Playbook for Green Buildings + Neighborhoods | Resources

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Adaptability: Whether it’s the design of space in a building or an outdoor space such as a park, when thinking longer term, is it important to ‘build in’ the ability to allow changes to whatever we build or design so that we can accommodate the needs of different users in the long term.

Adaptation (re. Climate Change): The ability of a system (e.g. ecosystem) to adapt to climate change or other environmental disturbances. This may mean moderating potential damages, taking advantage of opportunities, or coping with the consequences.

Baseline: Data on a current process that provides the metrics against which to compare improvements.

Bioregion: An area defined by its unique ecological characteristics (i.e. watershed, species, flora, fauna, etc.)

Bioswale: A technology that uses plants and soil and/or compost to retain and cleanse runoff from a site, roadway, or other source.

Brownfield: Abandoned, idled or underutilized industrial and commercial facilities where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived contamination.

Capacity Building: Opportunities to gain information and experience that improve citizens’ ability to take action.

Carbon Calculator: A tool to help individuals and organizations track carbon emissions. A carbon calculator determines primary carbon footprints, through calculations based on factors such as fuel bills and annual travel patterns.

Carbon Credit: Carbon credits (or Offsets) are created when an emitter of greenhouse gas emissions (i.e. carbon dioxide, CO2) makes permanent emissions reductions. For instance, if a large industrial building retrofits older, less energy efficient furnaces for newer higher efficiency equipment, they reduce overall energy consumption and therefore, reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In this scenario, if the greenhouse gas emissions that have been reduced can be quantified or measured, a ‘carbon credit’ is created and can be sold. Market trading mechanism for carbon credits is a key program in the Kyoto Protocol.

Carbon Dioxide Off-Set: Reducing carbon dioxide emissions in another location to compensate for the emissions an individual or organization uses during home or office activities, commuting, travel or other activities that use energy and produce emissions.

Carbon Neutral: The point at which greenhouse gas emissions from one’s activities, such as driving or flying, are offset by planting trees or investing in solar, wind or other clean-energy projects.

Carbon Tax: A tax on the types of energy sources that emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Charrette: A meeting held early in the design phase of a project in which the design team, contractors, end users, community stakeholders, and technical experts are brought together to develop goals, strategies, and ideas for maximizing the environmental performance of the project.

Chicane: An `S` bend in a roadway that reduces speeds by forcing drivers to drive through in a single file.

Climate Change: Changes in long-term trends in the average climate, such as changes in average temperatures. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), climate change is a change in climate that is attributable directly or indirectly to human activity that alters atmospheric composition.

Cluster Development: Development design that concentrates buildings and infrastructure in specific areas on a site to allow remaining land to be used for recreation, common open space, or the preservation of historical or environmentally sensitive features.

Combined Heat and Power (CHP) or Co-Generation: CHP or co-generation is the simultaneous production of power and usable heat.

Comfort: Designing for comfort aims to create a space where people enjoy being; such qualitative, performance-based objectives are a hallmark of sustainable building.

Commissioning: An activity commenced at completion of construction (often including initial user occupancy) intended to allow designers and managers to check functional subsystems, to determine that the facility is functioning properly, and to undertake any necessary remedial action.

Community: Design and building related practices enhancing and supporting community ideals and functions are considered more sustainable than those that do not, all else being equal.

Complete Street: A multi-modal street that is designed and operated to enable safe access for all users. Pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and bus riders of all ages and abilities are able to safely move along and across a complete street.

Conservation Subdivision: A form of land regulation that permits flexibility of design in order to promote environmentally sensitive and efficient uses of the land. With land subdivided through a conservation subdivision regulation, local government can preserve unique or sensitive natural resources such as groundwater, floodplains, wetlands, streams, steep slopes, woodlands and wildlife habitat. Conservation subdivisions enable clustering of houses and structures on less environmentally sensitive soils which will reduce the amount of infrastructure (including paved surfaces and utility easements) necessary for residential development.

Construction and Demolition Waste: Waste building materials, tree stumps, and rubble resulting from construction, remodeling, repair, and demolition of homes, commercial buildings and other structures and pavements.

Cost and Benefit Analysis: An economic method for assessing the benefits and costs of achieving alternative health-based standards at given levels of health protection.

Daylighting: Using natural light in an interior space to substitute for artificial light. Daylighting can reduce reliance on artificial light (and reduce energy use in the process) and when well designed, contributes to occupant comfort and performance.

Distributed Generation: Distributed generation typically refers to distributed electricity generating technologies (and sometimes heat and power technologies) that are embedded in the local distribution system, either behind the customer meter as in a net metering installation or selling directly into the grid (as in a small independent power producer).

District Energy System: District energy is an approach to supplying thermal energy in the form of steam, hot water and cold water through a distribution system of pipe from a central plant to individual users. Users then extract the energy from the distribution system for their individual heating, cooling and process requirements.

Durability: A factor that affects the life cycle performance of a material or assembly. All other factors being equal, the more durable item is environmentally preferable, as it means less frequent replacement.

Eco-Roof: (See Green Roof)

Embodied Energy: The total amount of energy used to create a product, including energy expended in raw materials extraction, processing, manufacturing and transportation.

Externality: An externality is an effect of a purchase or use decision by one set of parties on others who did not have a choice and whose interests were not taken into account. The non-consenting parties may be either helped (by external benefits) or harmed (by external costs) by the decision.

First Cost: The sum of the initial expenditures involved in capitalizing a property; includes items such as transportation, installation, preparation for service, as well as other related costs.

Full-cost Accounting: The process of collecting and presenting information (costs as well as advantages) when a decision is necessary. Costs and advantages may be considered in terms of environmental, economical and social impacts. Full-cost accounting information can be used by decision-makers to make more ‘balanced’ decisions.

Gentrification: The process in which low-cost, run down neighborhoods undergo physical renovation resulting in an increase in property values and an influx of wealthier residents.

Green Building: A building that conforms to environmentally sound principles of construction practices, resource use and operations.

Green Cleaning Practice: A term to describe the process of cleaning with environmentally-friendly, non-toxic, biodegradable products. Green cleaning avoids chemically-reactive and toxic cleaning products which contain various toxic chemicals, some of which emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) causing respiratory and dermatological problems among other adverse effects.

Green Infrastructure: As with Buildings and Neighborhoods, we introduce this section as “Green” Infrastructure. In the context of the Playbook, this implies a broader, sustainable approach with a focus on climate-friendly strategies. However, to avoid confusion with a common use of the term “green Infrastructure” to refer to ecosystem-based services, such as urban forests, the term “sustainable infrastructure” will be used in most cases

Green Neighborhood: A neighborhood that is typically moderately dense, includes a range of uses, is designed for people and pedestrians first – including a dense network of paths and streets, human-scaled buildings and pedestrian-oriented street design. It has “green” elements, including a network of green spaces and corridors, street trees, significant private landscaping (including possibly green roofs). Buildings are often “green” buildings with excellent environmental performance. Green infrastructure is commonplace, from low-impact stormwater management to district energy systems for example.

Green Power: Energy generated from clean, renewable energy resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, biomass and low-impact hydro.

Green Roof: Contained green space on, or integrated with, a building roof. Green roofs maintain living plants in a growing medium on top of a membrane and drainage system.

Greenfield: Previously undeveloped parcels that are not surrounded by existing development, or are surrounded by partially developed/low-density areas.

Greenhouse Gas (GHG): Components of the atmosphere that contribute to the "greenhouse effect." Some greenhouse gases occur naturally, while others come from activities such as the burning of fossil fuel and coal. Greenhouse gases include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone.

Greyfield Development: The development of non-contaminated retail areas such as old malls, strip malls, or institutional areas into complete, livable communities.

Ground Source Heat: Solar heat stored in the upper layers of the earth. This heat can be extracted and delivered to a building through a ground source heat pump.

Heat Island Effect: A "dome" of elevated temperatures over an urban area caused by structural and pavement heat fluxes, and pollutant emissions.

High Efficiency: General term for technologies and processes that require less energy, water, or other inputs to operate. A goal in sustainable building is to achieve high efficiency in resource use when compared to conventional practice.

High Reflectance: The ability of materials to effectively reflect the sun's energy. Roof materials with high reflectance stay cooler in the sun, thereby reducing energy cost, improving occupant comfort, and reducing the urban heat island effect.

Indicators: Specific quantitative and/or qualitative measurements for each aspect of performance (output or outcome) under consideration.

Indoor Air Quality (IAQ): ASHRAE defines acceptable indoor air quality as air in which there are no known contaminants at harmful concentrations as determined by cognizant authorities and with which 80% or more people exposed do not express dissatisfaction.

Integration: Viewing a building as a system to allow the discovery of synergies and potential tradeoffs or pitfalls with design choices. An integrated design approach helps maximize synergies and minimize unintended consequences.

Inventory (re. Climate Change): A tool developed to better understand and predict the impact of GHG emissions on climate change. A climate change inventory may be used as a tool to develop atmospheric models, develop mitigation strategies, establish compliance records with allowable emission rates, and track the effectiveness of policies related to GHG emissions.

LEED: The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings.

Level of Service: A standardized measure of infrastructure operating conditions, often defined with reference to a benchmark. The most common example is used by transportation engineers to indicate that traffic is moving at ideal, average, or poor efficiency and measured on a grade scale of "A" through "F".

Life Cycle: Refers to all stages of a building's development, from extraction of materials to construction, use, and disposal.

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA): The assessment of a building's full environmental costs, from raw material to final disposal, in terms of consumption of resources, energy and waste.

Local/Regional Materials: Building products manufactured and/or extracted within a defined radius of the building site. For example, the US Green Building Council defines local materials as those that are manufactured, processed and/or extracted within a 500-mile radius of the site.

Location-Efficient Mortgage (LEM): A mortgage that helps people become homeowners in location efficient communities. These are convenient neighborhoods in which residents can walk from their homes to stores, schools, recreation, and public transportation. People who live in location efficient communities have less need to drive, which allows them to save money and reduce their environmental impact. The LEM combines a low down payment, competitive interest rates, and flexible criteria for financial qualification.

Low-Impact Development: A comprehensive land planning and engineering design approach with a goal of maintaining and enhancing the pre-development hydrologic regime of urban and developing watersheds. This design approach incorporates strategic planning with micro-management techniques to achieve superior environmental protection, while allowing for development or infrastructure rehabilitation to occur.

Maintenance: An overlooked element of a product, system, or design strategy that impacts cost over the life cycle. Establishing and adhering to a maintenance protocol ensures that materials and systems function to specifications.

Market Barrier: Instances that prevent or inhibit market adoption of specific technologies or higher levels of energy efficiency. Market barriers to the adoption of high efficiency and renewable resource measures can include lack of awareness, knowledge, and information on the technology, product, and service offerings; lack of product or service availability; and perceived higher risk or difficulty financing the higher incremental cost often associated with energy efficiency and renewable resources.

Market Transformation: A strategy that promotes the manufacture and purchase of energy-efficient products and services. The goal of this strategy is to induce lasting structural and behavioral changes in the marketplace, resulting in increased adoption of energy-efficient technologies.

Mitigation (re. Climate Change): An intervention to reduce the extent of global warming through reducing the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases.

Natural Ventilation: Ventilation design that uses existing air currents on a site and natural convection to move and distribute air through a structure or space.

Neighborhood: An imprecisely defined area within which people live, work, learn, and/or play. Its edges may be well-defined or more loosely felt by residents. Although it is often defined by a radius equal to an easy walk, its size may vary, from an easily walkable district to a larger region. In some cases, neighborhoods may overlap, especially where they are well-connected.

Neo-Traditional Design: A traditional neighborhood, where a mix of different types of residential and commercial developments form a tightly knit unit. Residents can walk or bike to more of the places they need to go and municipal services costs are lower due to the close proximity of residences. A more compact development also reduces the amount of rural land that must be converted to serve urban needs.

New Urbanism: Neighborhood design that promotes the creation and restoration of diverse, walkable, compact, vibrant, mixed-use communities composed of the same components as conventional development, but assembled in a more integrated fashion, in the form of complete communities.

Open Space Preservation: The protection of natural areas both within and around communities that provide important community space, habitat for plants and animals, recreational opportunities, farm and ranch land (working lands), places of natural beauty and critical environmental areas (e.g. wetlands).

Orientation (Solar): Orientation of a structure for controlled solar gain is essential to the success of passive and active solar design elements. Sun charts and software assist in orienting a building for maximum solar benefit. Designing for solar considerations can substantially reduce both heating and cooling.

Passive Solar: Strategies for using the sun’s energy to heat (or cool) a space, mass, or liquid. A window, oriented for solar gain and coupled with massing for thermal storage (e.g., a Trombe wall) is an example of a passive solar technique.

Patient Equity: Equity whose returns on investment are received on a long-term timeframe, complementing and supplementing typical short-term real estate financing. These may include investments from foundations and pension funds, revenue from parking facilities, and other sources of capital.

Performance Metrics: Data that can be used to measure how well you are performing to objectives and goals.

Precautionary Principle: When information about potential risks is incomplete, basing decisions regarding the best ways to manage or reduce risks on a preference for avoiding unnecessary health risks instead of on unnecessary economic expenditures.

Public Benefits Charge: A charge added to a customer billing which is intended to cover costs related to services that a utility provides in the public interest. A utility may be mandated by legislation or regulations to provide some or all of the services covered by this charge, and these services range from educational initiatives to funding for low-income customers to environmental programs.

Rainwater Harvest: On-site rainwater harvest and storage systems used to offset potable water needs for a building and/or landscape.

Recycled Content: The content in a material or product derived from recycled materials versus virgin materials.

Retrocommissioning: Refers to the systematic process of commissioning of existing buildings for identifying and implementing operational and maintenance improvements and for ensuring their continued performance over time. It is an inclusive and systematic process that intends not only to optimize how equipment and systems operate, but also to optimize how the systems function together.

Revolving Fund: A fund established to finance a cycle of operations to which reimbursements and collections are returned for reuse in a manner such as will maintain the principal of the fund, e.g., working capital funds, industrial funds, and loan funds.

Risk: A measure of the probability of an adverse effect on a population under a well-defined exposure scenario.

Road Diet: A technique of transportation planning in which the width of a road or lane is narrowed in order to achieve improvements to the transportation system. A typical road diet technique is to reduce the number of lanes on a roadway cross-section. One of the most common applications of a road diet is to convert a 4-lane section, with two travel lanes in each direction, into a 3-lane section with one travel lane in each direction and a two-way turn lane in the middle. The two-way turn lane can be transitioned into dedicated left turn lanes at intersections. The additional space that is freed up by removing a vehicular lane can be converted into two bike lanes on either side of the roadway.

Shared Parking: A type of parking management in which parking spaces are shared by more than one user, which allows parking facilities to be used more efficiently. Shared Parking takes advantage of the fact that most parking spaces are only used part time by a particular motorist or group, and many parking facilities have a significant portion of unused spaces, with utilization patterns that follow predictable daily, weekly and annual cycles.

Shared Street: A common space created to be shared by pedestrians, bicyclists, and low-speed motor vehicles. They are typically narrow streets without curbs and sidewalks, and vehicles are slowed by placing trees, planters, parking areas, and other obstacles in the street.

Smart Growth: A collection of urban development strategies to reduce sprawl that are fiscally, environmentally and socially responsible. Smart Growth is development that enhances our quality of life, protects our environment, and uses tax revenues wisely.

Solid Waste Infrastructure: The set of systems and facilities that are used to manage solid waste (garbage and recyclable materials); this includes storage, collection, transport, recycling, and disposal systems and facilities.

Split Incentive: A market barrier to an innovation, in which higher capital costs of an innovation are borne by one market participant while its operating savings benefit another. The financial incentive to adopt the technology is split from the participant responsible for putting it in place.

Sprawl: The unlimited outward expansion of suburbs created by low-density residential and commercial development. Sprawl is characterized by low-density greenfield development; the separation of residential, work and shopping areas; lack of well-defined centres; and a road network consisting of very large blocks with limited points of entry into the blocks.

Stormwater Infrastructure: Stormwater infrastructure is the network of piping, systems and facilities that manage runoff from areas such as paved surfaces and roofs.

Stormwater Management: Building and landscape strategies to control and limit stormwater pollution and runoff. Usually an integrated package of strategies, elements can include vegetated roofs, compost-amended soils, pervious paving, tree planting, drainage swales, and more.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) Analysis: A strategic planning tool used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project. Because it concentrates on the issues that potentially have the most impact, it is useful when there is a limited amount of time available to address a complex strategic situation. The SWOT analysis can serve as an interpretative filter to reduce information to a manageable quantity of key information.

Sustainability: Practices that would ensure the continued viability of a product or practice well into the future.

Sustainable Development: An approach to progress that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

Sustainable Infrastructure: Is the term refering to a broader, sustainable approach to water, wastewater, stormwater, solid waste, and energy systems with a focus on climate-friendly strategies.

Sustainable Landscape: A landscape that uses environmental and financial resources efficiently. Characteristics of a sustainable landscape may include water conservation and infiltration, invasive plant prevention, and habitat enhancement.

Traditional Neighborhood Development: Development that is based on human-scale design with concern for walkability, and exhibits several of the following characteristics: alleys, streets laid out in a grid system, buildings oriented to the street, front porches on houses, pedestrian-orientation, compatible and mixed land uses, village squares and greens.

Transit-Oriented Development (TOD): Moderate and high-density housing concentrated in mixed-use developments located along transit routes. The location, design and mix of uses in a TOD emphasize pedestrian-oriented environments and encourage the use of public transportation.

Tri-generation: The combined production of electricity, heat and cooling, and involves connecting cogeneration units with absorption cooling units (cooling produced from heat).

Triple-Bottom Line (TBL): Measuring the economic, social and environmental performance of a project. This method of assessment aims for synergy amongst these three aspects rather than compromise or ‘trade-offs’ between them.

Unbundled Parking: A parking strategy in which parking spaces are rented or sold separately, rather than automatically included with the rent or purchase price of a residential or commercial unit. Tenants or owners are able to purchase only as much parking as they need, and are given the opportunity to save money and space by using fewer parking stalls. Unbundled parking is more equitable and can reduce the total amount of parking required for the building.

Universal Accessibility: Access to environments and products that is, to the greatest extent possible, usable by everyone regardless of their age, ability, or circumstance.

Urban Forest: A forest or a collection of trees and shurbs that grow within a city, town or a suburb. In a wider sense it may include any kind of woody plant vegetation growing in and around human settlements. The benefits of urban forests are many, including beautification, reduction of the urban heat island effect, reduction of stormwater runoff, reduction of air pollution, reduction of energy costs through increased shade over buildings, enhancement of property values, improved wildlife habitat, and mitigation of overall urban environmental impact.

Ventilation: Process by which outside air is conveyed to an indoor space.

Ventilation Control (by Occupants): The ability of building occupants to control ventilation rates. A strategy for giving control of comfort back to occupants, this can be achieved through access to individual electronic controls or by operable windows in workspaces.

Wastewater: The spent or used water from a home, community, farm, or industry that contains dissolved or suspended matter.

Wastewater Infrastructure: Wastewater infrastructure could include everything between the point where wastewater (sewage and graywater) is collected, and the discharge of treated effluent such as a river or ocean. System components include wastewater collection (sanitary sewers), wastewater treatment plants, residuals (sludge or biosolids) management systems, and effluent discharge systems.

Water & Wastewater Infrastructure: The network of pipes, systems and facilities that provide fresh water supply and wastewater (sewage) management for communities.

Water supply Infrastructure: Water supply infrastructure could include everything between the water source, and the buildings or site where the water is delivered. System components include water supply conveyance, water treatment plants, and water distribution networks.