In a city dear to our hearts, reported yesterday, the country’s tallest building is planning a $350 million retrofit in the name of energy efficiency. As widely reported, the renovation includes both alternative energy creation and energy-saving upgrades to accomplish LEED goals and the reduction of the building’s electricity use by 80%, slash C02 emissions, and create water savings of 24 million gallons per year. New energy sources would come from a combination of wind turbines and solar panels. Upgrading of 16,000 windows, green roofs, advanced lighting controls, restroom and elevator renovations are energy conservation renovations on the list. As previously thought a few months ago, the color of the building’s exterior will not be changed to shiny silver. New construction of an adjacent green hotel is also planned. Check out these great photos of what’s planned by the Chicago Tribune.

The Sears Tower has long represented architectural ingenuity and leadership. Its energy retrofit will once again set a new bar as a model example that buildings can, and must, be reinvented. As Smith of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, leading the retrofit and hotel design, so rightly emphasizes, buildings are the single largest contributor to global greenhouse gases, responsible for  52% (versus 9% of passenger cars, for example). Frank Lloyd Wright would be proud. He believed a building should belong to the era in which it is built, and this is the era of energy saving to the benefit of the economy, the bottom-line, and the environment. Sears Tower will model just that - the ideal triple-win that energy efficiency building programs yield: green manufacturing job creation, financial profit, and environmental benefit for the very long life of the building, the city, and its people.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Green Building Standards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.