Tracking 'green' building energy use falls short

• Government bodies are big supporters of the "green" building boom
• Only small percentage of government agencies track energy use
• Costs often impede ongoing checks of green-building performance

When the District of Columbia began requiring newly constructed city buildings to be environmentally friendly, it created an oversight panel to monitor the program and to report every year on possible improvements.

The building law took effect nearly six years ago.

The oversight panel has written one report -- in 2011.

"It just wasn't the top priority," said Patty Rose, who helped write the law and sits on the oversight group, the Green Building Advisory Council.

As major cities and states are requiring new taxpayer-financed buildings to be designed for energy and water efficiency, none have tracked building operations thoroughly enough to determine whether those goals are being met, a USA TODAY review shows. More than 200 cities, states and federal agencies have such "green" requirements, which often increase construction costs. Yet, officials cannot say with certainty whether they're paying off.

The lack of evaluation has been a weakness of the fast-growing "green building" movement that's changing the design of government facilities, private office buildings and schools. Green construction will account for 44% of commercial and institutional building this year, researcher McGraw-Hill projects. Advocates say extra costs for efficient heating and cooling systems, large windows and other green features can be recovered, sometimes in a few years, through lower utility bills.

But government bodies, which have been the earliest and strongest supporters of green construction, seldom measure whether green buildings cost less to operate than conventional counterparts. Researchers and USA TODAY have found numerous green buildings that use far more energy than projected.

Only nine of the 35 states that require new state buildings to be green also require evaluations of the buildings after they're occupied. Eight of the nine U.S. cities with populations above 1 million also have such building requirements; only New York City requires a follow-up evaluation.

Even when required, building evaluations are sometimes not done or do not analyze actual energy and water use.

In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick issued an executive order in 2007 requiring new state buildings to be green and directing state agencies to cut energy use. Patrick also ordered state environmental and building officials to give him a report on the green efforts every year.No report has ever been written, said Krista Selmi, a spokeswoman for the governor's office of environmental affairs. "To do the annual reports, we'd have to stop working on the actual work and write reports. We thought it was more important to do the actual work," Selmi said. She expects a report next year.

Some officials fear writing evaluations that expose green building failures. "They're uncomfortable making their associates in other agencies look bad, and they don't want to reflect poorly on them or on the (green-building) requirement," said Rose of Washington, D.C. The city department that was supposed to help write annual oversight reports was understaffed for years, Rose said, but has recently made a priority of evaluating green buildings.

"It takes time to move new practices through a bureaucracy," Rose said.

Government green buildings usually follow LEED, a standard created by the private U.S. Green Building Council. Under LEED -- or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design -- the non-profit council certifies as green buildings that are designed to improve efficiency, conservation and occupants' health. The council itself has called for more research into LEED's effectiveness.

Technical and financial obstacles have interfered with some efforts to evaluate green buildings. Washington state has built 52 green buildings since 2005, adding millions in design and construction costs. But a recent 350-page state report aimed at documenting the buildings' operating savings could provide only estimates, because agencies weren't analyzing the actual energy and water use of their buildings. Analysis "is rarely completed because of the cost," which is $5,000 to $10,000, the report said.

"For colleges, their primary mission is educating students," said Bill Phillips,head of engineering and architecture at the state Department of Enterprise Services. "Even though it (an analysis) may only be $5,000 to $10,000, it is sometimes a tough decision to make."

South Carolina has not been able to evaluate its LEED-certified buildings because none of them have their own energy and water meters, a state report says.

Rhode Island and Oklahoma officials have not evaluated their green buildings as required, because none have been built since their green-building requirements were enacted.

States and cities that lack evaluations nonetheless say their green buildings are energy efficient, using models of the buildings that are done before construction begins. However, models are often inaccurate because buildings are used and maintained differently than planned.

A 2010 New York City report says that constructing 90 new city buildings in accordance with LEED adds about 1.5% to construction costs, which will be recovered in seven years through lowered energy costs. But none of the 90 buildings had been completed when the report was published. The projected savings are an estimate.

Officials express confidence that green buildings are energy efficient in the long run because of their design, and say they create better work environments when they include "green" features such as views, daylight, toxic-free paints and thermal comfort.

"We're trying through LEED to construct a better building, not just save energy and water," said Phillips of Washington state.

Maryland state Sen. James Brochin saw no reason to require evaluation of the state's green buildings under a law he wrote in 2007 that requires new state buildings and state-funded school buildings to be LEED-certified. "I've had confidence in the certification requirements," he said. "The assumption is we're going to get the net results we're supposed to."