MOFOE Alert!

[Detroitdad]

Originally Posted by YOhio

You fellas might be referring to LEED certification. This is the government benchmark for energy efficient buildings.

http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CategoryID=19

My company is currently building a new facility and I've discovered that LEED certification is pretty expensive. We're hoping to achieve LEED Silver and that will drive up our total design/engineering/building costs up by about 7-8%. If we were to try and go for platinum, it would be an approximate 15-20% increase in total construction costs. The energy savings would pay for the additional costs in about 50 years.

While I generally agree that the church should be sensitive of the environment while constructing new facilities, there is a price point where it doesn't make sense to go green. This is especially true of an organization that is constructing tens (hundreds?) of new facilities across the world.

Do you know what the energy savings (in terms of usage are, percentage wise) between Silver and Platinum?

I see your point about economic sense. I don't know much about construction, but I know that generally the more common a technology is used the cheaper it becomes. If this is the case with construction if the church were to take a cutting edge stance it could help drive down costs for others (because they do build and maintain so many buildings) and eventually the church. They could also buy some positive pr in so doing.

I don't expect this to happen, because there is also a need to be mindful of the sanctity of tithing dollars, but I think that a decent argument could be made that being a market leader would cut some of the cost differential out of the equation. Furthermore, the long time horizon of the church and their meetinghouses might enable them to do more of this.

Just some thoughts.

[YOhio]

Originally Posted by Detroitdad

Do you know what the energy savings (in terms of usage are, percentage wise) between Silver and Platinum?

I see your point about economic sense. I don't know much about construction, but I know that generally the more common a technology is used the cheaper it becomes. If this is the case with construction if the church were to take a cutting edge stance it could help drive down costs for others (because they do build and maintain so many buildings) and eventually the church. They could also buy some positive pr in so doing.

In our case, the energy savings would seriously take about 50 or more years to pay for themselves. A 15 to 20% increase in construction costs would be north of 2 million dollars.

Assume that a typical chapel built by the church costs 750K. An 8% (which would probably be a Silver or Gold LEED) increase in construction costs is 60K. The church would have to save at least 6K a year in energy costs to have the additional costs pay for themselves in in 10 years. I haven't ever worked as a ward clerk or facilities manager so I'm unfamiliar with how much energy a typical chapel consume, but I do think it's safe to say that saving 6K a year is unrealistic and it would take much longer. This is not factoring in the opportunity costs of using the money, either through using the money on another facility or having it accrue interest elsewhere.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by YOhio

In our case, the energy savings would seriously take about 50 or more years to pay for themselves. A 15 to 20% increase in construction costs would be north of 2 million dollars.

Assume that a typical chapel built by the church costs 750K. An 8% (which would probably be a Silver or Gold LEED) increase in construction costs is 60K. The church would have to save at least 6K a year in energy costs to have the additional costs pay for themselves in in 10 years. I haven't ever worked as a ward clerk or facilities manager so I'm unfamiliar with how much energy a typical chapel consume, but I do think it's safe to say that saving 6K a year is unrealistic and it would take much longer. This is not factoring in the opportunity costs of using the money, either through using the money on another facility or having it accrue interest elsewhere.

And this is a point of being green for green's sake is nonsensical. It must make dollars sense. If it's exorbitant as demonstrated by your proposed scenario, the fiscal responsibility of a charitable organization requires it to do the most cost efficient plan, not the greenest plan.