Barriers to the implementation of sustainable structural materials in green buildings

The purpose of this research was to discover what limits the ability of building design and construction professionals to use environmentally responsible materials in the structural systems of buildings. The researchers interviewed building design professionals in Oregon with experience incorporating structural materials that are more environmentally responsible than the materials used in conventional practice. This research identifies gaps in information as well as gaps in access to or availability of sustainable materials for structural use that will help material producers better understand the needs of designers who are responsible for green material selection as well as identify future research opportunities related to the development and evaluation of green structural materials. The survey process was divided into two phases. Phase I was a series of eight exploratory interviews with individuals who assisted in refining questions and identifying potential participants in the focus group discussions of Phase II. In Phase II, expert opinion about barriers to implementing sustainable structural materials was collected through interviews conducted in four focus groups. Twenty-two professionals in architecture, engineering, construction and development participated in the interviews conducted in Phase II. Similar survey questions were used to conduct the semi-structured interviews in both phases. This paper outlines the existing barriers, the role of rating systems such as LEED, and strategies for the increased use of sustainable structural materials and systems. The interviews highlight the need for more concise and credible environmental and economic information, integrated design teams, and analysis tools for comparing alternatives. resource use and emissions from the building sector are a significant part of human activities that have been shown to contribute to global climate change, and even slight changes in climate could have potentially disastrous consequences for physical and biological systems on which humans rely (Rosenzweig, et al. 2008). To minimize the impact of the building sector on the natural environment, stakeholders, including building owners, developers, architects, engineers and contractors as well as governmental planning agencies and non-profit organizations, have promoted the design and construction of green buildings. A green building can be defined as one built to the standards of a green building certification program, such as the United States Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) or Green Globes (GG), or one that incorporates multiple sustainability measures across a range of categories including energy efficiency, water efficiency, resource efficiency, responsible site management and improved indoor air quality (McGraw Hill 2008). “Sustainable” or “high-performance” are two other adjectives often used to describe green buildings within the literature reviewed for this paper. Typically, buildings defined as sustainable have economic and social goals outside of the design, construction and operation of the building itself, and those described as high-performance focused more on reducing the operational energy and resource consumption. While the USGBC Research Committee (2007) has identified the need for more green building research and innovation, there are technologies, materials and design strategies that could be deployed now to reduce the environmental impact of the construction and operation of new buildings. Post-occupancy studies have documented the improved performance of existing green buildings over conventional or baseline buildings (Turner 2006, Diamond, et al. 2006) and over 2,400 buildings have been LEED certified since the inception of the program in 2000 (USGBC 2009). Despite the availability of more sustainable alternatives to normative building design and construction practices, green buildings made up only an estimated 10-12% of non-residential construction starts in 2008 (McGraw Hill 2008). If the knowledge and ability exist to create green buildings, then there must be non-technical barriers that must be overcome to reduce the environmental burden of the building sector. 1.2 Non-technical barriers to green building Throughout the existing literature on non-technical barriers to green buildings, the interactions between stakeholders are highlighted as a primary concern. Boden (1996) predicted that a paradigm shift beyond the inclusion of specialty services and manufactures of sustainable technologies would be necessary in the construction industry to realize green buildings. The structure of the industry itself would have to modify as communication and relationships between stakeholders change to meet green building goals. These transformations would face significant barriers from existing policies and regulations, market forces, and the existing structure of the construction industry. Taking this argument further, green buildings can be viewed as part of a social-technical system that accounts for “functional dependencies and requirements, but also interests, perspectives and the interaction of actors” (Rohracher 2001). The largest barrier to green building is not developing the technology necessary but disseminating it broadly due to the “lack of available services, lack of collaboration between different groups of professional and construction companies, lack of articulate demand, or inappropriate regulations” (Rohracher 2001). In an analysis of the institutional barriers to green building in the Netherlands, the asymmetric distribution of costs and benefits between different stakeholders and the lack of interaction and cooperation between them were noted as major obstacles (van Bueren & Priemus 2002). In terms of disparate goals as well as communication, the gap between those involved with the design and construction of buildings and the end users proved to be the greatest barrier to green building. The complexity and availability of information about the environmental performance and interaction of building materials and systems is also a significant barrier to green buildings during the design process. Access to consistent, comparable information about building materials is essential to advance the production of green buildings (Jonsson 2000). Yet data about building materials is often incomplete or difficult to interpret, particularly in cases when building project teams are comparing materials produced by different building industries (Seo 2002). All of the aforementioned research did not include interviews. Therefore, the authors describe barriers that might exist in the design and construction of a green building rather than the barriers actually experienced by stakeholders. Williams and Dair (2007) examined five case studies of residential and mixed-use buildings in the UK to determine the barriers to green building. Four of the case studies were randomly selected and the remaining case study was chosen for its “sustainability credentials” in order to compare the processes of a successful green building with those of conventional buildings. Using semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and planning documents, the authors used an analytical framework of sustainability objectives including environmental, economic and social goals as a checklist to compare the caste studies. Twelve barriers were identified to meeting the sustainability objectives. The most commonly recorded barrier was that the stakeholders did not consider the sustainability measure. As four of the projects were selected at random and green buildings make up a small portion of existing building stocks, this result is not surprise. Without regulatory or policy requirements, sustainability objectives would only be considered if your goal was to create a green building. The other commonly recorded barriers included a lack of client demand, regulations, cost (or assumed cost), availability or trading one sustainability measure for another.