New cost structure approach in green buildings : cost-benefit analysis for widespread acceptance and long-term practice

Abstract

Although the concepts of sustainable building have been widely accepted in the market, there are unavoidable challenges toward widespread acceptance and long-term practice. Crossing green building development, there is continually growing awareness in practices, green products, and high-performance technologies among building design, development and construction. The market has shown that there are concerns on lack of accurate and quantifiable information to analyze the economic impacts of high-performance buildings. It further implies that there are hurdles in the perception of cost, such as the high cost of construction and operation. These perceived high costs have become stumbling blocks to the acceptance of green building concepts. While dealing with complexity, emergent behavior and the requirements of many stakeholders, the cost factor directly impacts further development on green buildings, which will be required to demonstrate value-added flow between owners and users. There is a timely opportunity to evaluate the cost of construction and operation to determine how the strategy to reduce this cost will benefit the sustainable building industry in long run. Sustainable buildings meet market and building owners' (as well as builders') demands for new and renovated facilities, after consideration for less environmental impact. While realizing the environmental stewardship and conservation, green buildings need to be generated with an optimal balance of cost, in order to show environmental, societal, and human benefits through the function of the intended facility or infrastructure. Based on current market research and data, there's a consistent disconnect between capital costs and operating costs. Over past a few years, there has been a lot of discussion and analysis on the true costs of green buildings and proposals to reduce the high construction and operation costs in order to show returns on constructing an environmentally responsible, high-performing facility. The objectives of this thesis are to identify the strategies to reduce the construction and operation costs for building sustainably and convince the industry to rethink construction budgeting and financing. In order to provide quantification of cost, a comprehensive analysis will be done on the cost of construction and operation of green buildings. Key Questions: The proposed thesis will address the following major questions: " What kind of measurements are appropriate for the green building industry to capture the costs of sustainability? * What methodology can best be employed to monitor the long-term reduction of these costs? " What approach should be used to quantify the direct association between the cost impacts and green building development? * What are the commonalities and differences offered by these costing methodologies? " What kind of green building can offer the greatest return on investment?