January 10, 2011
Over the past few weeks, we have featured Part 1 and Part 2 of our Green Buildings blog post series. Green Buildings Part 1 offered an initial overview of the green building industry and illustrated how the huge impact buildings have on carbon emissions and natural resources consumption. Part 2 of the Green Building series focused on residential green buildings and the economic savings that come with building or retrofitting your home to be energy efficient. This week, for our final piece, we will discuss the future of green buildings and some thoughts as to where the industry is headed.
Overall green building market predictions
Many studies indicate increased growth rate in the green building sector, as the demand for solar has grown more than 30% per year for the past 15 years. According to Environmental Leader, the total U.S. green building market value is expected to increase from $71.1 billion to $173.5 billion from 2010 to 2015.
Commercial green buildings
The future looks very bright for both commercial and residential green buildings. Studies reveal that the commercial green building sector will grow annually by 18.1% from $35.6 billion to $81.8 billion, and has the potential to generate 2.5 million American green jobs.
Residential green buildings
As for the residential green building industry, there is currently a $1 trillion potential market in residential electricity. Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects that by 2020, 2.4% of houses in the U.S. will have solar installed. This percentage equates to approximately 3 million homes, compared to the 80,000 solar homes that exist today.
Why is the industry growing so rapidly?
The extensive growth of this industry is due to many factors. An obvious reason points to the economic advantages. Constructing and retrofitting buildings to be energy efficient reduces operating costs, increase the value of buildings, and add to return on investment figures. According to McGraw-Hill Construction’s Green Outlook 2011 report, the operating costs for a new building is reduced by 13.6% and 8.5% for retrofitted green buildings. Other reasons that contribute to industry expansion are related to an increase in public knowledge and awareness of the world’s depleting and finite resources, as well as the benefits of integrating sustainable practices. Also, more local and federal green building regulations and policies have been implemented to spur smarter living. Individuals and companies are also realizing the market differentiation that comes with building green. For example, adding solar panels to your home increases the value of your home.
We hope that you have both enjoyed and learned a little from our Green Buildings blog series. As you can see, this is an industry that is not only growing, but will continue to expand over the next decade. The environmental and economic benefits are too good to ignore, so to finish up, we will leave you with one more fact that might inspire you to go solar or share the shine with somebody else: 89,000 times more solar energy than humans consume hits the earth each day!
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