Courtesy of Kevin Manalili.

Kevin Manalili, the Director of Operations recently sent out an email to Academy staff answering some questions about the California Academy of Sciences building. He gave me permission to share the email in this post. It details some of the more interesting methods needed to operate a Green building and it will show you some of what goes on behind the scenes at the Academy.

Ever wonder how the Academy makes salt water for our cold and tropical salt water tanks?

We start with salt – lots of salt. Each of these bags contains 2,000 lbs of it. Engineers use the power chain hoist to safely lift each bag over to the salt water mixing cistern located underneath the life support system room.

In addition to the salt, there are 11 additional ingredients to the CAS salt formula. Laurie’s demonstrating her new checklist that ensures the mix is correct 100% of the time.

The Academy recently converted over from Instant Ocean (the Bisquick for salt water aquarists) to our own blend. The salt water team took months to investigate and test the new mixture that reduces our cost from $0.12 per gallon to under $0.08 per gallon. This is a big deal when you are making over 2.7 million gallons per year!

Just before making the transition, the cisterns where the water is mixed and stored needed to be cleaned. In a joint effort, the Aquarium Staff and the Engineers drained the cisterns, washed down the silt, and collected it for disposal. Arnel’s in this tank after most of the water was drained and the space certified safe for people to enter.

Ever wonder how the glass roof is cleaned?

The panes of glass that ring the living roof house thousands of solar cells and keep the perimeter of the building dry. Unlike a regular roof, the glass needs to be washed regularly to remove any debris and deposits that can permanently etch the glass. A soft brush at the end of a long pole, with filtered water that removes any chemicals and minerals that will spot the glass, are the only tools used – no chemicals.

The same technique is used on most of the building’s glass surfaces, both inside and out.

Ever wonder how we spread compost on a steep slope?

Spreading compost to improve the planting conditions on the south slope is difficult. The process used to be carrying buckets of the stuff by hand, up and down a hill, trampling plants and compacting the soil in the process. Enter jet mulching! Specialty trucks use compressed air to push to compost through a flexible tube, literally blowing the mulch onto the hillside. Three trucks made quick work of our hillside in just a few hours. They placed three times the amount of mulch in a quarter of the time, for the same cost.

Ever wonder what went into the Academy's LEED Platinum certification?

The Academy earned its LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification for New Construction (NC) with a score of 54 out of a possible 69 points. The LEED NC was designed to guide and distinguish high-performance commercial and institutional projects. Our building was graded on six categories that included sustainability, water efficiency, energy use, and indoor environmental quality, and was based on how the building was constructed. We are now nearly complete with our submission to the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) for our Existing Building Operations and Maintenance (EB-OM) certification. The EB-OM checklist has a total of 110 points and helps us measure the operations, improvements, and maintenance with the goal of maximizing efficiency and minimizing environmental impacts. The project team are in the homestretch of this nearly two year project!

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Henry Gifford. Photo by Travis Roozee.

Henry Gifford, a mechanical systems designer and principal at Gifford Fuel Saving, Inc. in New York City, is suing the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) for millions of dollars. Gifford, in the class action suit, claims that the USGBC has committed fraud in the selling of its Leadership in Energy Efficient Design (LEED) program, and has unfairly kept work away from people like him who are not involved in the program.

There is a LEED for New Construction (NC), LEED for Homes, and LEED for Existing Buildings (EB), among other certifications. The rub for Gifford is that LEED is a very popular and widespread program—some municipalities require LEED certification for new city buildings—that makes claims about energy efficiency that it can’t back up. The claims of energy saving attract builders and developers to seek LEED certification, and people in architecture firms, building energy consultants, and others in the building industry have rushed to become LEED approved providers; that means they are able to help builders meet the building requirements and fill out the paperwork needed to apply for certification. Buildings with LEED certification draw higher rents and people with “LEED AP” after their names make money shepherding builders through the certification process.

Gifford’s case hinges on the claims for energy savings made by USGBC based on a study the group commissioned in 2008. The New Buildings Institute (NBI) study compared buildings that are LEED certified with similar buildings that are not certified. NBI claims that LEED buildings use about 25-30% less energy than conventional buildings. But according to Gifford, who examined the data from the study, LEED buildings actually use about 29% more energy than conventional buildings. Gifford has legitimate concerns about how NBI gathered, sorted, and analyzed the study data. For example, the data on LEED buildings was submitted by a small percentage of LEED building owners; those who take the trouble to keep records and who want to share information on how their building performs. In another example, the mean energy use of one set of buildings is compared to the median energy use of another set, possibly skewing the results in favor of the LEED buildings.

The USGBC counters that they do not guarantee energy savings, even though the group sells its program partly based on the supposed energy efficiency of LEED buildings. They model energy use in buildings using a software program and only certify that a buildings meets its design specification—sustainable wood, recycled steel, interior building material that doesn’t off-gas noxious chemicals, and so on—with predicted energy efficiency only a part of the requirements for certification.

Gifford has been a thorn in the side of the USGBC for years. His criticism, along with that of others, has pushed the USGBC in the right direction. The LEED EB program requires that buildings actually meet performance requirements and the USGBC is encouraging LEED NC building owners to take part in the LEED EB program; they are also asking LEED NC building owners to submit five years of energy-use data that can be used to a study the effectiveness of the program. But this is not required for LEED NC certification.

Gifford is afraid that in the future someone will do a thorough study of green building performance and use the information to discredit the whole green building movement. “I predict that someday, energy will be so important that we will start to measure it,” writes Gifford in a recent Press Release. “And I predict that when that happens, building energy efficiency will start to be measured by building energy use. At that time, the currently popular systems based on computer predictions of energy use will be shown to be useless, and abandoned.”

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This is a LEED-certified building on Columbus Circle
in New York City. Anything wrong with this picture?

But there is some question as to whether LEED buildings actually save energy. Henry Gifford, an engineer and mechanical system designer in New York City, "…the best data available shows that on average, they (LEED-certified buildings) use more energy than comparable buildings." His view is controversial, but I have seen the data he used and have studied his analysis and it seems reasonable to me, though I am not a statistician and have done a limited amount of number crunching in my short career as an engineer before becoming a writer.

I have heard the arguments from the other side and haven't been convinced. Even from a common sense perspective, it seams unrealistic that LEED buildings are built to save energy. I've seen too many LEED certified buildings with a large percentage of windows as exterior walls–that is like trying to build an energy efficient building without walls. Also, LEED certification does not require performance testing of buildings. A building can achieve points for energy efficiency from modeling alone. In my role as editor of Home Energy Magazine, I have wanted to publish in-depth articles about LEED-certified homes, but I have been unable to find a LEED-certified building owner or designer who is willing to publish a full year of performance data, post-occupancy.

The LEED program has made green building a common term and a sought after designation among architects, builders, and developers across the nation. LEED buildings may use more environmentally friendly materials and be healthier for their occupants. But it is not yet clear to me that they save energy compared to business as usual. If we want to achieve energy independence, combat the worst effects of global warming, and grow a green economy, we can't afford to build–and celebrate–buildings built as usual.

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