Missouri Life October 2023

MISSOURI GREEN LIFE

Green Grow the Buildings Missouri embraces sustainable construction. STORY Nate Birt

Green Building Council, describing home and commer cial building trends in the state. “This is being driven by climate change and the fact that building energy use represents 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, the increasing affordability of solar energy, polices that are driving builders to pay closer attention to building energy use, and federal funding that is targeted at both the residential and commercial building sector for reducing energy use.” Across the country, more home buyers and real estate agents are taking note. Half of all National Association of Realtors-affiliated agents report that they have helped clients with properties con taining green features, up from just one in three the previous year. For commercial properties, health and wellness considerations increasingly factor into the decision to build green, says Julie Peterson, director of US Green Building Council Market Transformation and Development with the organization’s Kansas City based Central Plains Community. “We spend nearly 90 percent of our time indoors, so it’s important to ensure that our homes, workplaces, and schools provide clean and healthy spaces for occupants,” Peterson says. “When it comes to indoor office spaces in particular, research has long shown that good air quality, ventilation, lighting, acoustics, and thermal control lead to greater productivity and employee retention.” Whether you are building a home, purchasing an existing commercial property, or undergoing renova tions, a variety of financial incentives are available for green upgrades, Peterson says. These include: • Energy efficiency incentives and rebates from major electricity and gas utilities such as Spire serving Kansas City and St. Louis, Evergy in Kansas City, and Ameren in St. Louis. • HVAC savings passed onto homeowners and com mercial building owners for installing more efficient systems, typically managed by HVAC contractors. • Various tax incentives via the federal Inflation Reduction Act, including those for improved energy efficiency at multifamily housing complexes, rooftop solar at office complexes, or electric vehicle charging station installation at retail centers. “In most cases, the incentives can be bundled together to make a variety of green building improve ments on a single project,” Peterson says. Those incentives, combined with increasing con sumer demand and improving technology, mean that Missouri’s status in the sustainable building industry is destined for strong and steady growth.

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Green building elements enhance the Jack C. Taylor Visitors Center at Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. A custom-made scrim hangs from the ceiling, creating a quality of light akin to that found beneath a canopy of trees. Other features include rooftop solar panels, limestone and granite sourced from Ste. Genevieve, and a 50,000-gallon system for capturing rainwater for the plants surrounding the center.

issouri’s sustainable building ranking might not make many of its US peers green with envy—yet. But a growing cohort of homeowners and commercial building operators are seeing black thanks to construc tion that uses fewer resources, cuts energy and main tenance costs, and reduces neighborhood exposure to toxins. Missouri sits at No. 23 overall—right in the middle of the pack—in an October 2022 report on the best and worst states for green homes, according to data analysis by the insurance website PolicyGenius.com . It cites 38 green home incentives available to residential homeowners. Missouri can now boast of more than 282,000 homes powered with wind energy and nearly 17,000 homes powered by solar energy. Growth opportunity also abounds for Missouri’s commercial buildings, which use more than 23 percent of the state’s energy for cooling, heating, and ventila tion, according to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. “We are seeing a strong focus on how buildings use energy and where that energy comes from,” says Emily Andrews, executive director of Missouri Gateway

HOPE GRIBBLE/US GREEN BUILDING COUNCIL–MISSOURI GATEWAY CHAPTER

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