As the top showcase for cutting-edge eco-friendly practices and products major paint makers including PPG,
Sherwin-Williams, AkzoNobel, Benjamin Moore, Valspar
and DuPont as well as smaller firms like C2 Paint and
YOLO Colorhouse will be among this year’s exhibiters displaying the latest in green paint technology when
Greenbuild 2008 lands in Boston, MA from Nov. 19-21.
GREEN HOMES GAIN GROUND
In the residential sector, green housing is growing even
while the overall housing market is suffering. As this issue
went to press the Census Bureau announced that housing
starts dropped 6.3% in September. At this pace only 817,000
new homes will be built over the year—almost a 60% drop
from the 1.98 million private homes completed in 2006.
The residential green building market is expected to be
worth $12-20 billion representing six to ten percent of
the market this year, according to McGraw-Hill’s
SmartMarket Reports 2008. That’s up from just two percent in 2005. By 2012 the firm expects the market to double to 12-20% market share or $40-70 billion.
More importantly, 40% of home builders think green
building helps them market their homes in a down market with quality emerging as the most important reason
for building green. This indicates that green homebuyers
in today’s market are not just green consumers, but are
also buying a green home for investment and performance reasons.
Earlier this year at the National Association of Home
Builders’ Green Building Conference, Harvey Bernstein,
McGraw-Hill’s vice president of Industry Analytics, Alliances
and Strategic Initiatives said the tipping point for builders
going green has emerged. “This year, the number of builders
who are moderately green—those with 30% green projects—
has surpassed those with a low share of green—those who are
green in less than 15% of their projects,” he said. “Next year we
will see even greater growth, with highly green builders—those
with 60% green projects—surpassing those with a low share of
green. This year has seen an eight percent jump over the last
year and we expect another ten percent increase next year.”
LEED-ING THE WAY
So what makes a green building “green”? With different
organizations setting different standards that are up for
revision constantly, it can be a confusing question to answer.
For its part the NPCA is playing a major role in defining
green building for the paint and coatings industry.
NPCA is a member of the North American Coalition on
Green Building, a group consisting of more than 30 trade
associations representing industries affected by the green
building movement. According to NPCA, the coalition supports the goal of building more sustainable buildings but
that the supporting technologies must be feasible, and that
the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design (LEED) ratings systems are not the
only green building certification systems available for project certification, though it is the most common.
LEED is a third-party certification system for buildings
and was developed because there was no common consensus
for what defined a green building. “LEED acts as a nutrition
label for a building—it shows exactly how much energy and
water the building is using, what the building is made of,
where the building materials were sourced from and gauges
the quality of the indoor environment,” said USGBC’s Katz.
“LEED looks at all of these features—building site, water
efficiency, materials and resources, energy and atmosphere,
and indoor environmental quality.”
Each LEED rating system is a green building certification
process administered by the USGBC. The LEED ratings systems pertain to various construction categories including
new construction, existing buildings and commercial interiors. Under this system projects earn points for green and
sustainable development practices. There is basic LEED certification ( 26-32 points); LEED Silver ( 33-38 points); LEED
Gold (39-51 points); and lastly, LEED Platinum (52-69
points).
LEED has become the certification process of choice for
U.S. commercial green building construction since its debut
in the late 1990s. “On the commercial side of the green
building movement, there is 3. 9 billion square feet of construction space participating in the LEED system, which
means registered and certified projects,” said Katz. “That
number translates to approximately seven percent of the
commercial construction market. With the growth we’ve
been seeing, we expect that number to be closer to ten percent once the numbers are tallied again.
“In Dec. 2007 USGBC launched LEED for Homes and
have already seen tremendous growth,” Katz continued.
“We currently have 1,039 certified and 13,597 that are
