Green Building Case Paper

Plaintiffs assert that Defendants’ chemical land farming operation near their homes that are polluting the air violates Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act 42 and Section 112 of the Clean Air Act. Plaintiffs contend that these human rights violations are demonstrated by the fact that, (1) the Defendants failed to operate their pollution control equipment and (2) the Defendants did not acquire a permit from the United States Environmental Protection Agency or the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality to store hazardous waste in Alsen, Louisiana.

Case 3: “Henry Gifford, et al. v. United States Green Building Council (USGBC), et al., 10‐7747 (filed October 8, 2010)”.

Executive Summary: Decreasing revenue for our Green Works product line puts us in a conundrum. Do we continue pouring advertising dollars into a product with a majority market share but unimpressive returns, or should we stop, thus sacrificing our desirable position in a market with massive growth potential?

According to a “go green” blog named 2B Green World Website-LEED Consultants, “buildings represent over 50% of US wealth; $800 billion is the amount of renovation and new construction in the United States, buildings account for 1/6 of the worlds freshwater withdrawals, ¼ of its wood harvest and 2/5 of its material and energy flow” (Go Green Facts 1).These figures represent the disadvantages of a world without green building. Throughout this report the focus is on LEED certification and accreditation, and the impact LEED has on several different service firms. The report begins with background information about the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), LEED, and LEED

Bullard – 5 principles towards environmental justice: “guaranteeing the right to environmental protection, preventing harm before it occurs, shifting the burden of proof to the polluters, obviating proof of intent to discriminate, and redressing existing

As the issue grew in prominence through the mid-2000s, ordinary citizens elsewhere in Georgia took up activism to supplement legal action taken by Friends, GreenLaw, and Sierra Club. They battled LS Power, and Dynergy when it acquired LS Power, in and out of court over the decade. Every time a judge turned down the environmental groups, they formed another plan (GreenLaw, 2011). Meanwhile, Blakely improved its community through efforts like building new school facilities and creating a non-profit meant to help with long-term local development. With new hope for the future of Blakely, mercury-laden air threatened that future. As the case dragged on to 2010 and 2011, it became obvious that coal was becoming obsolete and financially unfeasible. Expedited by the fact that Dynergy dropped their support of LS Power’s coal plant plan, LS Power cancelled the plans in 2011 after reaching a deal with the environmental groups (GreenLaw,

Accordingly, since Clendenin Bros., the policy language has been broadened—seemingly in response to Clendenin Bros. and similar cases—to include not only environmental pollution, but also, substances that are “harmful or toxic to persons [or] property.” The significance of this distinction was recognized in Clipper Mill Fed., LLC v. Cincinnati Ins. Co, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 112172 (D.Md. 2010), where a landlord/insured alleged that damages caused by “[t]oxic and dangerous airborne pollutants” attributable to a malfunctioning HVAC unit gave rise to a claim against the insured by a tenant. Id. at 3. In that case, although the pollution at issue was not “environmental,” the District of Maryland observed that:

The siting of the SSTP in London, Ontario offers an excellent case to examine the ways in which Harris’s “common sense restructuring of public services, including the repeal of numerous land use planning requirements and the authorization of waste disposal sites without public input, work simultaneously to create new forms of white privilege and environmental racism in Southwestern Ontario” (Mascarenhas, 2012, p. 128). To meet the infrastructural needs of London’s rapidly growing population, London’s Planning Department proposed to build the SSTP along its southwest border. The plant is scheduled to be built by 2020 at a cost of approximately $80 million (DeBono, 2014). The story of the SSTP originated in 1996 when the City of London

The placement of companies deleterious to the environment and well-being of humans is something that prosperous communities are not quite familiar with; in contrast, it is something well-known to less affluent communities. The imbalance of classification shows a lack of environmental justice in low-income and minority communities. According to the EPA, or Environmental Protection Agency, “environmental justice is the fair treatment… of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies,” (EPA, n.d.). However, the environmental justice, the EPA mentions is not prevalent in communities of color, but rather its counterpart is: environmental injustice. Environmental injustice, or environmental racism, being the excessive placing of perilous waste and contaminating polluters near communities of color (Cha, 2016). Although often overlooked, environmental racism is an extensive problem that negatively affects minority communities in Southeast Los Angeles.

Finally, if you’re building green it calls for green cleaning. This means that the products used in cleaning these green buildings are also very environmentally safe. For example

Green buildings could become one of the main factors to preserve our rapidly decaying environment. There is no easy way to define a green building, but a green building is essentially a structure that amplifies the positives and mitigates the negatives throughout the entire life cycle of the building (Kriss, 2014). There are many definitions for a green building, but all of them include the planning, designing, constructing, and operating of the building while taking into huge considerations of the energy use, water use, indoor air environment, materials used and the effect it has on the site the green building is being built on. The first green buildings dates back to as far as the 1970’s, when solar panels went from experiments to reality. Green buildings were not as popular as they are today due to their extremely high pricing. With technology rapidly growing, solar panels are becoming cheaper and cheaper, making the transition to creating green buildings more affordable. This is the primary reason for the increased growth of green buildings today. A modern company that is paving the way to the growth of green buildings named LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, focuses primarily on new and effective ideas for environmentally friendly buildings projects. With more than 60,000 commercial projects worldwide and 1.7 million square feet being certified every day, LEED is one of the leading groups for promoting green buildings. LEED has popularized the entire

Part III of this Comment will analyze the liabilities of voluntary prescription in the industry. Due to the lack of a definitive verification process, American municipal bonds are particularly vulnerable to investment in unhelpful green projects. New laws and regulations may turn off some investors hoping to cash in on the tax-exempt investment grade bonds. Both issuers and recipients of the bonds will need to decide whether they care more about making green or being green. Part III of this Comment will also outline how investors in green bonds can use class action lawsuits to sue issuers who mislead them or greenwash their projects for non-sustainable purposes.

Green roofs are a type of green infrastructure that are becoming increasingly more popular as they perform vital environmental functions in addition to being a used for storm water management. In simple terms, green roofs provide storm management by providing layers of absorbent materials on the roof’s surface capable of holding water. These layers consist of some form of vegetation like grass, a growing medium that enables the vegetation to cultivate, a filtering layer that allows only water to pass through, a draining layer, a waterproof barrier that prevents water from going through and the roof structure that is made from a material like concrete, wood or steel (City of Alexandria). According to Lake Superior Streams, green rooftops absorb 15%-90% of runoff rainwater that comes in contact with the roof, and that large variation in absorbency is based on the vegetation and growing medium used (Lake Superior Streams). The type of vegetation used ultimately depends on several factors, such as the climate, access to sunlight and the depth of the growing medium as shallow growing mediums (5cm) can only sustain plant species with short roots such as sedum (stone-crop), while grasses, herbs and wildflowers can be sustained in medium-depth growing mediums (10cm) and columbines and asters can live in growing medium with deeper depths (15cm or more) (Green Garage). The depth of the growing medium directly correlates with the vegetation that can be grown on a green roof as the

Green roofs as a combination of natural and artificial facility has many positive and negative aspects. By knowing properly about the positive and negative aspects, it gets easier for facility managers to plan and maintain the service according to space, infrastructure, people and organization. Carter and Butler (2008), studied the ecological impact of green roofs on test plots of Georgia and Massachusetts. It was evaluated that green roofs help in storm-water retention by retaining 78% of rainfall. They also help in improving building energy and managing the temperature according to the surrounding temperature. Approximately 2.5% of cooling load reduction and 0.5% of heating load reduction are provided by the presence of green roofs. Similar kind of study was done on the urban ecosystems of green roofs, examining the biotic and abiotic components that contributes to overall ecological systems (Oberndorfer, Lundholm, Bass, Coffman, Doshi, 2007). Though green roofs are beneficial in water retention and varying the roof temperature according to the surrounding temperature, it highly depends for these attributes on its design (Simmons, Gardiner, Windhager, 2008). A case study on Fencing Academy of Philadelphia was conducted by United States EPA Office of Water (2000) to measure the benefits of vegetated roof cover. The project showed that the vegetated roof cover helps to reduce the peak runoff rates for the storm events and helps in extending the roof life by 20 years or more.

In this part, government attitude and policies are focused on, as well as advanced technologies are considered. Finally, this paper also turn to highlight the relevant field in China and what availability would suit for China, especially focus on what recommendations be suggested to local authorities in order to guide the whole society to aware the importance of green building and accelerate the development of this industry.