How to Find Opportunities to Make Green Building Design Possible and Affordable

We spoke to Hetal Parekh, founder of EneryYields, about how to accelerate sustainable building design.

SolveCaster™

Karrah Krakovyak
Sustainability Innovator
More about Karrah Krakovyak
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I am an architect. I practice as an architect for two years only to realize that in order to make a difference at grassroots level I would probably have to follow where the money is. I. Hmm, I did my master's in sustainable design and then a PhD in building performance in diagnostics from Carnegie Mellon university. https://www.solvecast.com/articles/detail/29208-how-to-find-opportunities-to-make-green-building-design-possible-and-affordable

I would say one of the biggest barriers that I have experienced through my six years of working in this field before starting any issues is that, that there is a huge knowledge gap. The information that is available is too technical and general audience who is not specialized in this field, they find it very difficult to understand. So the perception of high upfront cost, it generally exists and is associated with any green technology compared to standard practices. https://www.solvecast.com/articles/detail/29208-how-to-find-opportunities-to-make-green-building-design-possible-and-affordable

There are a lot of innovative and specialized financing methods that are available out there, which can appeal to different preferences or help overcome these different challenges that use our space. One of these, like you likely mentioned is a perception of high upfront cost, but there are many specialized financing measure methods that are available out there, which require zero out of pocket costs. And the entire cost of the upgrade is paid to the energy savings that are generated from the project or from carrying out that upgrade. So the owner necessarily does not have to put any money towards it, which is even cheaper than going for a conventional loan to carry out regular upgrades. And not to mention the energy savings and the reduction in operational costs that kind of all bundled together. https://www.solvecast.com/articles/detail/29208-how-to-find-opportunities-to-make-green-building-design-possible-and-affordable

That there is such a clear disjunct between. tons of money out there, which could help so many building owners and everybody could be on the same page to achieve the goal. The ultimate goal is the impact on the climate. being more sustainable in our approaches really makes a difference to the planet in general. https://www.solvecast.com/articles/detail/29208-how-to-find-opportunities-to-make-green-building-design-possible-and-affordable

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