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Sustainability Begins at Home
Sustainability means more than recycling soda cans.
It means looking ahead and considering how the concrete from the building you’re
designing will be used 50 years from now, according to a speaker from an ASHRAE
news conference on sustainability.
“It’s not about grabbing the sustainable guide from the shelf and
saying ‘I’ll take that, and I’ll take that,” Tim Dwyer,
chair of an ASHRAE technical program seminar on sustainable design tools, said.
“There’s a whole world to consider.”
The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers
(ASHRAE) updated HVAC&R-related press on its work in sustainability at a
news conference held January 26.
ASHRAE and Sustainability: Practicing Green to Preserve Tomorrow focused on
how the HVAC&R industry is changing the way it approaches the design, construction,
operation, maintenance, reuse and demolition toward addressing the environmental
and long-term economic consequences of its actions.
ASHRAE’s work in sustainability stems from publication of its energy conservation
standard in 1975. ASHRAE currently is working on Advanced Energy Design Guides,
which seek to achieve 30 percent savings over Standard 90.1, Energy Standard
for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings. The first document in the
30 percent series will provide prescriptive design assistance for office buildings
up to 20,000 square feet. It will be a how-to, user-friendly guide targeted
for use by contractors and small design-build firms.
“ASHRAE is moving aggressively to provide training and support for this
guidance, schedule to be published later this fall,” Ron Jarnagin, chair
of the committee writing the document, said.
Editor David Grumman discussed the newly published ASHRAE GreenGuide, developed
to provide guidance to designers of HVAC&R systems in how to participate
effectively on design teams charged with producing green buildings. The guide
features 29 ASHRAE GreenTips, which are sidebars containing information on techniques,
processes or systems.
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