Behavioral Controls or Just Behaving

There are a couple of fundamental themes that keep running through my green building world right now.

The first can be summed up quite simply as internalizing the externalities. If we took into account the cost of the human health impacts of mining coal, the cost extracting the coal, moving it to the coal fired plant, burning the coal, the cost of the added air pollution on the environment and human health, etc. etc. we'd be paying a great deal more for our electricity.

The second theme is really a debate we keep having in the context of our office renovation. To what extent do we want to emphasize the importance of human behavior, versus using automated controls to such a degree that we as building occupants don't need to think about our environment at all.

This afternoon and into the evening we were discussing plans for lighting design and daylighting.When the conversation turned to controls, we started exploring the functionality of a potential system, a cutting edge system that can be controlled on site, via the internet - I could turn lights on and off just for kicks when I'm traveling to the farthest ends of the earth - they've probably already developed an app for that. It allows for constant data collection and monitoring of energy use, the wiring and zoning is completely different than a traditional set up - it's really really cool.

And yet - the question came back around to what are we trying to accomplish with this renovation project? This super slick system is really expensive - and while we would only use the system if it were donated, that is still a factor we need to consider. 

We want to strike a balance between demonstrating the easily achievable and affordable strategies to green an office with the up and coming cutting edge technologies of the future. We want to be able to monitor and measure the impact of our work over time. Most of all, we want to use the space to educate the community about green building and sustainable work environments.

And it's important that in some ways, our actions continue to matter. Maybe we decide that we want the computer to turn the heat up when we're getting off the bus on the way to work, but we'll be the ones manually turning the lights on or off, or opening the windows, or adjusting the shades.

Technology is critical to the impact green buildings have on the built environment - but humans matter too.