Building the IgCC

For at least a decade regulation was the sworn enemy of business, and business was the solution to virtually every problem.  I always felt it was a nostalgia thing, a longing for the Wild West, or the freedom of childhood when nobody is telling you what to do.  But let’s get real, it’s a small planet with a lot of people on it and things are going to get pretty messy if we can’t all agree on a few basics.  Economic decisions made purely on the basis of financial profit ignore the “externalities”, costs not reflected on the balance sheet.  The environmental costs of construction, renovation, demolition, transportation planning, sitework, building operations, and materials manufacture, transportation and disposal, cannot be overlooked without further jeopardizing the fragile habitat that we share with all other living things.  If we look beyond short-term profit margins to a realistic assessment of the world we are creating for future generations the fallacy of the old economic model quickly becomes evident to all possessing an open-mind.  Environmental costs can no longer be ignored by a society interested in preserving a viable planet for our species.
Accounting for all environmental consequences of constructing and maintaining the built environment is a tall order for a building code.  Maybe we should try to scale this back to a reasonable scope.  The Committee that put together the first draft of the IgCC proposed three thresholds as a litmus test for whether or not to include proposed language.  Is it “adoptable, usable, enforceable”?  I.E., can the jurisdiction adopt the code or is the scope too broad or ill-defined?  Can the design and construction community use the code or are the provisions too complex and unwieldy?  And will the Authority Having Jurisdiction (probably the Building Inspector but maybe also the zoning officer or conservation commission, Plumbing Inspector, etc.) be able to enforce these provisions effectively?  The IgCC has to be a real life document, written with an understanding of how the real world works.  The real world, that is, of permits and inspections and certificates of occupancy, but also the real worlds of available technology, owner expectations, jurisdictional silos, and occupant behaviors.
About thirty years ago Building Codes began to include requirements for insulation to make construction more energy efficient.  There was an oil embargo and lines for gas and everybody was waking up to the fact that America was not in charge of her destiny.  The architectural style in favor at the time, late-stage modernism, favored exposed structure and facades of glass, features that did not enhance energy performance.  And Building Inspectors were not particularly interested in matters that appeared to have no impact on life-safety.  Then we learned that when you put insulation in an exterior wall or roof the dewpoint drops inside the material causing condensation, material deterioration, and possible structural damage.  Vapor barriers and ventilation were introduced, and the science of the “building envelope” began to crawl out of the slime.  But before long the solar panels were removed from the White House and it was “Morning in America”.  A window of opportunity for real technological innovation was closed in favor of the bliss of denial.  If we ignore a problem of course it will go away.
But it didn’t go away.  There were pioneers on the fringes who kept experimenting with passive solar collection, hay bale construction, not to mention arcologies in the desert.  Solid advances were made in air and water quality regulations.  And by 1993 the USGBC had been incorporated and was developing a “rating system” intended to evaluate the environmental performance of green buildings.  Called “LEED” (for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”) the system awards points in various categories, such as “sustainable sites”, “water efficiency”, “energy and atmosphere”, “materials and resources”, and “indoor environmental quality”.  Based on the number of points earned a project is awarded with a certification level that is intended to reflect its sustainability.  The program has grown exponentially and is playing a major role in the construction industry, driving the process of market transformation described in the first blog of this series.
Although USGBC has not been a sponsoring organization in the development of the IgCC they did participate and the draft document owes much to the innovations of LEED.  For instance the chapter headings currently in use include “Site Development and Land Use”, “Material Resource Conservation and Efficiency”, “Energy Conservation, Efficiency and Atmospheric Quality”, and “Indoor Environmental Quality and Comfort”.   There is a LEED system for existing buildings (“LEED EB”) and there is a chapter in the IgCC for “Existing Buildings”, as well as another chapter for “Existing Building Site Development”. When the ICC embarked on the adventure of writing a green building code the USGBC has already committed to sponsoring a “green building standard”, the ASHRAE/USGBC/IES Standard 189.1-2009.  At the time it looked like the two documents were destined to compete for the developing market of green buildings regulations, but the story has a happy ending, with Standard 189.1 now included in the IgCC as a compliance path.  The IgCC also has “points” (although not called that), which are laundry lists of requirements that can be chosen from, like a Chinese menu, by jurisdictions and design teams.
Will the IgCC render the LEED rating systems obsolete?  Can the ICC produce a document that is “adoptable, usable, enforceable”?  Is a building code capable of expanding into the arena of environmental regulations?
Stay Tuned.

Oil is washing ashore from the worst environmental disaster of the 21^st Century, oil meant for refineries and automobiles, and exhaust pipes and the atmosphere, and our lifestyles.  That’s probably a metaphor for something but rather than spilling ink (or whatever the digital equivalent may be) let’s look at the response.  Anyone who cared knew that New Orleans was a bathtub waiting to happen and that land use and development patterns could mitigate (or aggravate) the damage done.  What have we done to address future risk in the rebuilding?  And President Obama’s first Oval Office televised speech to the nation included a vow to reduce our dependence on oil as part of a comprehensive response to the oil spill. Remarkably this statement was the most widely criticized in the address, considered too abstract a response to a problem calling for more concrete action.  What are the odds that life in post-“Deepwater Horizon” America will constitute business-as-usual?   Despite the almost 60 million gallons of oil that have poured into a delicate marine ecosystem in the past three months, much of which is quietly lapping ashore in enormously productive estuaries and intertidal areas that are critical to entire ecosystems and economies, somehow the environment remains far down the list of priorities for most Americans.  What would it take to change this?

The information is available, and the science is solid.  Parts per million greenhouse gasses, melting glaciers and rising sea levels, species extinction, weather patterns and storm severity, and indisputable data that the pace of climate change is increasing.  Yet the Copenhagen talks were a stalemate and the Waxman/Markey bill has been taken off life support by the U.S. Senate.  Maybe the Obama administration takes it all very seriously (the Pentagon is extremely interested in the destabilizing effects worldwide that will accompany water and food shortages and population displacement resultant from climate change) but one senses that the administration is unwilling to risk political capital on a defining and polarizing issue without clearer signals that this will not further alienate the electorate.

I reflect on these matters from my humble position as a consultant specializing in building codes.  You know, those minimum requirements for design and construction that hopefully keep a building from falling down or burning up, or allow people in wheelchairs to use the restrooms, that kind of thing.  I used to be a building inspector, sniffing out work performed without a permit or illegal basement apartments.  Now I teach codes to architecture and interior design students.  Codes are a humble instrument, intended to regulate certain activities in the built environment in order to achieve certain limited but essential social goals.  A building that is “code minimum”, as the saying goes, is the least safe structure that you can legally build.  The registered design professional (architect, landscape architect, structural engineer) is responsible for code compliance, but is rarely taught the subject as part of his or her design education.  The building inspector is responsible for enforcing the code but is rarely given proper training or resources, with the revenue generated from permit fees redirected to fund other town or city departments.  Wouldn’t it be too much to expect building codes to provide a solution to environmental problems?  How can construction regulations impact climate change?  How would architects and building officials, with little or no training in matters pertaining to the natural environment, play a role in restoring habitat, improving water quality, or reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

Up until now such lofty goals have been left to cutting edge efforts like the USGBC’s “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)” rating systems, or the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Energy Star” program.  Such efforts are referred to as “market transformation”, a process whereby the fundamental principles that we take for granted in the marketplace (owners won’t pay for optional features that do not provide immediate payback) dissolve and are replaced by new principles (environmental impacts are a fundamental aspect of all design decisions).  Those who study market transformation see “regulatory change” (sometimes called “codification”) as the culmination of the process whereby innovation becomes ubiquitous.  So, for the market of energy efficiency in building construction and operations to transform, the innovations of LEED, Energy Star, and multiple other efforts must find their way into regulation.  And the applicable regulations are building codes.

One organization in the U.S. writes building codes, the “International Code Council (ICC)”.  About a year ago they began work on a new volume, the “International green Construction Code (IgCC)”.  It has been a leap of faith, not just because there has never been such a thing before, but also because there is no way of knowing who will adopt a “green” construction code.  This blog will provide periodic updates and reflections on the development of the IgCC.  The first public version of this code, along with proposed amendments, can be found at  www.iccsafe.org.  An eight-day hearing will be held in Chicago August 14 to 22 to review the 1,500 amendments proposed, and a second Public Version will be published in November.  Is this market transformation at work?

Stay Tuned.