Protecting the Environment from Buildings
Mike Woolsey
Certified Passive House Designer · WELL Faculty · WELL AP · HVAC Sustainability
The importance of environmental stewardship isn’t new. Adam was made responsible for taking care of the Garden of Eden. Thousands of years after the Book of Genesis was written, mankind still works to be a better steward, and the knowledge base required to be a good steward is continuously expanding and refining. The tools to design and construct more environmentally responsible are available today and improving at a fast rate.
In the last 4 editions of Building Science Observer, consideration was given to the ingredients of building materials in general, with special emphasis on the risks HVAC system ingredients might pose on building occupants. Increasingly, voluntary building certification programs make it possible for building occupants to know if they are surrounded by building materials that have been vetted and found to pose very little risk to their well-being. When you see a WELL, LEED or Living Building Challenge certification plaque on the door of the building you enter, chances are that risks to your health caused by the building have been minimized, but only if the certificate was granted by the awarding of optional credits.
Buildings have long been viewed by many as a shelter, protecting us from the environment. Read more in the recent newsletter: 8 ways HVAC system design influences the WELL v2 Air Concept | LinkedIn. Emerging strategies, building codes and legislation are driving the development of buildings that still shelter us, but with minimized impact on the environment.
In 2023, many in the construction industry are focused on reducing all sorts of impacts buildings have on the environment. We can evaluate not only the direct release of emissions from the building, but the indirect emissions caused during construction, operation and eventual deconstruction phases of the building. For building components, including HVAC equipment, data is just now being made available through a relatively new tool - a document called an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), which reports, according to established industry rules, the measures of environmental risk a specific building component contributes.
Potential Environmental Impacts Reported by an EPD
For each phase of a building’s life, a product EPD details the following potential environmental impact categories of the product.
The first two categories above get most of the attention today in code writing and legislation groups, but the other categories are also important. Forests like the bamboo forest pictured above, for example, benefit when we make informed building product selections to minimize environmental impacts by referring to EPDs.
Who uses EPDs?
Design teams can develop a whole building life cycle assessment (WBLCA) by gathering EPDs for all products used in a building and summarizing the total effect of using the specified combination of products.
Building product manufacturers use EPDs to support the work of design teams, and to identify opportunities for environmental impact reduction resulting from product design. Read here about the experience of one HVAC manufacturer that switched their sheet metal to a lower carbon steel product: Swegon takes its first step towards using fossil-free steel.
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Through the recent inflation reduction act (IRA), many federal buildings now have requirements that only certain building products with EPDs may be used on projects funded by the IRA. While EPDs contain other important information about the environmental impacts of a product, the IRA is so far focused on the use of EPDs to seek and install products with relatively lower carbon emissions.
HVAC-related building components also contribute potential environmental impacts, and ASHRAE (the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers) in 2022 published ASHRAE Position Document on Building Decarbonization, which “presents ASHRAE’s position on decarbonizing buildings along with recommendations for moving forward”.
In the 2023 version, ASHRAE Standard 189.1 Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings includes requirements for the submission of EPDs for building projects designed according to the standard.
ASHRAE Standard SPC 240P – Proposed Standard for Evaluating Greenhouse Gas (GHG) and Carbon Emissions in Building Design, Construction and Operation is still under development but is expected to include requirements for the use of EPDs to document a compliant building’s potential GHG and carbon emissions.
Many of the same voluntary building certification programs that give certification credits for the avoidance of risks to human health also give credits for the use of EPDs to lower the potential environmental impact of those buildings on the environment. (See resources below.) That means it is possible to design, construct and operate a building with understanding of both human and environmental risks. Although the use of EPDs may be an optional contribution to voluntary building certification, the owner may decide that the EPDs are mandatory for their project.
Environmental Impact Analysis Requires Experts
As stated in the last edition, many opportunities exist for architects, engineers, other design professionals, and students to specialize in the materials facet of building science. Here is a partial list of resources that I recommend.
Voluntary building certification programs that issue credit for Environmental Product Declarations
It's inspiring to see the construction industry embrace sustainability with tools like EPDs ??. Albert Einstein once said - The environment is everything that isn't me. Your effort to lessen our environmental footprint aligns perfectly with this thought. Keep leading the change! ????