Trends and more trends predicted for future of green building
It’s a nasty habit, this human tendency to prognosticate. As someone famous once said, Prediction is hard; especially about the future. But they trendy are trending once again with New Year’s predictions, lists of things to come, and other varieties of magicxal thinking so we’re going to wrap ‘em and roll ‘em on it.
A few days ago we brought you Earth Advantage Institute’s top ten list of trends in green building for 2010. Today we find seven more (actually, these mostly duplicate the Earth Advantage list) trends of highly effective green builders:
- “Rightsizing” of homes. A larger home no longer translates into greater equity. (Right, and a good choice for #1, as the Obama administration pumps money into cleantech, including for the hiring of local resource conservation managers.)
- Off-Grid Ready buildings – also known as Net Zero Buildings. (We’re eager to see a design that actually works; here’s our critique of one that likely doesn’t.)
- Eco-districts. Portland, Oregon, is already on the bandwagon with this one, encouraging the creation of greener communities where residents have access to most services and supplies within walking or biking distance.
- Home Energy monitor and display. (A lot of gadgets of this nature were revealed at the recent Consumer Electronics Show; see Treehugger for a round up of devices.)
- Energy labeling for homes and office buildings.
- Building information modeling (BIM) software. With buildings contributing roughly half the carbon emissions in the environment, CAD software for building design has produced new add-on tools with increasingly accurate algorithms for energy modeling as well as embedded energy properties for many materials and features.
- Financial community buy-in to green building. [We blogged about a UK community leading the way in this trend.)
