11 April 2013 – Extract from The Fifth Estate: It’s the burning question: how green are green buildings? Do they live up to they hype? What is their actual energy consumption, as opposed to their promised energy consumption? And what about water? Author and keynote speaker on green buildings, Jerry Yudelson says these were the questions he set out to achieve in his latest book, ‘The World’s Greenest Buildings: Promise Versus Performance in Sustainable Design’, (£29.99 from UK publisher Routledge).

Yudelson teamed up with co-author Professor Ulf Meyer of Berlin to compile what he belies is the “most extensive research to date on the measurable performance of LEED Platinum or equivalent buildings.”

With 55 case studies from 18 countries, Yudelson could well have delivered on the promise.

The book examines only buildings constructed since 2003, whose owners were willing to release a year’s worth of energy use data and, where possible, water use data, Yudelson says.

“In order to be included in this green building book, buildings had to have a LEED Platinum or equivalent top rating from a national green building rating program, represent a non-residential type, and be at least 4645 sq m (or 50,000 square feet) in size.

“We were aiming at the top-rated green buildings built in the past 10 years, with the goal of giving guidance to future projects in terms of best-practice energy and water performance, but also to refute the claims that green buildings don’t perform.

“In fact, the average building we profile uses almost two-thirds less energy than the 2003 average of U.S. commercial buildings.”

The Fifth Estate website has incorporated four extracts from the book, from Chapter 8 – read more here.