Location, location, (Green) Location

The growing "green buildings" movement is taking a new direction with the development of computer models that go beyond measuring a building's carbon footprint and attempt to quantify the amount of energy people consume to reach that building.

Experts say the ability to quantify the energy spent getting to and from a building could force businesses to reconsider what it means to be green. Transportation emissions account for 29% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and the newly quantifiable data could spur development in urban areas served by public transportation.

Commutes to work matter, said Emma Stewart, senior manager for sustainability at Autodesk Inc., a San Rafael, Calif., maker of 3-D design software applications. Overall, one out of five trips and one out of four miles are traveled in commutes, according to Census Transportation Planning Products. For work, people fly to conferences, hail cabs on lunch breaks and drive to far-flung suburbs.

"This is a new frontier in carbon accounting," said Stewart, who is part of a separate effort to digitally map buildings and infrastructure like train lines for urban planning purposes. "The practice thus far has really been focused around direct emissions."

Indirect emissions such as travel emissions are harder to control, she said, but once quantified can be managed.

Opponents to the new green order are companies that have traditionally built in more remote areas because land is cheaper, said Martha VanGeem, head of Chicago-based CTLGroup's building science and sustainability practice.

VanGeem helped draft and develop the ASHRAE Standard 189.1, which is a system from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers that is similar to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, but in a format for building codes.

To be green, the ASHRAE standard requires that buildings be located in developed areas or within walking distance of at least 10 services (grocery stores, restaurants, banks, etc.), a train or subway station, a bus stop or apartments or condominiums.

Adding that standard was a fight, VanGeem said, particularly among large manufacturing companies.

"We're trying to reduce a building's footprint, but what we found is that commuters are having a bigger footprint than the buildings themselves a lot of times," she said. "So we have to focus on the commuters."

But thus far, quantifying how location affects carbon footprints has been a challenge.

Since its launch in 2000, LEED, the bible of green certification systems, has focused mostly on the building, not where it is located. The system gives points for locating a building near public transportation and other services, but organizations such as the Sustainable Sites Initiative have argued that the standards lack comprehensive criteria.