create Sustainable Communities
Sustainability is often referred to as a three-legged stool: environmental, economic and social. Rutgers University’s National Center for Neighborhood and Brownfields Redevelopment (NCNBR) received a grant from the U.S. EPA to work with community organizations to integrate redevelopment of brownfield properties into their neighborhood revitalization plans. These unrealized opportunities to address economic, housing or recreational needs have long been avoided for fear of expense, liability and uncertainty in time and expense required to address the environmental issues. However, the reclaiming of brownfields for the betterment of communities exemplifies all aspects of this definition of sustainability.

Working with community development corporations in Philadelphia and urban New Jersey, the center has developed a set of five modules for understanding brownfields. The modules were the basis for training sessions for the community organizations which were encouraged to explore sites previously considered unapproachable.

The Allegheny West neighborhood of Philadelphia and the other community groups in the pilot have committed to expanding their current plans to incorporate brownfield sites. Integrating green building and energy efficiency technologies into their brownfield reuse plans helps to ensure the ideal of a sustainable city.

Brownfield sites continue to stigmatize communities through lost opportunities for economic growth and the drain on public resources. Communities across the country are mobilizing their forces to clean these sites, not just for new commercial, housing or public institution construction, but as part of our green future.

Conclusion
The projects outlined here highlight just a few of the many efforts underway to more completely define the sustainable state. Whether defined broadly as a balancing of social, economic and environmental objectives, or narrowly as a set of environmental system conditions, sustainable development requires multiple actions at multiple levels. Green buildings alone cannot make a green community; many components must be weighed and balanced in order to outline and implement a truly sustainable plan, whether on a local, national or global scale.

As with most notable shifts in societal behavior, the tradeoffs and compromises associated with sustainable design must be carefully measured and the rapidly changing trends weathered if we are to understand the best and most effective approach to reaching sustainability. Whether we look at the environmental potential of installing solar panels or evaluate the possible financial outcomes of redeveloping a brownfield site, it is clear that the shift from simply building green to a sustainable state is challenging but rewarding.

There are no simple answers but continuing research and collaboration among stakeholders will better define the many layers of what ultimately must function as nested sustainability.

Contributors: Jennifer Senick, executive director, Rutgers Center for Green Building; Uta Krogmann, Ph.D., associate professor, Rutgers University Department of Environmental Sciences; Clinton J. Andrews, Ph.D., associate professor and director, Urban Planning and Policy Development Program, Rutgers University Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy; Judith Shaw, senior program associate, National Center for Neighborhood & Brownfield Redevelopment; Jesse Sherry, Rutgers University Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy; Randall Solomon, executive director, New Jersey Sustainable State Institute; Cate MacNeill, Rutgers University Department of Environmental Sciences. ¹

¹The World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission, 1987) defined “sustainable development” as “meet[ing] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

²Environmental Building News, Volume 10, Number 5. These statistics exclude industrial buildings.

³EBN, op cit.

⁴EBN, op cit.

⁵EBN, op cit.

⁶Yeang, The Green Skyscraper.

⁷EBN, op cit.

⁸The Office of the Federal Environmental Executive, The Federal Commitment to Green Building: Experiences and Expectations.