(http://www.kestreldesigngroup.com/)
Yesterday in Community Economic Development, our guest speakers included a green roof promoter and an architect. It was a really interesting conversation between an advocate, a designer and finance-focused students. Our instructor asked us the questions, "should we be pursuing sustainable design at all, or is it just a sexy trend?" My insides balked at this question! How could you call something as crucial as sustainability merely a trend? My natural resource management sensibilities were outnumbered in that room of urban and regional planners and public policy analysts, however. And I had to admit the truth that sustainability is often defined as "everything that is good."
The economic angle counters that "it is only good if it is financially feasible." That is a true, albeit limiting, statement. The crux seems hangs on how we can call something financially feasible when we don't account for the externalities (or impact costs, as someone called them), and if we aren't factoring in the subsidies that are underneath finical calculations of fuel costs? The argument is more complex than calculating cost and expected savings, yet that is necessary to do. Is the 7-year payback on the Target Center green roof too long? For a developer or private company, it is. For the City of Minneapolis, with their long-term ownership and stake in storm water mediation, it isn't. (There's also a host of other benefits that went along with it, like workforce training). The total cost of the green roof includes eliminating one life cycle on the Target Center roof-- so replacement will come in 40 years instead of 20. That's substantial.
Overall the conversation was a little depressing. Most of the time, sustainability is not financially feasible (without incentives, cost share, subsidies etc.). I am used to more warm-and-fuzzy sustainability conversations. So I browsed to find out more information and eventually found a Green roofs project compendium open-source website and the latest solar decathlon winner (the U entered in this a few years ago, it's a neat competition held in DC to encourage residential solar innovation).
The University of Maryland's winning project, the "Watershed," is an example of technological and design innovation. I'm excited about these technologies taking off...and hopeful that they will. I recently visited northern Minnesota, where an environmental learning center had newly installed solar panels, vacuum water-heating tubes and wood biogasification to replace their natural gas and petroleum heating sources. Sustainable things like this can and do happen- it's not just a fad or anomaly. I would argue that they need to happen more so that sustainability isn't an after thought, but an essential element to any fiscal policy, development or planning process.
