{"id":622,"date":"2010-02-14T23:44:06","date_gmt":"2010-02-15T04:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=622"},"modified":"2010-02-14T23:55:44","modified_gmt":"2010-02-15T04:55:44","slug":"more-use-more-energy-but-still-less-per-watt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=622","title":{"rendered":"Even in Energy Saving Buildings, Not a Lot of Measuring Going On"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce Henderson, THE SUN NEWS, February 7, 2010<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"image\"<\/a> Charlotte’s first energy-efficient “green” public building, the children’s theater and library ImaginOn<\/a>, turns out to use twice as much energy as its designers had estimated.<\/p>\n

Engineers say the bigger bills are due to the building’s unexpected popularity, which has caused it to extend operating hours. ImaginOn still saves thousands of dollars a month, they say, compared to a standard design.<\/p>\n

But as dozens of such buildings rise in Charlotte, many financed by taxpayers, their owners might not be getting all the green they’re paying for.<\/p>\n

ImaginOn’s owner, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg library system, didn’t know how the 4-year-old building was performing until the Observer asked. The library then had engineers analyze energy use.<\/p>\n

The lack of data is not unusual, experts say, and could hurt the credibility of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, which certified ImaginOn in 2006.<\/p>\n

LEED scores buildings based on predicted performance. How they actually work might be far different.<\/p>\n

“When you ask how your building is working and your facility manager isn’t able to answer, nobody should be surprised that the building is out of whack,” said Brendan Owens, the council’s vice president for LEED technical development. “There’s an old saying: ‘You can’t manage what you don’t measure.'”<\/p>\n

When researchers sought energy records for hundreds of LEED-certified buildings nationwide, they got usable data for less than a fourth, according to a 2008 report prepared for the council. [Read rest of story]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charlotte, NC’s, new library uses more energy than expected because it has 50% more visitors and is used many more hours than designers anticipated. But the LEED Silver building didn’t know it was still had energy savings of 28.5% over what a conventional building equivalent would use until somebody asked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[173,132,182,171,164,87,181,265,210],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":628,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions\/628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}