[cameron4]

This article makes a lot of great points. Thankfully, proof of "green-ness" of a building such as LEED Certification is becoming marketable, and developers or building owners can advertise their building's LEED status to potential tenants. What likely needs to happen to really achieve healthier indoor spaces is to create a standardized process similar to LEED certification for all new construction. Just as the article states, the change needs to happen at the policy level.

Aside from policy changes, customers also have a tremendous amount of leverage in the design process. If customers begin to push for healthier materials and designs, we'll likely see change faster than waiting for policy or building code changes.

Many architects push for healthier materials and designs but cost is such an enormous obstacle. Healthier materials are usually the more expensive option, and are the first to go in any value-engineering endeavor.

There are ways to design for maximum natural ventilation as well, but there are several generations of architects educated to design for HVAC systems, likely due to the energy crisis that the author mentioned. They just don't know how to design a building for passive ventilation. Heck, I finished school in 2020 and just barely touched on this kind of thing. Contractors and engineers also stand in the way - it's tough to re-educate such a huge industry with so many actors, trades, and fields involved in every project. This is also somewhat of an American problem. The western/American AEC industry could and should look to elsewhere in the world for examples of healthier design. Above comment about lack of education applies here as well - very few educators in America can teach this, as most never learned it themselves.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

Some of these "green" certifications tend to become a negative marketing factor. "Green" buildings with such certifications are considered bad for comfort/health by many. In some cases it may be prejudice, often based on early buildings where initial issues with the new technologies weren't ironed out yet, leading to e.g. mold issues. In others, "green" certifications encourage approaches that are bad for health and/or comfort (e.g. ultra-low-flow faucets).

The environmental certifications I've seen often claim to also push for increased health and/or comfort, but due to the conflicting goals, I don't trust this at all and I suspect neither do others. I agree that we need a certification for health & comfort, and that should explicitly NOT take into account how "green" the building is, both to avoid conflicting interests and to make it more trustworthy.

With split standards, when someone wants to advertise a green building that's still comfortable, they can prove that they have the highest category of both ratings, and people will be able to trust it. Right now, they'll just show their great "environmental" rating and you don't know if you're getting a nice, comfortable and also environmentally friendly/low cost of energy building, or a mold-infested hellhole where you can't get fresh air nor take a proper shower just to save the last bit of energy.

I've seen both cases (buildings according to an unpopular primarily-environmental standard that were really nice to live in, and certified buildings that sucked due to measures obviously taken to get the certification), and it'd be nice to be able to distinguish them.