Multifamily Crawls Out of Green Infancy

Ready or not, a largely untested multifamily industry is expected to up the ante when it comes to green.

16 MIN READ

Richard Borge

Numbers Don’t Lie

0.95%

Portion of U.S. man-made greenhouse gas emissions in 2007 contributed by all equipment used in the construction industry

Source: Associated General Contractors of America

180 million

Tons of structural and reinforcement steel and asphalt annually recycled by the construction industry, offsetting 75.7 million tons of annual CO2 emissions

Source: Associated General Contractors of America

41%

Portion of Americans who think the severity of global warming is exaggerated

Source: 2009 Gallup Environment Survey

$5.5 million

Average increase in capital value of Energy Star-rated commercial office buildings

Source: Royal Institution of Charted Surveyors

25%

No. of renters who say they are willing to pay more rent to live at an apartment property that considers the environment in day-to-day operations

Source: Apartments.com

$930K

Entry price for a unit at Riverhouse, One Rockefeller Park, a 264-unit luxury condo tower in New York City being advertised as the East Coast’s “greenest” condo community

Source: Sheldrake Organization

3

No. of versions of LEED that have been issued thus far without a dedicated track to multifamily construction and development

Source: U.S. Green Building Council

39%

Portion of total CO2 emissions in the United States generated by existing buildings

Source: U.S. Green Building Council


How Much is Net Zero?

The need for complete life cycle analysis makes energy consumption claims difficult to verify.

This summer, Oakland, Calif.-based ZETA Communities will open models of the company’s modular, manufactured multifamily product intended to produce net zero energy consumption for urban and sustainable communities. Like many at the forefront of real estate sustainability, ZETA company founders are driven by a perceived environmental crisis, and advocate that green building leads to less waste, improved energy efficiency, and overall better quality of the finished product. “As urban infill consultants for public-private partnerships, economic development agencies, and affordable housing developers, we have long realized that there is a better way to build, and there is a way to build where we are not energy dependent,” says company CEO Naomi Porat.

ZETA’s better way involves “rapid-production” housing: from floors and walls down to the towel racks, each of ZETA’s 12-foot-by-40-foot modular units are 90 percent built in the factory using optimized framing technologies and then transported and completed onsite, replete with uber green features such as photovoltaic solar panels, air to air heat exchangers, heat pumps, and a wastewater heat recovery system. Due to a more efficient design and tighter building envelope, ZETA claims to have reduced the average energy consumption load by 60 percent, while generating another 40 percent of unit energy via photovoltaic panels. The result is a multifamily unit with an annual net zero energy consumption, Porat says.

Of course, the ZETA factory, or Z-Lab, as Porat calls it, is still on the municipal power grid, and daily employee travel, not to mention the transport of building materials and the finished ZETA units, all come with their own carbon and energy footprints that realistically need an amortized offset as well. The challenge isn’t lost on Porat, who says ZETA will continue to emphasize energy usage and emissions reductions as the company grows. “The Z-Lab is our startup facility and since we are not off the grid, it’s obviously not a good demonstration,” she says, adding that the company has tried to compensate by providing transit passes to employees, and hopes to move into a solar powered factory in 2010.

With several projects in the pipeline ranging in density from 30 units to 50 units, and an advertised cost savings over site-built construction between 10 percent and 20 percent, Porat thinks the economics are there to hit net zero marks across the ZETA operation. It’s not just the finished product, she acknowledges, but “a consistency across the business model that remains the key aspect of any net zero or green initiative.”

About the Author

Chris Wood

Chris Wood is a freelance writer and former editor of Multifamily Executive and sister publication ProSales.

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