Green Innovations Revolutionize Construction

A Green Economic Revolution is under way, led by entrepreneurs with green ideas for re-engineering the home construction industry. The pace of this revolution is exceeding all expectations as consumers search for ways to reduce their costs while helping fight global warming.

We're talking new ways of designing buildings and locating them. These new buildings are using new products that place less stress on the environment and that carry the type of third-party certifications just emerging from institutions like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a nonprofit organization that provides a consumer product label certifying the business supports responsible forest management.

These buildings are designed to use little or no utility-supplied energy, a benefit that's gaining tremendous traction among consumers with the seemingly daily price increases in coal, oil and natural gas.

Deva Rajan is a successful "green" builder and founder of Canyon Construction, a California-based contracting company in the Bay Area that builds and remodels homes and offices using green methods. Rajan was a leader in the "Going Green" revolution long before the rest of us "got it."

"When you build beautiful things, people take care of them. And durability is a cornerstone of sustainability," Rajan says.

During the 1970s he quietly influenced the development of California's Title 24--pioneering building codes that most states have now adopted. And he was instrumental in developing a new type of concrete that recycled "fly ash"--waste created by coal-fired power plants that's now a high-utility standard among building materials."I really admire Deva's strength of purpose in helping turn this Titanic-like building industry toward sustainability," Canyon Construction President Chris Avant says.

"In no small part due to Deva's efforts, California pioneered legislation focusing upon building standards that increased energy efficiency in 1978. Since then we have learned a lot and the codes have been upgraded three times, but we are still a long way from truly having building codes and community planning that have sustainability as their cornerstone," Avant says.

Avant should know. He just moved into a new corporate headquarters certified by Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). LEED provides third-party certification for buildings to meet the highest standards for energy efficiency and environmental responsibility. Canyon Construction's building obtained a platinum rating, one of 17 new construction projects in the United States to obtain such a rating at the time of the building's completion.

The LEED program is helping the industry "adopt where we design, locate, build and retrofit buildings to achieve sustainability in our work and lifestyles," Avant says.

Canyon Construction's headquarters provides an example of sustainability. First, it's a reconstruction of a building that had been vacant for years and fallen into great disrepair.

Reconstruction helps eliminate urban sprawl.

"Infill is a major element of sustainability," Avant says, adding that clear-cutting land or claiming farms for new construction results in more commute time for more people.