Drexel commits to 'Green Globes'
Stephanie Takach
Issue date: 2/20/09 Section: News
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"Green Globes is more than a monitoring system; it's an environmental design and assessment tool," Mark Rossolo, director of state and local outreach for the Green Building Initiative, said. "What it does is it will take data and different criteria, which depends on [whether it is a] new or existing building."
According to Jim Tucker, senior vice president for Student Life and Administrative Services, Green Globes may also be a key component as Drexel establishes new guidelines and policies for all future construction projects.
"It is hoped that the versatility and on-line access to Green Globes will help educate, prompt discussion and foster research at Drexel," Tucker wrote in an e-mail.
Rossolo said the report factors in all different areas and creates a rating to determine how the university scored with each new building and also acts as sustainability consultancy and gives builders recommendations.
"Great thing about it is it gives you all these recommendations and you can look at it budget wise," Rossolo said. "In this case specifically, it will really help make the University as green as possible, given possible budget that Drexel has."
Rossolo added that though a few schools are using the program for a few projects, Drexel is the only university applying the program to its entire campus.
"We have other schools that are using Green Globes for one or two buildings but no other universities nationwide that are using it as a campus wide aspect and it's really unique and neat to see," Rossolo said.
According to Rossolo, LEED would be one program to which Green Globes can be compared in terms of equivalency.
"Technically, Green Globes and LEED are about 85 percent identical. The major difference is that we focus more on energy and energy efficiency and life cycle assessment, looking at how it's manufactured and how long it will be there," Rossolo said.
A comparison of costs using a typical Drexel construction project showed Green Globes to cost approximately .05 percent of the project costs, while the cost of pursuing LEED may be 1 percent, according to Tucker.
"Green Globes is a comparable sustainable building design certification but costs considerably less than LEED," Tucker wrote.
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