This past weekend it was time to go car shopping for my husband who graciously agreed to part with his not so fuel-efficient and very costly to own and maintain BMW 5series. Buying premium fuel and getting less than 25 miles to a gallon hurts in many ways. Fuel-efficiency was one of our top priorities for his new car, but it also had to have enough tech gadgets and features to satisfy his love for such things. Plus it had to have at least a little bit of a coolness factor. We were hoping to reduce his car payment, so we ruled out the “luxury” brands this time and zeroed in on Mazda, a brand I am very loyal to, and Volkswagen, a brand he is very loyal to.

We test drove several cars at the local VW dealership, including the new Jetta Hybrid, the Passat TDI (clean diesel) and finally a standard gas CC which was still pretty fuel efficient and definitely a cool car. Both the Jetta Hybrid and the Passat Diesel got gas mileage in the 40+ mpg range. The fuel economy was very attractive, but the sticker prices and leasing options meant that we weren’t really going to lower our monthly payment much at all and the money saved on gas did not seem to make up for the increased sticker prices of the hybrid or diesel technologies.

At Mazda, we limited our looking to the CX-5 and the Mazda6. My husband liked the idea of the CX-5 compact SUV and the gas mileage was actually pretty good at almost30 mpg combined,  but I had a suspicion that he really wanted an SUV so he could tow our group’s tailgate trailer and it just seemed like a lot of vehicle for just a few towing occasions. We started leaning toward the Mazda6 and were pretty impressed. The 2014 Mazda6 was just released and features Mazda’s “Skyactiv” technologies. In the case of the Mazda6, this is a whole range of technologies aimed at fuel efficiency including a lighterweight car body, streamlined aerodynamics, a super efficient gasoline combustion engine and regenerative breaking to power the car’s electronics. The result seems to be a car that can get up to 38 mpg on the highway without the sticker shock of an electric or hybrid solution. I was also a big fan that the car doesn’t have a battery that costs thousands of dollars to replace and has to be disposed of as toxic waste like a hybrid. Electric cars are intriguing to me, but we live in Ohio where most of our electricity comes from coal and a coal powered car doesn’t really seem much better to me than a gas powered one.

Mazda’s Skyactiv technology seem like a great combination of fuel-efficiency, affordability and just enough style to please my husband. Sign us up! We are now the owners, well make that lessees, of a Mazda6 for the next 3 years. We’ll see how it goes…

Ok- enough with the personal stuff and on to the green stuff. The architecture of the library, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, has received some mixed design critiques. The $250-million, 226,000 SF complex which houses a library, museum, auditorium and policy institute is impressive in size but presents a stripped down neo-classical aesthetic. Whether you care for the design or not, it is worth noting that the building did earn LEED Platinum certification earlier this month. Of note, the building has solar hot water heaters that provide 100% of their hot water, PV panels that provide 10% of the building’s energy use and rainwater harvesting that meets 50% of the landscape’s irrigation needs. Additionally, natural habitat was restored on over 70% of the project’s site using a diverse mixture of native grasses.

It certainly speaks to the relevancy of sustainable design in today’s culture and the prominence of the LEED Rating System that both President Clinton’s and President Bush’s libraries pursued and achieved LEED Platinum. I only wish that President Clinton hadn’t referred to it as “LEEDs” in his dedication speech yesterday. Oh well.

Activities:

The activities section allows you to view building that have achieved different certifications, labels and awards. Currently it is tracking things like LEED certifications, BREEAM certifications, Energy Star labels, AIA COTE award winners, Living Building Challenge Projects, Enterprise Green Communities certifications and more. You can sort by the different certifications or view a timeline of recent activities.

Buildings:

This section allows you to view information about buildings that have one or more sustainable “activities” associated with them. When the activity is a LEED certification, you can view details about the certification including rating system, level of certification and even which LEED credits were achieved. Additionally, some projects have linked case studies that include even more information.

Places:

Places allows you to view sustainable projects sorted by country or city. It also has a running top ten list that shows which U.S. and non U.S. cities have the most green building activities.

Strategies:

The strategies section allows you to view buildings that have achieved different LEED credits and specific strategies like building reuse, regional materials or heat island reduction. It is also sorted by rating system, so you could use this section to see how many LEED for Schools 2009projects have achieved the Construction Waste Management credit.

Collections:

This section allows you to view groups of projects that are similar in some way. Many collections have been formed based on project type like K-12 Education or Professional Sports venues. Other collections have been formed based on USGBC chapters or special technologies that have been used like solar hot water panels or ground source heat pumps.

I’m still exploring GBIG myself, but the amount of data it already contains is pretty impressive. It will be interesting to see how professionals and building owners around the world are allowed and encouraged to interact with the database. Currently, most of the information on GBIG is based on initial design strategies, features and performance. Very little is focused on actual performance after construction is complete which is that data that I think people are really hungry for. Hopefully this “in-use” data will become available over time.

1. Education (unlimited number of hours)
2. LEED Project Participation (unlimited number of hours)
3. Authorship (unlimited number of hours)
4. Volunteering (no more than half of all CE hours)

You’ll notice that three out of four of these delivery methods are available for an unlimited number of hours. Personally, I think this is a great step toward streamlining the process in and of itself as I always found it difficult in earlier versions of the program to keep track of the hour limits for certain delivery methods. For instance, you used to only be able to report a maximum of 10 hours for project participation. It’s great to see that limit go away. Also, all activity types can now be considered LEED-specific if certain requirements are met.

I am also happy to see that the reporting has been streamlined with a simplified tool. When I reported participation in a webinar today, it was as easy as imputing a date, the activity type and a brief description of the activity. So much easier than the previous reporting tool! If you’ve been putting off reporting your CMP activities because of what a pain it is like I have now might be a great time to take a new look at the program and get your reporting up to date!

When I was reviewing the LEED addenda a couple weeks ago, I found one particular addition to the Measurement and Verification (M&V) credit that I am very happy about and plan to use on most if not all of my LEED 2009 projects. Prior to this addenda, there were two options for earning the measurement and verification credit:

Option 1: Calibrated Simulation

Comparison of the building’s actual energy use to a calibrated energy model

Option 2: Energy Conservation Measure Isolation

Sub-metering of energy uses and a Measurement and Verification plan to analyze sub-metered date

The addenda offers a third option:

“Meet MPR 6 through compliance Option 1: Energy and Water Data Release Form. Projects must register an account in ENERGY STAR’s Portfolio Manager tool and share the project file with the USGBC master account.”

M&V has typically been a pretty difficult credit to acheive as it requires expensive sub-meters or calibration of an energy model which can be very time consuming and expensive and can still result in little to no real insight into unexpected energy use. The addition of this third option really makes this credit a “freebie” for many of the projects I am on as most of our building owners have already committed to using Option 1 for MPR 6. I have mixed feelings about that. The extra 2-3 points this credit is worth will definitely be appreciated on these projects, but part of me feels a bit like this is cheating since our owners were going to do it anyway. Hopefully in the end it will at least mean that building owners are paying more attention to their energy use on a regular basis as they input data into the Energy Star Portfolio Manager.