Facility financing and operational maintenance are typically among the largest budget line items for churches, after staffing. In today's cost-cutting climate, churches are looking for ways to reduce expenses in this area. Building environmental features into church facilities may be one significant way to accomplish this.

LEED is a system by which buildings can be recognized as being more environmentally sustainable than market-rate building design and construction. Environmental features in a broad array of building aspects, from location to air quality to energy use to renewable materials can be tracked and reported upon to earn four levels of green achievement. Their goal is not merely more LEED buildings, but to change the design and construction industry.

Spec office building developers are embracing LEED. They can enjoy an average of eight to nine percent decrease in building operating costs and a three percent increase in rental rates. The 2002 Los Altos project conducted by the Packard Foundation created a financial and energy model of a hypothetical $10 million market rate building of unspecified purpose. The total project cost for this building including soft costs of furniture, equipment and design and engineering fees was $12.6 million and it consumed the equivalent energy of 451 average U.S. homes. Over the lifecycle of the facility, at U.S. Government-predicted utility costs, the total cost of the building over 30 years would be $22.7 million and 60 years would be $62.9 million. They modeled the performance of the building at the basic LEED certified level. It would now cost $12.8 million, use the energy of 250 homes, and over 30 years cost the owner only $19.7 million and at 60 years only $45.7 million. That's a $17 million dollar return over 60 years on a $200,000 investment up front. Higher levels of LEED brought even more dramatic cost savings.

If spec office building developers are adopting LEED for buildings that they often build to sell, why aren't there more LEED certified churches, which are often purposed to be legacy buildings for multiple generations? As of October 2008, there were only 29 church buildings among the over 15,000 LEED or pending LEED projects registered with the United States Building Council.

Along with pursuing LEED certification, here are a number of other sustainability initiatives churches can take advantage of for real, quantifiable cost savings::

• What is the greenest building material? Bamboo? Cork? Aluminum? Trick question. The greenest building material is the one you never have to use. In the life-cycle of a product from raw material extraction through transportation to manufacturing to installation to recycling and/or re-use, the most energy intensive phase is raw material extraction. Churches can exemplify Creation Care by adapting and reusing existing buildings rather than building new.

• Create multi-use facilities. That soundproof operable partition sure is expensive, but it is cheaper than having to build five rooms instead of one that can be subdivided in four different ways for different sized groups and functions.

• Design for disassembly. Materials from the steel skeleton to exterior finish materials that are stick built and mechanically attached rather than welded or adhered can be dismantled and re-used on-site when future expansions come rather than sent to the landfill or recycling station.

• An emerging green design term is "Industrial Symbiosis." It means having the by-products of one activity help the efforts of a nearby unrelated activity. For example, pumping the steam generated from a manufacturing facility next door to heat an office building instead of sent up a chimney to the atmosphere. Churches can really exploit this idea when it comes to parking. One of our clients is planning to develop their parking lot as a park-and-ride location for a regional public transportation initiative and have their cafe face out onto the bus stop location. The lot will be used all week during the same hours least used by the church.

• Another advanced green topic is "Passive Survivability," which asks, how well can the building function when something goes wrong? In an extended power failure, for example, can users simply open windows to allow for passive cooling or will they simply have to leave the 100 degree building? On a much larger scale, in the case of a natural disaster, can the facility become a safe haven for the neighborhood?
  
  

Wondering what else you can do right now with your existing facility to realize the benefits of Creation Care? Check out our downloadable poster: 25 Steps to Creation Care