Green Building Costs

Sustainability has become a driver of innovation in the built environment, but the affordability of sustainable building remains a significant challenge. This book takes a critical view of the real cost of green building. It provides readers with a non-biased evaluation based on empirical construction cost data and sheds light on the affordability of sustainable buildings.Chapters are presented in three parts. The first part lays the foundation to demystify the perception of green buildings being expensive to construct by providing empirical evidence that green buildings, even net-zero buildings, are not necessarily more expensive to build than conventional buildings. The second part presents empirical evidence, common misperceptions of a higher green building construction cost are debunked, such as the target level of sustainability and technical complexity. The author offers a new framework to explain the construction cost drivers and differences of sustainable buildings: the project characteristics and project team characteristics (human factors). The third part directs the readers’ attention to the important role that human factors play in controlling and reducing construction costs, with a focus on the project design team. A lack of skills, expertise, and experience during the design phase is likely to be the biggest contributor to higher construction costs. Empirical analysis, case studies on LEED-certified buildings, and interviews with project teams are used to present a pathway to more affordable green building.This will be a crucial resource for students and professionals in architecture, engineering, construction management, and planning and energy policy.

Ming Hu is an Associate Professor at School of Architecture and Associate Professor at College of Engineering, University of Notre Dame, USA. Her research activities center on how to decarbonize the built environment through net zero impact and healthy building design, and to understand how the (smart) technologies might be employed to reduce the impact from built environment to ecosystem.