Why Sustainable Design Still Matters

Overview

Published in the February 2014 issue of Modern Materials Handling as part of a sustainable-design supplement, this feature by editor at large Roberto Michel asks whether green building still has a place now that warehouse construction has recovered from the recession. Michel interviews three facility-design specialists, Ed Klimek of KSS Architects, Tripp Eskridge of Jones Lang LaSalle, and Don Derewecki of St. Onge, and concludes that sustainability has quietly become the default rather than a premium option.

Key Findings

• U.S. warehouse construction put in place bottomed out in late 2010 and has climbed since early 2012. The article’s chart (JLL and Moody’s data) shows annualized spending peaking near $18 billion in 2007, falling to roughly $5 billion in 2010, and recovering to about $8 billion by 2013.
• Green work never disappeared; all construction did. Klimek reports that at least 80 percent of his firm’s current warehouse work is sustainable and a large share pursues LEED, and the U.S. Green Building Council certified its 20,000th commercial project in December 2013.
• Lighting is the lowest-cost lever. Replacing metal halide with T8 or T5 fluorescent on occupancy sensors pays back in under three years, and Eskridge notes lighting runs about a dollar per square foot, which is real money in a 200,000-square-foot building.
• The New Buildings Institute figures cited say best-practice lighting and envelope design saves at least 40 percent on energy, and up to 50 percent once HVAC selection is included.
• Prismatic skylight lenses that scatter daylight across a wide area, combined with photocell controls that hold electric lights off when daylight suffices, are called out as another effective and low-cost green feature; white roofs are now standard for large new buildings but rarely justified as a retrofit until reroofing.
• Bigger-ticket systems can pay off faster than expected: a 1.2-megawatt rooftop photovoltaic array on a New Jersey tire distributor’s warehouse and office is projected to pay back in five years thanks to state incentives and the adjacent office load.
• E-commerce is changing the equation. Order fulfillment needs more people and more automation in the same building, so new distribution centers are more likely to be conditioned, and the experts argue the biggest sustainability gains often lie in network design, putting facilities closer to customers and ports to cut transportation.

Why It Matters for Daylighting

The article documents a shift that matters for anyone selling or specifying toplighting: efficient lighting, daylighting, and photocell controls moved from a LEED checklist item to a standard feature of new warehouse construction as the market recovered. The photo that anchors the piece shows a row of prismatic skylights on a white roof, and the caption credits the combination of prismatic lenses and photocell-controlled fixtures with cutting lighting costs dramatically. Derewecki’s warning, “If you have 20-year-old lighting system, it’s probably eating your lunch,” applies just as well to a roof with no daylight openings.

The e-commerce trend strengthens the case. Fulfillment centers carry more workers per square foot than pallet-storage warehouses, run longer hours, and are increasingly conditioned, so the quality of light at the pick face affects productivity and comfort, not just the utility bill. Prismatic skylights deliver diffuse, glare-controlled daylight across those work areas while the photocells keep the electric load down, and both are recognized by the daylight-responsive control provisions in current energy codes.

About the Source

Modern Materials Handling is a long-running U.S. trade magazine covering warehousing, distribution, and materials-handling equipment, published by Peerless Media and widely read by logistics and facility managers. This feature by Roberto Michel, then editor at large, appeared in the February 2014 issue on pages 82 through 88 as a special supplement on sustainable design; the four scanned pages in the library are the article pages, with the interleaved advertising pages omitted. The full article remains available on the magazine’s website.