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November 22, 2006
Cost of Green -- Part MCMVII
I seem to be one of few (if any) green building professionals advocating a different way of framing the "cost of green" discussion.
I'm back from Greenbuild 2006, where one speaker after another compared the cost of a green building with a conventional building by expressing the cost of the one building against the average cost of how many? conventional buildings. Often, the green building is a few dollars higher per square foot than the average of conventional buildings. That number is then adopted as "this year's" green building premium.
The CEO of the Enterprise Foundation did it in the opening plenary, observing that Green Communities houses cost 3% or 4% more than conventional houses.
Maybe it's part of the progressives' fairness doctrine: we feel the need to fully disclose the down side as we present the up side. But what, exactly, are we disclosing? I suggest the comparison would be far more valid if we express the cost of a green building - say in $ per square foot - and place it in the range of conventional buildings.
Posted by aquacura.com at November 22, 2006 07:33 AM