Reducing your Carbon Footprint:

1
Reducing your Carbon Footprint

• A Practical Guide from Product Selection through
  Building Completion

2
Why Build Sustainably?

• Carbon is a limited resource
• Maximize building efficiency while minimizing
  environmental impacts
• Longer lifespan of goods promotes decreased cost
  over time

3
Areas of Importance

• Site Selection
• existing building reuse or new construction
• Water Usage
• using different techniques to decrease dependence
• Energy Consumption
• decrease dependence on electricity

• Material Selection
• what materials take less energy consumption to
  produce and deliver
• Indoor Air Quality
• creating a more healthy and productive
  environment for building users

4
Site Selection

• The greenest building is the building that you
  dont build
• Can the existing conditions of the site be used
  to maximize your building efficiency?
• Stormwater management
• Reducing the heat island effect

5
Water Usage

• Fixture Usage
• Is double plumbing applicable?
• Low flow fixtures
• Landscape Usage
• Graywater Reuse
• Potable Water Use

6
Energy Consumption

• Commissioning and Optimization
• Renewable Energy
• What constitutes green power?
• Lighting Energy Consumption
• Equipment Energy Consumption
• Laptops vs Desktops
• Other equipment

7
Material Selection

• Existing site materials
• Waste Management
• Recycled Content
• Regional Materials
• Renewable Resources

8
Indoor Environmental Quality

• Tight building health
• Low VOC material choices
• Occupant Comfort
• Daylighting and Views

9
Where do we go from here?

• Energy Audit
• Lighting
• HVAC
• What should we actually replace? And when???
• Life Cycle Analysis
• Embodied Energy