Green Glossary
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Carbon neutral: Calculating total carbon emissions, reducing them where possible, and balancing remaining emissions with the purchase of carbon offsets.
Certified wood products: Products made from lumber harvested in a sustainable manner and certified by a reliable third party, such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
Commissioning: A quality control process required by most green building certification programs. This process incorporates verification and documentation to ensure that building systems and assemblies are planned, designed, installed, tested, operated, and maintained to meet specified requirements.
Cool roofs: Energy-efficient roofing systems that reflect the sun’s radiant energy before it penetrates the interior of the building. These systems can reduce the building’s energy requirements for air conditioning.
Cradle-to-cradle design: Designing objects that are not just resource efficient but essentially waste free. This is accomplished by using building materials that can either be recycled or reused, or composted or consumed.
Daylighting: Using various design methods, such as windows and skylights, to reduce the building’s reliance on electric lighting. Numerous studies have highlighted the productivity benefits of natural lighting for building occupants.
Energy efficiency: Designing buildings to use less energy for the same or higher performance as conventional buildings. All buildings systems can contribute to higher energy efficiency.
Green: Refers to the tangible or physical attributes of a product or a property. Compare sustainable.
Graywater: Wastewater that doesn’t contain contaminants and can be reused for productive purposes such as irrigation or nonpotable purposes such as toilet flushing. Gray water reuse is restricted in many jurisdictions; check with local health and building officials.
High-performance building: A building that uses significantly less energy than a conventional building. Such buildings also feature high water efficiency and superior indoor air quality.
Integrated design: The main method used by green builders to design high-performance buildings on conventional budgets. This is accomplished by incorporating efficient building system design that reduces the anticipated energy use of the building so that smaller building systems can be installed.
LCCA (life-cycle cost analysis): A method of evaluating energy and water conservation technologies that save money and resources for the long term but may cost more money initially than conventional technologies. Identical to the total cost of ownership concept used in many other industries.
LED (light-emitting diode): A new lighting technology that reduces energy consumption, allows lighting to be programmed by computer, and permits wide variations in lighting color.
LEED™ (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design): A third-party certification program operated by the US Green Building Council (USGBC). LEED™ is the primary US benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high-performance green buildings.
Locally sourced materials: Building products manufactured and/or extracted within a defined radius of the building site. The US Green Building Council defines local materials as those that are manufactured, processed, and extracted within a 500-mile radius of the building site. Locally sourced materials require less transport, reducing transportation-related costs and environmental impacts.
Low-flush toilets: A toilet that uses less water than a traditional unit, thereby lowering costs. Dual-flush toilets are a good example a low-flush technology.
Passive solar design: Design strategies that reduce or eliminate the use of fossil fuels and electricity for heating, cooling, and building lighting. This is accomplished by incorporating sunlight and natural ventilation into the basic design of a building, minimizing the need for mechanical system capacity.
Photovoltaics: Also referred to as PV, these are solar electric systems that convert sunlight directly into electricity by using semiconductor materials. These materials do not create any pollution, noise, or other environmental impact.
Post-occupancy evaluation (POE): A process for evaluating the performance of a building once the building has been completed. This evaluation particularly focuses on energy and water use, occupant comfort, indoor air quality, and the proper operation of all building systems. The results of this evaluation can often lead to operational improvements.
Productivity: Worker efficiency gains are a major business benefit of green buildings. Numerous studies have identified a link between specific green features and higher employee productivity, which offsets the cost of installing or implementing green features.
Rapidly renewable materials: Materials that can be grown and harvested for production in a short period of time. These materials are considered more sustainable because they reduce concerns of resource depletion. The US Green Building Council uses a 10-year milestone as an evaluation point for deeming a material to be rapidly renewable.
Recycled-content materials: Products manufactured using post-consumer materials such as plastic, fiber, wood, and glass. Deconstruction of various structures can also produce a variety of “raw” materials to create new products from — everything from tiles to carpeting to composite flooring materials and beyond. Recycled-content materials help to reduce the need for new raw materials and the accumulation and manufacturing processes involved.
Renewable energy: Energy generated from natural resources that are inexhaustible. Renewable energy technologies include solar power, wind power, hydroelectricity and micro hydro, biomass, and biofuels.
Return on investment: A measure of the financial viability of a profit or loss on an investment, often expressed as a percentage.
Right-sizing systems: The practice of using smaller, more efficient building systems that are not “too big” for normal building operation. By using integrated design, a building design team can minimize the “extreme” requirements on a building system, allowing for the installation of smaller-capacity systems.
Sustainable: Refers not only to green physical attributes, as in a building, but also business processes, ethics, values, and social justice.
Triple bottom line: A calculation of financial, environmental, and social performance. Often referred to as “profits, planet, and people.” This calculation method contrasts with the traditional business bottom line, which only considers profits.
VOCs (volatile organic compounds): Volatile organic compounds are emitted as gases from certain solids or liquids. They include a variety of chemicals, some of which may have short- and long-term adverse health effects. Concentrations of many VOCs are consistently higher indoors than outdoors.
US Green Building Council (USGBC): A nonprofit trade organization that promotes sustainability in the way buildings are designed, built, and operated. The USGBC is best known for the development of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED™) rating system.
