Abstract  – “Oops !  We’ve been Drilling in the Wrong Place !  October 2010 by Steven Chandler Hall

The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) oil disaster prompted research leading to a paper, “Oops!  We’ve been drilling in the Wrong Place” .  The paper compares the energy value of all the oil produced annually from the U.S. GOM with what can be achieved with a national program of building retrofits of just homes and commercial buildings.  The results are informative. The potential of the reserve of energy from annual energy savings equals 3 times the annual energy from the GOM. The paper suggests a program that would create 5 million jobs per year for the next 10 years. It would create $2.3 trillion in the design and construction economy (primarily to small businesses). In the first year it would erase construction unemployment, and reduce national unemployment by 30%. In aggregate the program would add $7.8 trillion to our GNP jumpstarted with deficit neutral mechanisms and financial guarantees.

Our firm is just completing management of a major building retrofit of The Princeton Club of New York.  It is projected to save 50% in energy usage and costs, to reduce the carbon footprint and is targeted to get a LEED Gold certification.  This project was used as an example for a graduate class in Green real estate development for the newly created  New York University Schack Institute of Real Estate, Center for the Sustainable Built Environment (SBE) http://www.scps.nyu.edu/areas-of-study/real-estate/center-for-sustainable-built-environment/  for what can be achieved by the retrofit of existing buildings.  I guest lectured with two  presentations and tours last year.

LINK TO THE FULL ARTICLE (MUST DOWNLOAD THE PDF) FROM DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION MAGAZINE