Environmental Studies > Major/Minor > Standards and Practices for Minnesota

Standards and Practices for Minnesota

With green building gaining popularity, the question “how do I build green?” emerges frequently. Can you just build a building and call it green, because you saved a little energy here and there and included some recycled materials? How environmentally sensitive does my building have to be to qualify as being “green?” To answer these questions, there are an ever-growing number of manuals and standards to follow in designing and constructing green buildings. Some of these standards are in the form of rating systems, with approval ratings and checklists for almost every aspect of a building design. The more efficient or environmentally appropriate a particular aspect of the building is, the higher the rating. If the cumulative rating achieves certain set standards, the building can then be certified by an external organization. Other standards are simply instructions to guide a designer or builder in the direction of building green, and can be drawn on to whatever extent is desired.

Two guides referred to extensively in this proposal are the Minnesota Sustainable Design Guide (MSDG) and the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System. Both of these guides are continually evolving due to the changing nature of the field, and their publishers are open to discussion of their standards and strategies for future revisions of the guides.

The Minnesota Sustainable Design Guide (MSDG) was developed by the University of Minnesota to incorporate environmental considerations into the design, construction , and operation of both new and renovated buildings. Specifically, the goals of the MSDG are to:

1. Educate designers, building owners, operations staff, and occupants about the concepts, goals, and significance of sustainable design.

2. Develop an orderly decision-making process with measurable outcomes along with a database of decisions and outcomes.

3. Provide flexibility in the way priorities are set and outcomes are measured within the system so it can be adapted for different clients or agencies, regions, and building types.

4. Organize information in a hierarchy that permits users to easily understand the sustainable design process.

5. Create a system that can easily grow and change as more experience and new information becomes available.[i]

Overall, the MSDG authors hope readers will apply their green building strategies to an actual project, so they present them in as part of a process, rather than just stating the strategies as other guides and rating systems do.

The MSDG gives the reader about 50 different design pathways to choose from, divided into different groupings depending on the design issue to which it pertains. The guide works on a type of credit system that awards designers for working sustainable “benchmarks” or minimum standards into their designs. Credit is also given to designers who develop innovative, sustainable ideas or design something with the potential for creating a future sustainability strategy. The whole life cycle of the building is covered, with particular emphasis on the Occupancy and the Next-Use phases. For these stages, the MSDG offers something that other guides do not, a checklist of actions a designer must follow so that the strategies are not simply listed, but are actively incorporated into the design. As the title alone suggests, the guide was also designed specifically for Minnesota. If one were to use this guide in other areas, with different climates and building requirements , it would need to be reevaluated of course, but for our reference purposes, its advice is more than an adequate start for a green building program in Minnesota.

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, unlike the MSDG, were created as national standards specifically for developing high performing and sustainable buildings.[ii] The goals of the LEED Green Building Rating System are to “define green building" by establishing a common standard of measurement; to promote integrated, whole-building design practices; to recognize environmental leadership in the building industry; to stimulate green competition; to raise consumer awareness of green building benefits; and to transform the building market.”²One can see that the goals of LEED are much broader than those of the MSDG. Their final goal, “to transform the building market,” is in itself a massive goal. But through the recognition and accreditations which LEED officials confer on completed buildings, projects become officially recognized and green building in general benefits from the establishment of standards. Reading through the standards, one can see another difference between LEED and the MSDG. The LEED standards are just that, a simple list of standards, while the MSDG is a broader and more applied program.

As mentioned previously, there are many other guides and lists of standards out there. These are only two excellent examples of ways that organizations are trying to implement green building in today’s market. By incorporating some of these principles in our processes for designing buildings on our campuses, we would be promoting the transformation of the current and future building markets, as well as bringing more popularity to the idea of being green in all aspects of our operations.

[i] Regents of the University of Minnesota , Minnesota Sustainable Design Guide . 1999, <http://www.sustainabledesignguide.umn.edu/default.htm>, (21 April 2004).

[ii] United States Green Building Council, The LEED Green Building Rating System^TM, 2003, <http://www.usgbc.org/leed/leed_main.asp>, (21 April 2004).