To develop a “green” project or not to develop a “green” project, that is the comparison. Well, maybe these three points listed below will help you determine your decision.
One of the biggest factors in green development is managing your footprint and energy consumption, such as electricity and water. According to the EPA, buildings use over 39% of the United States’ total energy, 12% of its total water use, 68% of the total electrical capacity, and 38% of the total carbon dioxide emissions.
By going green with your project, you can help reduce the impact on our natural environment, economy, and human welfare. Developing a green project and the processes that generate this type of project can occur at any stage of development or construction.
Having a “Green Team” in place from the beginning will give you the most benefit during project development. The potential advantages to starting a green driven project include, but are not limited to the following:
Economy
Reduce operating costs by saving on heating and cooling costs per year with newer technologies in mechanical systems and reducing water consumption with advanced rain harvesting systems. HighGrove’s Know Water green process is a great way to begin.
Traditional development practice typically has no reuse methods in place for water or will generate its own power. Traditional development practice considers only the short-term return.
More Green Space and Less Cost For Infrastructure
Improve occupant productivity with a low impact footprint and surface consumption will provide you with more opportunities for green space. Low impact development strategies help with keeping infrastructure costs down.
Traditional development strategies normally clear-cut entire sites and consume the maximum building footprints. This means the maximum cost for infrastructure and limited green space.
Better Quality of the Natural Environment
Improve air and water quality by creating bio-retention and wet retention to help reuse water on-site for irrigation. Bio-retention cleans the water before reusing the water on the site, creating fewer pollutants and lowers water volume downstream. Bio-Retention helps the overall quality of the natural environment. Having these green systems help reduce the amount of detained water that then helps in the reduction of stormwater detention.
Traditional methods do not slow the water movement down until it gets piped to the maximize detention structure. This limits the amount of water that can be reused on-site at different stages of water capture.
Green vs. Traditional Development–Which is the Better Choice?
When a decision needs to be made between Green development versus traditional development, the answer, in my opinion, based on these few examples, is to Go Green! If you are considering going green, I recommend contacting HighGrove Partners at (678) 298-0550 to begin developing your green team.
Call us at (678)298-0550 or use our simple contact form.
