Green Roof Resource

Yesterday I was in Chincoteague, VA and visited the National Wildlife Refuge. While I did see some of the famous ponies in the distance, one of the highlights of the trip was the visitor’s center, Herbert H. Bateman Educaton and Administrative Center. Not only did the center have a camera on an eagle’s nest with newly hatched chicks, but the center is also a green building employing several innovative technologies.

The technology that caught my eye was the wetland wastewater treatment system as you walk into the building. The water entering the wetland is wastewater from the center that has first been through a filtering tank. The water flows through the wetland to a piped system that further treats the water with ozone before returning the water to the center for reuse in toilets.

November’s Building Operating Management has a good introduction to green roofs by Greg Zimmerman. The five part article covers the industry, the energy and stormwater benefits of green roofs, and the new professional certification program. Plus the article cites some of my work while at Michigan estimating air quality benefits from green roofs.

In addition to the public health benefits from air quality, the article links patient health benefits with green roofs. Zimmerman cites Roger Ulrich’s study, which found that patients with window views of nature required less pain medication and fewer days in hospital than patients with only a brick wall window view. While the economics is important in the decision-making, it is also valuable to remember the benefits (both economic and other) to the occupants of the buildings.

To update from a previous post, not only did US Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit rule that the clean air mercury rule violated the Clean Air Act in February, but in July the District of Columbia Circuit also vacated the clean air interstate rule (CAIR). While the court vacated the CAIR rule, the NOx State Implementation Plan is still valid. However, as the NOx Budget Trade Program (BTP) was set to expire prior to the 2009 ozone season to make way for CAIR, state regulators have been urged to revise their programs to extend the NOx SIP call. Meanwhile, on September 24th the US filed a petition to the court for a rehearing of the CAIR case.

So why should we care about CAIR or the NOx BTP? The NOx BTP has effectively reduced NOx emissions by 74% between 1990 and 2006 [1]. The ozone season NOx emissions have dropped from 1.86 million tons in 1990 to 491 thousand tons in 2006. During the same period, the 8-hour average ozone concentration decreased across all states participating in the program with significant reductions occurring in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia [1]. While there remain areas that are not in attainment of the 8-hour ozone standard, most areas within the NOx BTP have shown improvement suggesting that there is a benefit to implementing such a program whether the CAIR ultimately is accepted or the NOx BTP is extended.

Reference:
[1] US EPA. Office of Air and Radiation. NOx Budget Trade Program: 2006 Program Compliance and Environmental Results. EPA-430-R-07-009. 2007.

With the opening of the Olympic Games a few days away, air quality in the city is increasingly a concern. It is now possible to view air quality around the city thanks to a joint effort by Mapufacture, Inc. and Fortius One. The map shows values from air quality sampling stations around Beijing, China.

The air pollution index (API) indicates air quality for SO2, NO2, and PM10 (particulate matter that is 10 micrometers in diameter or less). The API cannot be directly compared to other air quality indices from other locations. The USA and Canada both use AQI, air quality index, which is similar to API but the indices are set according to different formulas based upon concentration. Hong Kong uses a different API, which can cause confusion when comparing the air quality of the two cities. While the indices cannot be compared, each index is used to evaluate when the air quality is safe or dangerous to public health according the location’s guidelines. The API for Beijing has the following ratings:

Generally, an AQI or API is set such that ratings of 100 or below are safe while ratings above 100 may be dangerous to at least some of the population. However, the formulas vary, and the specific concentration of that threshold varies according to the country or location where the index is used.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has established guidelines according to concentration, which is much more straightforward. Using concentration allows for comparison of air quality across borders. However, even the standards issued by the WHO are not standardized across pollutants (in time) as you can see below.

Source: WHO. 2006. WHO Air Quality Guidelines for particulate matter, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. WHO/SDE/PHE/OEH/06.02

While we can now view daily air quality in Beijing, where within the city the data is taken, and the proximity of the sampling stations to the Olympic venues, we are not able to compare it to WHO standards. Nevertheless, this is still pretty neat.

A few weeks ago, I participated in a conference call for bloggers to learn more about the green building efforts of Genzyme, a biotech company focused on diagnostic testing, pharmaceuticals, and medical treatments. In addition to its headquarters building in Cambridge, Massachusetts (a LEED Platinum building), Genzyme has several additional buildings seeking LEED as well as a few green buildings internationally.

What I found most interesting were the efforts to green research laboratories. Genzyme is presently seeking Silver LEED accreditation for its research laboratory in Framingham, Massachusetts and has a proposed research building in Beijing, China. Much of the work in the Framingham laboratory focused on lighting and daylighting, radiant heating and cooling, and a highly reflective roof. One of the challenges with laboratories is the added energy expense of once-through air systems. Achieving LEED standards for laboratories can be more difficult than standard commercial buildings as laboratory buildings are more energy and water intensive (the average wet lab uses five times as much water and energy as a typical office building per square foot).