Building A Green Standard In Telluride
Written By: Ben Williams

Telluride is pioneering a new spirit! Always fresh on the bandwagon, the town of Telluride, which boasts the first AC/DC electric street lights in the country, has found a way to help our environment permanently. But let’s back up a little: Buildings in the U.S. account for approximately 36% of the nation’s energy expenditure, a whopping $220 billion—that’s nine zeros—in heating and cooling costs.

Two hundred and twenty billion dollars is an awfully large number to fathom. Yet this figure only represents the tangible costs of heating and cooling. It is a far cry from the actual costs of outdated building practices that lead to inefficient homes. The real figures are the impossible to configure external costs to inefficiency. Costs like crop damage from acid rain, greenhouse gas emissions, manufacturing effluents, pollution and sickness from bad indoor air quality, to name but some...all must be omitted. The actual costs of inefficient building practices are something only our great-grand children will realize. And yet, we are already witnessing the effects of our burgeoning society against our fragile earth.

How can we help reduce greenhouse gases? How can we lessen waste and conserve resources? How can we save trees? Incorporating a Green Building Code is a good place to start. While Telluride isn’t the first town to adopt a Green Building Code, we are certainly helping to carry the torch from community to community.What is this Green Building Code? Each construction project in town must meet a minimum number of points. The number of mandatory points ascribed a project depends on the footprint of the project. Larger footprints necessitate larger scores to meet the “Green” contingency. Points are awarded, say, for using locally manufactured materials, recycled materials, non-wood alternatives like strawbale or adobe, or for using renewable power schemes like solar power.

Elizabeth Robbins explains: “We will require construction to meet the energy-efficient code that has an environmentally responsible checklist.”

The checklist consists of several categories, each with a “choose X-number-of-points” contingency. For example, the energy efficient category mandates that the contractor meet 18 points for said category. A contractor can amass three points for incorporating a “suntempered design,” orienting the building to the south to collect solar heat. Or, they can get two points for an insulated water heater with an R-value exceeding R-10. (R-values represent an index quantifying a material’s resistance to conducting heat). Obviously, there are more items for this category and sub-categories like energy efficient mechanical systems, but you get the idea. Then, of course, there are other categories such as resource conservation, materials, indoor air quality; all with a minimum number of points assigned. The contractor is always allowed free-reign as to how they make up that number. So long as the numerical equivalent is met the building gets a “green” certification, and the project is cleared for construction.

“Green building doesn’t have to increase the costs [of construction],” says Robbins, who has a major hand in designing the Green Building Code. “There are significant pay-backs associated with the energy efficient components.” Indeed, over time, Green buildings save residents’ money, mitigate external costs of inefficient construction, and, ultimately, let more money stay in owners’ pockets.
“But we need to develop incentives and increase the threshold we’re demanding,” adds Robbins. Contractors that go over and above the mandated point levels get special recognition. Something akin to the “organic seal,” says Robbins, “such ratings assist marketing green contractors.”

Now there are sure to be people out there shaking their heads, muttering about increased construction costs relayed to the buyer, and all sorts of other negative rumblings. Yet, despite the increased savings over time paying back any initial bump in price, the Green Building Code invigorates the emerging environmental sector, placing additional demand on suppliers of eco-friendly products. San Miguel County abounds with such locally operated providers and green businesses. This can only assist the local economy and help the nation by reducing outdated practices that pollute and destroy. Indeed, we will be encouraged to make our own energy and manage it according to incentives that effect us individually.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of good karma.

Remember the blackout last year, the one that had the entire East Coast looking at the stars, perhaps for the first time? Decentralized power structures allow for individual households to manage their own energy consumption. Instead of 20 million people being idle, unable to do a thing, and awaiting restoration while power plant employees scour miles of powerlines, such a decentralized system—where each household produces its own energy would have. Firstly, a lot less people blacked out. Secondly, any free labor would well be applied to restoration, no one would need to be left hanging. Tighter communities with the incentive to conserve energy as well as self-sustainable communities would not only make people more involved, but heighten awareness of the ecology of the planet and our living habitat.(What a novel idea it is to be friendly to the earth’s biorhythms and in touch with our consumption levels.)
Sure, less money for the centralized behemoths, but more in the pockets of the individual. This, my friends, is what the Age of Aquarius will be about!

Telluride now has a bus service called the Galloping Goose, with buses that run entirely on recycled “biodiesel,” vegetable fryer oil or grassolean, as it is affectionately known. Plans for a hydrogen fuel pump are in the works; owners of new H2 powered vehicles will be able to drive around town and by 2008, get to LA or Aspen and back on a tank.

You must already know the internal combustion engine—as it is popularly produced by oil-guzzling behemoths—is obsolete! And oil, as a resource, is as necessary to the modern-mind as the cat-o-nine-tails to the justice system. It is time to wake up! It is time for the new era! The Green Building Code is yet another steppingstone in the path we’re making to environmentally conscientious living. When humankind finds harmony with all their neighbors—no matter how many legs they have or don’t have—our great grand children will be ready to inherit a world they can be proud of. And we will be proud to give it them.

On March 29th, at 11a.m., the town of Telluride unanimously approved the adoption of the Green Building Code.