Software to help make new buildings greener

A team of Colorado State University researchers is developing a software tool that will allow architects to shrink the carbon footprint of a building while it’s being designed, reducing future greenhouse gas emissions and costs.

The research, called the Carbon Footprint Metric Project, was made possible by a $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation awarded Aug. 1 and eventually will allow the team to create a software tool that will work in concert with software already used by architects to design buildings.

“Our main motivation is dealing with climate change and greenhouse gas emissions,” said Keith Paustian, part of the CSU Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and a member of the project team.

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A big part of reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is finding ways to keep buildings from emitting them.

About 50 percent of the nation’s manmade carbon-dioxide emissions can be attributed to the built environment, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency.

By comparison, vehicles, which are often thought of in conjunction with emissions, are responsible for less than 30 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, the agency says.

Buildings are such large producers of emissions because of systems such as air conditioning and heating, and the large amounts of electricity used in businesses and homes, Paustian said.

The trick is to get data and metrics into the hands of those in charge of designing buildings in a usable, easy and convenient way, he said.

The tool the team aims to develop will work along with software already used by architects, according to Thomas Bradley, another team member and a part of CSU’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Architects now use software that allows them to construct plans for buildings and make adjustments to those plans virtually, so that they can see immediately how any alterations will impact other design elements.

The Carbon Footprint Metric tool would work in much the same way, Bradley said, allowing building designers to see in real time what the effects of certain changes to a building’s design have on its carbon footprint and other sustainable features, and what impact those changes will have on the cost of a project.

Something as simple as relocating or enlarging a window could impact the sustainability of a building. If making a window larger means that 10 percent more natural light is allowed in, that means the artificial overheard light may be reduced by 10 percent, thereby reducing the amount of electricity needed to light a room, Bradley said.

“It has to be done right,” he said, “and that’s what we want to provide architects the tools to do.”

The team will develop the tool using case studies from a modular residential building in Los Angeles, a laboratory building in Fort Collins and a New Belgium Brewing project now under way in Asheville, N.C.

The prototype will be designed based on that research, Paustian said. The team has been organizing its efforts since the Aug. 1 award date of the grant, but is planning to have the prototype ready once the two-year grant is up in late summer 2015.