Green Mechanical Contractor

CLOUDS OF STEAM FROM
ROOFTOPS AND WASHINGTON

IT WAS COLD IN CHICAGO in January, -16ºF one morning. As I rode the commuter train into downtown, I could see billows of steam coming o the roof of the Sears Tower and Boeing headquarters and the Citibank building and all of the other rooftops downtown, forming clouds that sat on the roofs in the still air in an otherwise cloudless sky.

All I could think about was that somebody was paying good money for each of those clouds of steam. is magazine is dedicated to getting all that steam pouring out of those stacks to disappear.

This industry has so many ways to keep the heat inside buildings – solar thermal and photovoltaic, condensing boilers, tankless water heaters, radiant, geothermal heat pumps, inverter heat pumps, heat recovery ventilators and more. Manufacturers are trotting out that technology at an increasing rate as the editors and sta of Green Mechanical Contractor saw at the International Builders Show and at the Air-Conditioning, Heating & Refrigerating Exposition this past January. One manufacturer showed a residential condensing unit with a companion PV panel to run the condenser fan. Another showed an inverter heat pump boasting a 26.0 SEER. One tankless water heater manufacturer has a unit that’s 98% e cient.

e people we spoke with at those shows, contractors and engineers, small manufacturers to Fortune 500 rms, were all pulling for passage of the President’s economic stimulus package because of their belief that it will jump start construction work and investment in green technologies.

I got rather agitated when I read in early February of a list of items in the President’s stimulus bill that the Republican Party considers wasteful. I’m OK with getting rid of the $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture lm. My ox isn’t being gored with that one.

But here is a partial list of other “waste” that was published on www.cnn.com:

( is one really agitated me).

- land Security headquarters.

Health Service.

of Health facilities in Bethesda, MD.

Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.

State Department security o cers.

It must be a matter of perspective because I don’t view $6 billion in green building work as “waste,” not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars of other construction projects.

We’ve heard over and over again from people in the industry that green and sustainable construction and service will be what keeps them going in 2009. Energy and water e - ciency save customers money. The industry isn’t going to survive 2009 by waiting for the phone to ring.

“As research comes in from diverse sources examining the interest in green buildings among a wide range of Americans, the numbers keep painting the same picture: The future of our built environment clearly centers on energy e ciency, water reduction, systems that encourage cleaner indoor air, the use of recycled and more sustain-ably developed materials, and communities that coexist with their environments,” said Rick Fedrizzi, president, CEO and founding chair of the U.S. Green Building Council. “Over and over again, Americans are saying the same thing: e key to a prosperous future is sustainability, and the triple bottom line – environmental responsibility, economic prosperity and social equity – is imperative as we move forward.”

Among the numbers Fedrizzi goes on to cite:

Seventy- ve percent of commercial real estate executives say the credit crunch will not discourage them from building green, according to Turner Construction Co.’s Green Building Barometer.

Seventy percent of homebuyers are more or much more inclined to buy a green home over a conventional home in a down housing market, according to McGraw-Hill Construction’s 2008 SmartMarket Report, The Green Home Consumer.

A national green economic recovery program investing $100 billion over 10 years in six infrastructure areas would create 2 million new jobs, according to e Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.