Sustainability Background Information
This program promotes stewardship of existing, older and historic buildings and communities as an important component of any plan to reduce carbon emissions and address negative environmental impacts associated with the built environment. Our Principles of Sustainable Stewardship include: the reuse of buildings whenever possible; reinvestment in existing communities; and energy retrofits of older and historic buildings with up-to-date technology and renewable energy sources. These activities are both good for the environment and are proven community revitalization and economic development tools.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is working with federal, state, and local groups to develop and promote this program. Specific proposals include: broaden federal and state rehabilitation tax credit incentives, encourage flexible and innovative local building codes that support greater energy efficiency in existing buildings, improve green-building rating systems that encourage building reuse and discourage development in sprawl locations, and new incentives to encourage energy upgrades to older buildings.
It is increasingly apparent that we cannot build our way out of environmental problems. Conservation must be a major part of the solution. Up to now, the approach to reducing carbon emissions largely has been based on the "assumption of consumption" – that we can consume our way out of this energy crisis with new "green" buildings. It goes without saying that any new building or development should be sustainable and energy efficient. But the greenest building or neighborhood is the one that already exists. Any new construction has an enormous carbon footprint created by extraction of new building materials as well as the actual construction. Demolition is similarly energy intensive, and yet, we are much too inclined to think of our buildings as disposable, rather than renewable resources. Conserving, reusing and increasing energy efficiency in existing buildings, especially those over 30 years old, which were generally built to last, is urgent and essential to have any significant impact on global warming or encourage energy independence.
In addition, statistics show that rehabilitation is more job intensive than new construction. These jobs require more skill and offer additional pay and most of the money is spent locally. These are "green" jobs because rehabilitation and recycling older buildings is as "green" as it gets.
If, as a nation, we are to achieve the dual goals set out in your "Blueprint for Change" calling for an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, and a 25% reduction in energy use in existing buildings over the next decade, then we must create tools for owners of older commercial, industrial and residential buildings to improve energy efficiency at a scale that can have an impact.
Some facts:
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Approximately 32 percent of carbon emissions come from the transportation sector, but, according to the Pew Center on Climate Change, 43 percent of carbon emissions are attributable to building operations;
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According to the US Green Building Council, buildings consume 70 percent of the electricity in this country;
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The same source states that 40 percent of raw materials are used for building construction, and it takes additional energy to extract, manufacture, and transport those raw materials for new construction;
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A 2004 Brookings Institution report projects that by 2030, we will demolish and replace 82 billion square feet of the current U.S. building stock, or nearly 1/3 of the approximately 300 billion square feet of space. It will take as much energy to demolish and reconstruct 82 billion square feet of space as it would to power the entire state of California for one year (the 10th largest economy in the world); and
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According to the Building and Social Housing Foundation and Empty Homes Agency in England, it takes about 50 to 65 years for a new, energy efficient building to save the amount of embodied energy lost in demolishing an existing building.
