The Future of Green Engineering

Figure 1: One of the world's first sustainable engineers

In recent years, focus has been shifting towards changing our behaviour to be more sustainable and environmentally friendly (read: greener). You may have surmised that land development and construction have not been spared from this new initiative. So how does this new mindset change the way we design, construct, and operate new buildings?

One of the main goals of sustainable design is to improve on efficiency [1]; this efficiency can manifest itself in different aspects of a building. For example, it may change the way building design, construction, and day-to-day building operations are approached. When talking about efficiency, we generally refer to how effectively resources are used.

Green Roofs

Some features seen on sustainable building include green roofs, which reduces the amount of water run-offs, solar panels and solar water heaters, which help harness renewable energy and reduce dependence on fossil fuels, reflective building surfaces, which reduces the amount of energy absorbed by the building and thus energy expended into controlling building temperatures, and high quality insulation which also help on reducing energy consumption.

Figure 2: Sample Green Roof Membrane [4]

LEED

A programme promoting sustainable green building that has built up momentum in recent years is the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) [2, 3]. LEED offers different levels of certifications that a building can obtain. These certification levels are based on certain performance criteria revolving around site selection, water and energy usage, material selection, and the quality of the indoors environment. Although LEED certification is not mandatory, a lot of new developments obtain LEED certification to gain recognition and show that they are making an effort towards a more sustainable future. Owners of existing building can also retrofit their properties to obtain LEED certification.

Advantages and Disadvantages

One of the drawbacks of developing sustainable, green buildings is that there is an increase in initial cost incurred by the developer. Different figures have been quoted ranging from 5% to 300%, although the latter appears to be grossly exaggerated [1]. These extra costs are mainly due to the use of unfamiliar materials which increase the time spent in the design process as well as the higher costs of the materials themselves. However, the energy saved by the greener design will recover the initial cost.

As we can see, sustainable development in construction engineering provides an environmentally friendly way to design buildings. It also promotes the use of renewable energy which provides operational savings and reduces a building’s dependence on traditional energy.

References:

[1] http://www.civilengineeringcrossing.com/article/1320007/Sustainable-Building/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_in_Energy_and_Environmental_Design

[3] http://www.cagbc.org/leed/what/index.php

[4] http://www.e-roofing.com/green_roofs.php