G&M article: "Professor sees red over ‘green building’ claims"

[greenleaf]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ed-over-green-building-claims/article1544040/

"We suffer from brain-dead building design. We’re building all-glass condominiums, all-glass office buildings. The office buildings are hermetically sealed – they have entire glazing sections facing west with no external shading devices. These buildings are uninhabitable without massive air-conditioning systems. … It’s really pointless to do anything else until you address this issue. I say you’ve got it all backwards. And the problem is, these buildings we’re stuck with for 50, 100, I don’t know how many years. I mean, even a coal power plant is only going to last 40 years. A brain-dead building – and that’s almost all we’re building – is going to last 100 years."

 

[Chuck]

I've been saying this for a while. If memory serves me correctly, Part 12 of the Ontario Building Code, which deals with energy efficiency, does not apply to residential high rise buildings with respect to insulation. In a best case scenario, an all glass condo with a top of the line curtain wall can achieve an overall R-value of about R-5. By comparison, the minimum R-value for a wall in low rise residential construction is R-20, though windows do reduce the average slightly.

To put the value of R-5 into perspective, the typical R-value of a 1960s slab eligible for complete re-cladding under the Tower Renewal program is about R-8 or so, thanks to a much smaller window area and opaque concrete walls that offer at least some insulation. Most new condos also incorporate the single most energy inefficient design element of 1960s slab construction - uninsulated balcony slabs.

If we are willing to spend millions of dollars improving the energy efficiency of the 1960s high rise stock, why are developers allowed to construct all glass towers that are even less energy efficient today? And given the fact that all glass condos are essentially equal to 1960s energy hogs, how can these buildings manage to attain LEED gold?