April 20 2009

Independence Station-World's Greenest Building?

A new mixed use facility in Independence Oregon is being called the "world's greenest building" by it's developers, Aldeia LLC. The building, scheduled to be completed in early 2010, will house 15 condominiums, retail stores, and multiple offices. The developers foresee that it will receive the highest LEED rating recorded-64 points out of a possible 69! The points will be achieved as the building employs multiple green strategies such as rainwater re-use, daylighting, and the use of reclaimed and recylced building materials.
The most interesting way points will be obtained is through power generated from Biodiesel. Besides the common mixed use functions, the building will also house facilities for biodiesel production, education, and research. Grease from local restaurants will be converted to biodeisel on site and be used to power seven of the building's generators. In the summer, when heat loads are much less, the building will be mostly powered by PV panels.

http://www.independencestation.com/index.shtml

biodiesal-bldg

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7 Comments

April 20th, 2009 at 10:45 PM

Mr. Bad Green

I checked out the LEED scorecard hosted at the develoment website and they are still using LEED NC v2.1, which is getting quite dated, considering that v2.2 is being phased out now. Also v2.1 had lower requirements for MR credits. This is an extreme example of pointmongering. Project teams have the option of using v2.2, these guys chose not to in order to maximize their points.

April 21st, 2009 at 7:01 PM

Sukanya Walsh

Agreed-this seems to be a case of greenwashing a building for publicity-which seems to be happening a lot lately. I phrased the title as a question for this reason-does having the most LEED points necessarily make you the greenest?

April 23rd, 2009 at 12:48 PM

Mr. Bad Green

I really don't blame developers and designers for playing the point game. They didn't create the system, they are just working within it. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

May 27th, 2009 at 4:02 AM

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June 6th, 2009 at 4:27 PM

Steven Ribeiro

I am the Developer of this project and would like to personally answer this issue. The reason we are on 2.1 is that that was what was in existence when we started. We had the building designed and 1/3 built when our lender backed out and left us hanging. We took advantage of the financing gap time to add more and more refinements to the point of entering the Living Building Challenge. As you may know, this as a much taller order than any version of LEED Platinum. We chose not to stop and redesign to the new standards and instead take the huge sum of money we would have spent in doing so on adding even more more PV and nextgen batteries for off grid running. We are doing many things well above LEED that we are not recognized for and instead have chosen to go ahead and reapply under LEED-EB when we are finished and have actual performance data to publish. LEED does not give points for food production onsite and we are doing this in our second phase along with natural bio water filtration. We are an open source company and want to help conventional Developers to see the light. We are also making a run at the year 2050 protocol of the 2,000 Watt Society that will incorporate "full livestyle" energy consumption including transportation. Look for anyone even considering attempting such a feat. Please hold your final opinion on this issue until you have had a chance to let me personally tour you through the project. I bet you'll be absolutely floored when you see what we are really up to! Please contact me so I can share all this with you. Thanks. Steven Ribeiro steven@WorldsGreenestBuilding.com

June 12th, 2009 at 8:27 PM

Sukanya Walsh

Wow, sounds really wonderful. We would really love to see photos and have more information on the great stuff you guys are doing!

July 19th, 2010 at 1:15 PM

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