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The White Hat Guide to Energy & Resource Efficient and Environmentally Sustainable Buildings in Australia

Buildings that are energy and resource efficient are often labelled 'green buildings'. For reasons we have explained elsewhere, we at White Hat find the use of the word 'green' a somewhat mindless marketing term in the Australian context and prefer to use more objective terms such as environmentally sustainable design (ESD).

However the rating system Australia has currently adopted for rating environmentally sustainable designed buildings is called the Green Star Rating so may may have lost the nomenclature battle. Other rating systems around the world include the BREAM standards, the LEED building ratings and the CASBEE system. We expect to see some cross-pollination and rationalisation of the rating systems over time.

Site preparation and building

• Site preparation. What energy is used for site preparation? Does the preparation of the site have any significant effect on the environment?
• Building materials. Are there materials on site which can be recycled? What is the 'embedded energy' of the materials used?
• Building methods. What energy is consumed in the building process? Are the building methods environmentally friendly?

Impact on surrounding environment

• Ecology. A well designed building will attempt to at worst, to have little impact on, and at best positively contribute to local biodiversity, food security an similar ecological considerations.

Usage

• Heating and cooling. In many parts of Australia, heating or cooling a home or workplace consumes a large amount of energy.
• Water usage. In many parts of Australia, water is becoming a scarce and valuable commodity. An environmentally sustainable building may thus incorporate rainwater collection, black and grey water recycling and even 'water mining' (no, you don't want to know what that is.)
• Energy collection and generation.- Sustainable buildings aim not only to be energy neutral but to be regenerative, generating an excess energy to compenstae their own geographic footprint.
• Waste recycling and disposal. What features have been built in to minimise waste disposal?
• Design for sustainable behaviour. For instance a city office block may contain bicycle storage and shower facilities to encourage bicycle rather than car use.
• Design for a healthy living/working environment. This may entail access to fresh air, use of low emission paints, carpets and workstations and many other considerations.
• Design for risk management and environmental change. Has the building design taken into account the likelihood of environmental events and climate change? If a building designed to have a lifetime of 50 years requires substantial non-renewable energy to rebuild after a predicted once in ten year event such as a bushfire or a flood then it has not been sustainably designed. If that building requires substantial carbon emmitting energy input to accommodate the predicted climate change in its lifetime it has not been sustainably designed.

Maintenance & upgrading

• Regular maintenance. What are the energy and resource requirements for regular maintenance tasks such as window cleaning.
• Upgrading. Equipment, appliances and fittings are continually changing and improving. Will major energy consumption be required in order to upgrade (eg demolishing a reinforced concrete slab and then repouring concrete). For instance the Design Hub of RMIT in Melbourne (designed by architect Nonda Katsalidis) has been designed so that the extensive solar energy generation capabilities built in to the external 'skin' can be upgraded to accommodate new solar technologies as they emerge.
• Reconfiguring. The requirements of a family or a business change with time. Can the building be reconfigured so that it remains productive as circumstances change?
• Replacement. How often will the fabric of the building need replacement and can it be don with simple local materials. For instance architect Glenn Murcutt makes extensive use of wood and corrugated iron making replacing the fabric of the building relatively easy.
• Design for social change. Has the building been designed to accommodate the expected social changes in the lifetime of the building?

End of life

• Repurposing. At the end of the building's useful life is it possible to use the structure, or part of it, for some other purpose.
• Demolition. What energy will be required for demolition and how many of the materials can be recycled?

Some related pages on this site

• The White Hat Guide to Energy & Resource Efficient and Environmentally Sustainable Buildings in Melbourne
• Environmentally Sustainable Design in The Water Cube, Beijing

The White Hat Quiz

One of the most popular segments in the various free email newsletters from White Hat is the quiz at the end of the newsletter. Here is an example.

Environmentally sustainable design

1. In the Southern Hemisphere we are advised to have north facing windows to capture the winter sun and shelter from the summer sun. Why then do most older factories with their traditional sawtooth roof design in places like Melbourne have their vertical sections with the glass facing south?
2.