A "speculative 15,000 square foot mansion in Manalapan, Fla., will be the first home of its size to be certified green by the U.S. Green Building Council and the Florida Green Building Council."
Is that a good idea for USGBC? That's my question to you. Obviously people are going to build big homes -- and it is better if they have green features. But should USGBC single out such "eco-mansions" for positive recognition?
On the big side, the mansion has:
... eight bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, two elevators, two laundry rooms, two wine cellars (one for red, one white), a movie theater and guesthouse.
On the green side, the mansion has a:
... state-of-the-art air purification system and eco-friendly light fixtures that will reduce energy consumption by 90 percent.
Making this mansion green, probably tacked on additional costs of between 7 and 10 percent ...
For instance, instead of using a rare Brazilian cherry for the home's hardwood floors, he's using reclaimed teak -- thus sparing 7.5 acres of Brazilian rain forest ...
The house will also have a massive solar panel system (price tag: $120,000), a water system that uses "gray water" from the showers and sinks to irrigate the lawn and gardens, as well as a series of pools, reflecting ponds and water gardens to cool down the 1.5 acre property by 2 to 3 degrees.
USGBC does take size into consideration:
The USGBC also factors in the overall size of the house. So the bigger a home is, the more points must be earned to score one of the USGBC's four levels of achievement -- certified, silver, gold and platinum.
So for mansions, balancing a low-environmental impact with a colossal construction is particularly difficult.
This is not the first USGBC certified green mansion -- a puny 6,000-sq.-ft house built by Ted Turner's daughter has that distinction.
When I emailed USGBC about this, they wrote back saying:
Stopping folks from building green is not going to stop them from building big.
Education and experience has to happen at all levels.
That's what they think. I think they shouldn't lend their name to such homes. What do you think?
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Home Economics of the JP Green House, Part 1
Slideshow: Reinventing the JP Green House
Comments
View as Flat
sunflower Posted 10:02 am
20 Sep 2007
Permalink
odograph Posted 10:20 am
20 Sep 2007
(and on a world scale, most of us in the US have mansions. my 1000 sf is probably a mansion.)
The bad news is that there well be countless blog entries (especially on anti-environmental sites) about environmental hypocrites. It is fodder for pundits everywhere.
Permalink
Jones Posted 10:31 am
20 Sep 2007
Anyway...yes. Let's face it, rich assholes will always be with us. And this one just sank a lot of money into green building technologies. It's much more important to mainstream these (easily doable) technologies into the mass housing market than it is to heap our scorn upon one guy (or gal) who'd probably just jet off to Tahiti if he didn't get his rubber stamp.
LEED isn't perfect, but it's been a very, very good thing for the world. One of those environmental good news stories that environmentalists hate. If LEED says it's OK, then it's OK. We should accept this as a victory, and follow it up with another victory tomorrow.
Caveat: I don't know what "reduce energy consumption by 90 percent.", but if it means that the house will consume the energy a typical 1500 sqft would in the same location, then that's a considerable improvement on a standard American family home which is now up to...4000sqft? Since they're only getting "certified" (ie bronze) then is sounds like they're getting docked plenty for their habitat destruction...cause that energy performance is pretty good.
Permalink
trock Posted 10:31 am
20 Sep 2007
Permalink
greentiger Posted 10:42 am
20 Sep 2007
In other words the particular merits should be assessed on a point by point basis:
-Is this a first or second home? What is the typical occupancy? I wouldn't call 8 bedrooms wasteful if many of them are typically occupied.
-Size with relation to location. Excessive size (and the resultant higher heating/cooling duties) are not as much of an issue in temperate climates. Despite the cooling methods described, I have to believe there will be some decent AC usage down in Florida. Of course size also results in higher energy usage of construction (but give them credit for the reclaimed teak).
-There are other criteria of course, but in general I don't consider green mansions ideal (2 laundry rooms sounds just a bit excessive..). But I'll certainly echo other readers' thoughts that mansions will always be built. Might as well be green ones.
Also, in closing, I think it important to mention that people with disposable income are pivotal in establishing markets for many of these technologies. Furthermore, they're great for green publicity--most people don't have the means to build a mansion, but the 'oh wow' factor of this house brings greater attention to the green technologies which by themselves are economically feasible for many people.
Permalink
Jones Posted 11:08 am
20 Sep 2007
LEED certified means something else.
While LEED does have certain criteria for things like size and siting, it's fairly weak in this area and it's likely that if it went down the route of judging people's lifestyle, it would probably be ineffectual.
LEED focuses on building envelope and energy use, and that's the most helpful thing right now. It incentivises us to use technologies that have been available for 30 years now. If you insisted on using the same mechanism to change Americans' lifestyles at the same time, then you'd be holding these technologies up another 30 years. There is a separate LEED for communities in the works, I eagerly await it--hopefully it will have the success "LEED for homes" has had.
Permalink
Gar Lipow Posted 11:36 am
20 Sep 2007
Permalink
Delay And Deny Posted 12:18 pm
20 Sep 2007
We speak of air pollution.
Water pollution.
Why not "land pollution".
Even if it's "green" and doesn't pollute the liquid and gaseous states -- how about defacing the land?
Doesn't that count in Libland?
John Bailo
Sutext:
Permalink
style saves the world Posted 12:30 pm
20 Sep 2007
http://www.stylesavestheworld.com
be glam. live green.
Permalink
wayneluke Posted 12:48 pm
20 Sep 2007
So I saw this on "Living with Ed".
Supposedly Larry Hagman has a 25,000 square foot home and a $13.00 annual electric bill. That is the cost of the meter. He has an 82 KWh solar array that provides electricity for his home and 5 of his neighbors. According to the show, he is looking into adding Wind Power to supplement this. The property is also on its own well, which has a storage tank in the house that doubles as and indoor pool. The house is cooled with passive solar skylights as well.
The motivation for going green? His first year's electric bill was $37,000.
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 1:25 pm
20 Sep 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 1:33 pm
20 Sep 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
farnishk Posted 7:55 pm
20 Sep 2007
Embodied carbon is a huge issue that is only partly addressed by this, and there are many factors that determine how much energy goes into making the individual components of a building; however, the University of Bath in the UK have created an Inventory of Carbon and Energy which provides a wonderful reference point.
A typical (for the UK) 1,500 square feet detached brick-built house uses about 15,000 bricks. Assuming all other things being equal (transport, electricity generation, ease of material extraction etc.), each brick requires 3MJ of energy, which emits a very approximate 0.2kg of carbon dioxide. A typical house has about 2000 roof tiles. Most tiles used in construction are now concrete mix. Again, assuming all other things being equal, each tile emits 0.6kg of carbon dioxide.
This gives just the roof and the walls an embodied carbon total of over 4 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Now if you build a house 10 times larger, you will need walls with 3.16 times the number of bricks, and a roof with 10 times as many tiles. That gives the 15,000 square feet mansion an embodied carbon score (for walls and roof) of 21.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide - over 5 times as much as a typical house.
It may not be intentionally addressing the embodied carbon in a house, but the USGBC at least seems to be indirectly addressing this major issue.
Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org
Permalink
Miscetal Posted 8:54 pm
20 Sep 2007
They HAVE to be made greener, either by building better or by remodeling with LEED or another certification. The are people who are going to have these houses, come what may, and since the rich use and pollute more than the poor, we have to provide an incentive to go green, and remove real or perceived obstacles to them doing this.
If LEED can get 5% of the homes in the Hamptons, for example, to use less than they do today, that's a good thing. It might be better if they built smaller with quality, like The Sustainable House <ahref="http://www.livegreenlivesmart.org" rel="nofollow"</a> to reduce habitat loss - but some gain is better than none - if they see that there are both financial and social payoffs to be greener, I am willing to set aside my personal abhorrence of such excess in order to avoid more.
And once the wealthy have green homes, everybody will want one and the Handyperson's Guide to Greener Homesites will be sold at Target ---
Later, we can tear the things down and restore habitat, but for now we need them to be the edge of the marketplace edge to help us drive demand for more sustainable "homes" - shelter from the storm, eh?
The poor can't be the only people going green-er: it's not sustainable.
Miscetal
Permalink
zacaroni Posted 12:01 am
21 Sep 2007
How do we measure greenness? We shouldn't measure greenness by how many trees "were not cut down" or by how many fossil fuels "were not burned up." We should measure success not by how much we save but by how much we give.
As far as I'm concerned, building a 15,000 sq ft mansion is taking away from space that would otherwise be a 15,000 sq ft nature preserve. There's nothing "GREEN" about that.
We need to do better than being less bad; we need to be good.
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 1:04 am
21 Sep 2007
The fact that it uses less energy per square foot than a typical house is dwarfed by the total amount of energy it consumes. Maybe they need to rate the energy per occupant instead of per unit of area. If this house is 98% unoccupied it would get a horrible rating, as it should. Of course, that would just torque off the rich guys, and the certification organization obviously does not want to do that.
Ultimately, green is the total amount of energy used, land usurped, and resources extracted per person.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
Jones Posted 2:24 am
21 Sep 2007
It's all too easy to use a pass/fail framework to adopt an unreasonably high standard. You focus on the what they got wrong, while ignoring what they got right--it tends to turn into unconstrutive criticism. That may seem like a harmless online pursuit, but I'm not so sure...all too often environmentalists seem so caught up in their own personal scenarios of doom'n'gloom (I blame PETA for the general funk that seems to have descended upon Grist the last few days) that they can't see "what's in front of their noses".
Many environmentalists seem to be the intellectual equivalent of depressed, spending all day navel-gazing at the sorry state of humanity. What good does that do? Pretty soon, you begin to believe nonsense like "We need to do better than being less bad; we need to be good." rather than realizing that in order to be good, we usually have to be less bad for a while. "The perfect is the enemy of the good" is so true it's a truism. Why is it that we forget this so often?
Permalink
justlou Posted 3:42 am
21 Sep 2007
Sometimes we lose sight of the big picture. Florida is the most disaster prone state in the US. Should we be promoting any kind of certification or providing incentives for people to be building on that site?
Freedom, our cherished freedom, allows people people to make really stupid choices and then we reward them with gold stars. People, we just aren't being smart here.
Give this project the big, black stamp of disapproval. There is my reader opinion, and thanks for requesting it Joe.
Permalink
mihan Posted 3:42 am
21 Sep 2007
If you're polluting, you're polluting, no matter how efficiently you're doing it.
Permalink
Sean Casten Posted 4:06 am
21 Sep 2007
I think you got it right at the start when you acknowledged that people are going to build big homes - so why shouldn't the USGBC provide them with a template to do so more responsibly?
Permalink
felicia Posted 4:14 am
21 Sep 2007
Permalink
justlou Posted 4:39 am
21 Sep 2007
Tell me, was Gandhi moralizing when he said (paraphrasing), "the earth can meets every man's need but not everyman's greed"?
So, am I moralizing to say that if the earth cannot supply houses like this for everyone then those who are choosing to live like this are stretching the earth's capacity to supply houses for both the rich and the poor? What separates moralizing from a simple statement of reality? Recognizing the costs to all of our living the American standard +++ is not moralizing.
There are not only environmental and land ethics on the line here but human ethical values as well. Living big has big costs, no matter how green the coating. If that is moralizing, so be it.
Permalink
Sean Casten Posted 4:56 am
21 Sep 2007
Permalink
justlou Posted 6:13 am
21 Sep 2007
On site selection, the criteria used to allot a point for good site selection are incredibly weak. Based on what I can see from the photograph, I'd give the site a heavy negative number representing the sustainability of the building site. But from the criteria used in judging the suitability of the site, it would probably receive a positive "one"!?!???:
SS Credit 1: Site Selection
1 Point
Intent
Avoid development of inappropriate sites and reduce the environmental impact from the location of a building on a site.
Requirements
Do not develop buildings, hardscape, roads or parking areas on portions of sites that meet any one of the following criteria:
Prime farmland as defined by the United States Department of Agriculture in the United States Code of Federal Regulations, Title 7, Volume 6, Parts 400 to 699, Section 657.5 (citation 7CFR657.5)
Previously undeveloped land whose elevation is lower than 5 feet above the elevation of the 100-year flood as defined by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency)
Land that is specifically identified as habitat for any species on Federal or State threatened or endangered lists
Within 100 feet of any wetlands as defined by United States Code of Federal Regulations 40 CFR, Parts 230-233 and Part 22, and isolated wetlands or areas of special concern identified by state or local rule, OR within setback distances from wetlands prescribed in state or local regulations, as defined by local or state rule or law, whichever is more stringent
Previously undeveloped land that is within 50 feet of a water body, defined as seas, lakes, rivers, streams and tributaries which support or could support fish, recreation or industrial use, consistent with the terminology of the Clean Water Act
Land which prior to acquisition for the project was public parkland, unless land of equal or greater value as parkland is accepted in trade by the public landowner (Park Authority projects are exempt)
Potential Technologies & Strategies
During the site selection process, give preference to those sites that do not include sensitive site elements and restrictive land types. Select a suitable building location and design the building with the minimal footprint to minimize site disruption of those environmentally sensitive areas identified above.
https://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=1095
So, a weighting of one point for a highly, potentially disastrous building site? What kind of rating system is this? One to promote growth, wherever, I'd judge.
Permalink
Aklemm Posted 10:25 am
21 Sep 2007
They won't moralize and they aren't the epitome of green.
For now, LEED for the general public falls into the same category as Democracy in the following quote.
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all of the others.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't develop a better version of a greenbuilding rating system.
How about a Grist rating system?
Permalink
Jones Posted 10:28 am
21 Sep 2007
Do not develop...sites that meet...the following criteria:
+
Previously undeveloped land that is within 50 feet of a water body
mean?
This house didn't get points for site selection. Nor did it get points for compact development, though it may have gotten points for being located near existing iinfrastructure or on a previously developped site (we don't know). It may have gotten points for using native plants and a low-maintenance lawn. But it likely got there because of the energy efficiency.
Again, let's not forget that LEED is a voluntary system. In order to be effective it needs to be flexible. If anyone's upset about it, go look at some Platinum buildings. Those are the one's that USGBC really says are "green". It's just saying that this one is "slightly green" Feel better?
For a workable system we can hardly expect to use as a criteria some standard of "absolute sustainability". Largely because no one alive can define what "absolute sustainability" is, in practice. But more importantly, in a complex and expensive industry like building, you need to learn to walk before you can run.
Al Gore flies (and eats meat). Does that mean he's not green?
Permalink
C4nier Posted 11:19 am
21 Sep 2007
If we are okay with collectively acknowledging that a house with an enormous footprint, which creates new impermeable surfaces near a water source, destroys habitat, will need to be filled with "stuff" and inevitably maintained is "green", well then what exactly does the term mean? Some people are saying that the rich are going to build houses like this anyway. That may be true, but do we add to their ego trip by allowing them to use a label that is better reserved for more conscientiously constructed buildings? I say that you if the USGBC choose to do that they are compromising the value of the label. I know it's a slippery slope though. What if it were 5,000 square feet? That's still a behemoth. But this house is so far outside of the average American home size that it obviously flouts green sensibility.
The green features on this house are admirable. But let them stand on their own and save the accolades for people who inspire us by thinking outside the box.
As an aside, I really hope that this label doesn't qualify them for any tax breaks. I'm sick of handing out welfare to the insanely rich.
Permalink
raphsperry Posted 2:16 pm
21 Sep 2007
When U.S. Congressman John Dingell (D-Mich.) in August suggested as part of a proposed "carbon tax" bill to punish owners of homes larger than 3,000 square feet, he certainly got the attention of homebuilders. Dingell, who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said he would introduce legislation that would include, among other measures, a $100 per ton tax on carbon emissions, a 50-cent gasoline tax, and a "cap-and-trade" emissions program that would allow industries to trade pollution credits with low-polluting companies. The goal of the proposed legislation is to reduce carbon emissions by 60-80 percent by the year 2050.
Taxing McMansions?
But the loudest outcry came when Dingell targeted "McMansions" (he actually used that term) by eliminating the mortgage-interest income tax reduction for all homes that exceeded 3,000 square feet. Dingell said that he expected to "catch hell" for the idea, and homebuilders obliged. One in Dingell's own district called the idea "ill-informed and misguided." The National Association of Realtors calculated that the McMansion tax would lead to a 4-percent drop in housing prices nationally and would affect 15 percent of the nation's housing stock.
from http://www.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek07/0921/0921rc_fac ...
Guess that outside of vehicle fuel efficiency Dingell gets the picture?
Raphael Sperry
Permalink
justlou Posted 10:04 pm
21 Sep 2007
Do I feel better about anyone building any sized home, green or not, on such a shaky foundation in hurricane alley?
I am not hung up on this label. Just hung up that people can't see the big picture for what it is and substitute such artificiality to make their perception of reality work.
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 12:33 am
22 Sep 2007
Make this mansion earth cooled too and it would be an outstanding example for the renewable/conservation energy re-evolution.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
GonzoDon Posted 3:18 am
22 Sep 2007
Rediculous. Multiply that by some 150 workers and you get a sense of how much additional gas will be burned, how much additional pollution will be generated, how much additional traffic congestion will result, how much more incrementally we will be relying on imported oil from countries who hate us, how many more greenhouse gases will be spewed, how many more hours will be squandered by people with families and dreams commuting to-and-from work listening to rabid talk-radio hosts rather than spending the same time more usefully and creatively.
Ah ... but we'll have a 'green' building!
We live in a seriously f***ed-up society which has forgotten, or seems to have never really learned, what a pleasant world we could create for ourselves if we just tried.
I live in a delightfully walkable neighborhood with modest-sized houses ... except for the ones that have been scraped-off for McMansions, and are occupied by seemingly invisible owners who slip in and out of their garages surreptiously in smoked-window SUVs. I guess they like the rising property values.
So gee, I'm delighted that the owner of this monstrous monument to selfishness and self-aggrandizement is spending his generous Bush tax cut on something so 'environmentally sound'. No doubt the staff of 12 servants who service his sprawling house are very impressed. Except for the fact they doubtlessly have to each drive 40 miles RT daily to trim his shrubs. They certainly can't afford to live any closer.
Permalink
justlou Posted 3:55 am
22 Sep 2007
For a rating system like the one discussed here to have any real world impact the location of the building site would have to be heavily weighted against all the other positive attributes of the buildings themselves.
So there should be negative values applied in big doses for the choice of building sites instead of simply zeroing out the building site if it does not meet the incredibly weak criteria in the standard. In this system you could have a platinum rating but have a building five feet above the 100 year flood plain (How many 500 year floods have we encountered lately? Lots!) or 100 feet from a site that would be history in the next category 5 hurricane (but evidently from the comments here, this passes some folks' sustainability test OK). Insane!
And as you say, the environmental costs for you commuters over the lifetime of the "green" building more than offsets any gains from said construction by many factors.
How many bridges do you have to cross to get to that new building? Your increased gas tax dollars will take care of that, eh? No? Well, we'll just have to grow the economy faster with more green buildings to help pay for it.
Permalink
Delay And Deny Posted 4:15 am
22 Sep 2007
I'm reading it now. King of Cons by Aaron Tonken. It's a scathing insider look at Hollywood charity events complete with the vicious underbelly of Hollywood stars scrounging for diamond studded watches and gift bags in return to lending their presence to AIDS, girls' schools and muscular dystrophy benefits.
I'm about 3/4ths of the way through and suddenly it struck me -- this is why Global Warming is so big. GW is yet another theme (no more or less important than Milton Berle's 80th birthday) around which coasters can glom themselves and extract money from the masses all the while pocketing various "fees". Yep, Al Gore can keep paying the $3500 a month energy bills on his three mansions by lending his time to the Global Warming Three Year Non-Stop Charity Ball -- and do it tax free.
Of course, not for us. We'll be the ones paying the Carbon Taxes for the next 50 years so that Big Al, Eddie Vedder, and Sienna Miller can stay afloat for a few more bedraggled years of post-Stardom.
John Bailo
Sutext:
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 4:16 am
22 Sep 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
epadein Posted 8:21 am
22 Sep 2007
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." Marcus Aurelius
Permalink
calvinjones Posted 8:43 pm
22 Sep 2007
Business Energy Usage
Green Buildings
National 'Intensity' targets.
We are talking about emissions relative to the past. We need to talk about emissions relative to our planet, in other words, one big paradigm change of the climate challenge is saying no to relative targets: we dont live a a relative planet the logic dosent work.
If we accept relative targets for buildings (90% bigger than that size, when smaller sizes are possible) then why not for businesses? If for businesses then why not for countries? If for countries then why not for the world...answers are all the same.
Interested in climate change?
http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com
Permalink
Sam Wells Posted 3:03 am
24 Sep 2007
Separately although maybe related, Austin has tried to zone McMansions because they tend to dominate over the 1,000 SF bungalows, especially in historic areas. It was a common practice to chop the roof off an old house, add two more stores, expand sideways, and add a guess house and garage out back.
What can I say, I guess I'm a history nut. I'm a fan of re-using old structures rather than the wrecking ball or the bulldozer. This probably has nothing to do with the fake awards being handed out, but I think goes to the root of many of our problems ... what exactly is "green"?
Onward through the fog
Permalink
ritadona Posted 2:58 am
25 Sep 2007
What boggles my mind is that a family of 3 or 4 people thinks it needs this much space. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. I'm with the other commenter who said, what a waste of good money.
Permalink
duhkoz Posted 7:07 am
26 Sep 2007
Permalink
Steve Erickson Posted 12:11 pm
28 Sep 2007
Steve E.
Permalink