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GREEN GLOSSARY
COMMONLY USED TERMS
Adaptive re-use: new use for old building: a use of a building that is different from its original or previous use, often involving conversion work.
Artificial lighting: any light source other than natural light. Artificial light sources include those with a continuous spectrum such as candles, normal electric light bulbs (tungsten lighting), special photographic light bulbs (photoflood bulbs), as well as discontinuous light sources such as fluorescent tubes.
Ashrae 90.1-2004: a standard that establishes minimum requirements for energy-efficient design of buildings except, low rise residential buildings. This standard addresses construction, operation, and maintenance issues to minimize the use of energy while not compromising building functions or the comfort and productivity of building occupants.
Bio-mass: plant material, vegetation or agricultural waste used as a fuel or energy source.
Bio-fuel: fuel such as methane produced from renewable resources, especially plant biomass and treated municipal and industrial wastes.
Black water: water that carries wastes from homes, businesses and industries. It is usually a mixture of water and dissolved or suspended solids.
Brownfield: according to the EPA, brownfields are defined as abandoned, idled or under-used industrial and commercial facilities where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination.
Building automation: optimizes the startup and performance of HVAC equipment and alarm systems. BA greatly increases the interaction of mechanical subsystems within a building, improve occupant comfort, lower energy use and allow off-site building control.
Building footprint: property area that is to be covered by constructed areas such as parking lots, sidewalks, access roads as well as buildings.
Building orientation: proper building orientation can have an impact on heating, lighting and cooling costs. By maximizing southern exposure, for example, you can take optimal advantage of the sun for daylight and passive solar heating. Cooling costs can be lowered by minimizing western exposures, where it's most difficult to provide shade from the sun.
Building program: a written, detailed account of overall project goals inclusive of design concept and budget.
Building shell: framework of a building.
Chillers: mechanical equipment used to circulate chilled water throughout a building; consists of a compressor, condenser, and evaporator.
Civil Engineer: a branch of engineering that encompasses the conception, design, construction, and management of residential and commercial buildings and structures, water supply facilities, and transportation systems for goods and people, as well as control of the environment for the maintenance and improvement of the quality of life. Civil engineering includes planning and design professionals in both the public and private sectors, contractors, builders, educators, and researchers.
Clerestory: a horizontal row of windows at the top of a wall admitting light into the space.
Commissioning Agent: responsible for coordinating and carrying out the commissioning process.
Commissioning Plan: a quality assurance program intended to demonstrate that the building is constructed well and achieves the highest levels of performance.
Cool roof: reflects and emits the sun’s heat back to the sky instead of transferring it to the building below.
Cradle to Cradle Certification: provides a company with a means to tangibly, credibly measure achievement in environmentally intelligent design and helps customers purchase and specify products that use environmentally safe and healthy materials, design for material reutilization, such as recycling or composting, that use renewable energy and are energy efficient, have efficient use of water, maximize water quality associated with production, and institute strategies for social responsibility.
Daylight harvesting: utilizes available daylight to reduce the amount of electrical light used in a room. Using a combination of windows, skylights and an automatic control, electric lights are turned off when there is enough daylight to sufficiently light the store and turned on when the daylight levels are too low.
Economizers: a collection of mechanical devices that decide how much outside air to bring into a building to save energy versus using refrigeration equipment to cool recirculated air.
Electrical engineer: an engineering discipline that deals with the study and/or application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism and covers a range of sub-studies including those that deal with power, electronics, control systems, signal processing and telecommunications.
Energy efficiency: measures advanced industrial processes and high-efficiency motors, lighting, and appliances that have the potential to provide significant reductions in electricity use, reducing our dependency on fossil fuels, while saving consumers money in the long run.
Energy Star: a government-backed program helping businesses and individuals protect the environment through superior energy efficiency. Appliances and products that exceed federal energy efficiency standards are awarded the ENERGY STAR by the U.S... Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S.. Department of Energy (DOE).
Facilities management: a profession that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality of the built environment by integrating people, place, process and technology.
Geothermal: is heat (thermal) derived from the earth (geo). It is the thermal energy contained in the rock and fluid in the earth's crust.
Glazing: a transparent part of a wall, usually made of glass or plastic (acrylic and polycarbonate).
Graywater: any water that has been used in the home, except water from toilets, which may be reused for other purposes, especially landscape irrigation.
Greenfield: an undeveloped piece of land or land that has not touched by man.
Green Globes: a green management on-line auditing tool for interior designers, property owners and managers that includes an assessment protocol, rating system and guide for integrating environmentally friendly design into commercial buildings. Once complete, it also facilitates recognition of the project through third-party verification.
Greenguard Certification: a third-party product certification program for low emitting interior building materials, furnishings, and finish systems through evaluation of more than 75,000 chemicals, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carcinogens and reproductive toxins.
Green Seal Certification: Green Seal is an independent, non-profit organization that promotes the manufacture, purchase, and use of environmentally responsible products and services. Products are awarded the Green Seal if it meets the Green Seal standard through test data gathered for the environmental and performance requirements as well as the quality control procedures of the manufacturing facility.
Heat Islands: a phenomenon that causes urban and suburban temperatures to be 2 to 10° (1 to 6°C) hotter than nearby rural areas. Elevated temperatures can impact communities by increasing peak energy demand, air conditioning costs, air pollution levels, and heat-related illness and mortality.
Heat gain: the sum of heat accumulation of a building mostly from the exposure to sunlight and solar radiation, but also from people inside of it, from the lights, computers, copiers, dishwashers and ovens.
High-albedo: very reflective roof coatings that lower the absorption of solar energy and can reduce building air-conditioning energy use.
HVAC: an acronym that stands for "heating, ventilation, and air conditioning" which all seek to provide thermal comfort, acceptable indoor air quality, and reasonable installation, operation, and maintenance costs.
Integrated design: a developer or owner who commits to high performance and energy efficiency and ensures that these commitments are recognized by each team member. This team undertakes whole-system (whole building) analyses, considering interactions among systems. Systems that should be analyzed together include lighting (electrical and natural) with mechanical systems; daylighting with envelope systems; water (supply and waste) and heating and cooling; windows, ventilation and lighting.
Interior designer: a profession in which creative and technical solutions are applied within a structure to achieve a built interior environment. An interior designer is qualified by means of education, experience, and examination, to protect and enhance the life, health, safety and welfare of the public.
Landscape design: is the art, planning, design, management, preservation and rehabilitation of the land and the design of large-scale man-made constructs. The scope of the profession includes architectural design, site planning, estate development, environmental restoration, town or urban planning, park and recreation planning, regional planning, and historic preservation.
LEED: The LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings. LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.
Light shelves: surfaces with reflective upper sides, located near the top of windows. They allow light to penetrate further into a building by reflecting some of the light onto the ceiling, which in turn reflects that light further back into the room. Light shelves may be interior or exterior; exterior light shelves may also function as sunshades.
Low-E glass: Low-emission glass (Low-E) is a clear glass; it has a microscopically thin coating of metal oxide. This allows the sun's heat and light to pass through the glass into the building. At the same time it blocks heat from leaving the room, reducing heat loss considerably.
Low maintenance landscaping: requires proper planning and making wise choices. This includes the identification of areas that require a more manicured look and noting areas that are not as important to heavily maintain. There are a number of alternative choices of landscape building materials, plant types, design strategies, and ways to reduce effort and expense.
Mechanical engineer: an engineering discipline that involves the application of principles of physics for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. Mechanical engineers require a solid understanding of key concepts including mechanics, kinematics, thermodynamics and energy and use these principles in the design and analysis of automobiles, aircraft, heating & cooling systems, manufacturing plants, industrial equipment and machinery, medical devices and more.
Native plantings: Native plants (also called indigenous plants) are plants that have evolved over thousands of years in a particular region and have adapted to the geography, hydrology, and climate of that region.
Natural ventilation: a method for reducing energy use and cost and for providing acceptable indoor environmental quality rather than using mechanical ventilation. Natural ventilation systems rely on pressure differences to move fresh air through buildings. Openings between rooms such as transom windows, louvers, grills, or open plans are techniques to complete the airflow circuit through a building.
Passive solar: technologies that convert sunlight into usable heat, cause air-movement for ventilation or cooling, or store heat for future use, without the assistance of other energy sources.
Photovoltaic: or PV for short, is a solar power technology that uses solar cells or solar photovoltaic arrays to convert light from the sun directly into electricity.
Porous pavement: Pavement material that is designed to allow runoff to penetrate into the subsurface to aid with storm water management.
Rainwater cistern: is historically an underground basin of water, but it can also be an above ground barrel or tank. Much like an artificial well, cisterns are used to make sure that water is collected and used for irrigation conserving water resources.
Reclaimed material: material that has been previously used in a building or project which is then re-used in another project. The material might be altered, re-sized, refinished, or adapted, but is not reprocessed in any way, and remains in its original form.
Recycled material: material that has been reprocessed and reused in the building industry.
Remediation: to clean a site that has been damaged by industry that is physical, chemical or biological in origin.
Renewable energy: energy derived from resources that are regenerative or cannot be depleted, such as wind, water, and solar energy. Renewable energy sources are fundamentally different from fossil fuels, and do not produce as many greenhouse gases and other pollutants as fossil fuel combustion.
Renewable material: substances derived from a living tree, plant, animal or ecosystem which has the ability to regenerate itself.
Shading devices: reduce building peak heat gain and cooling requirements and improves the natural lighting quality of building interiors. It also improves user visual comfort by controlling glare and reducing contrast ratios which leads to increased user satisfaction and productivity.
Site planning: involves the organization of land use zoning, access, circulation, privacy, security, shelter, land drainage, and other factors. This is done by arranging the compositional elements of landform, planting, water, buildings and paving and building. Site planning generally begins by assessing a potential site for development through site analysis. Information about slope, soils, hydrology, vegetation, parcel ownership, orientation, etc. are assessed and mapped.
Solar power: (also known as solar energy) is a source of renewable energy that uses radiation emitted by the sun.
Storm water management: creates tools to manage volumes of water that are created during precipitation events.
Structural engineer: a branch of engineering that inspects, analyzes, designs, plans, and researches structural components and structural systems. Their work takes account mainly of technical, economic and environmental concerns, but they may also consider aesthetic and social factors.
Sustainable design: to produce places, products and services in a way that reduces use of nonrenewable resources, minimizes environmental impact, and relates people with the natural environment.
United States Green Building Council (USGBC): a non-profit composed of leaders from every sector of the building industry working to promote buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable and healthy places to live and work.
Vegetated roof: (also referred to as a green roof, eco-roof, or living roof) is a roof of a building that is partially or completely covered with vegetation and soil, or a growing medium, planted over a waterproofing membrane. Vegetated roofs reduce heating and cooling loads on a building, reduce the urban heat island effect, increase roof life span, reduce stormwater run off, filter pollutants and CO2 out of the air, filter pollutants and heavy metals out of rainwater, and increase wildlife habitat in built-up areas.
Water conservation: preservation and careful management of water resources.
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