Reduced operational costs, improved occupant health and productivity, and buildings with small ecological footprints: these are the ways we make the case for green buildings.

What about first cost?

Perhaps to the detriment of green building adoption, we’ve been letting cool premium products and innovative demonstration projects paint a picture of higher first costs. It doesn’t have to be that way, say architects, engineers, and developers that EBN spoke with. Using constraints to feed creativity, plenty of projects are not only choosing no-brainer, no-added-cost measures to go green but are also using their dollar budgets as a signaling mechanism to find cheaper, simpler, and more effective designs.