CAD Services Green Checklist: An Approach To Save Taxes
Posted on : Mar 27, 2019
There had been numerous articles, case papers, reports, guidelines and many more written on the concept and designs of Green Buildings in recent past.In fact worldwide buildings account for just above 40% of global carbon emissions which makes sustainable and energy efficient building designs an understandable option to address the environmental impact called carbon footprint. As a leading CAD Services provider globally, we have seen number of instances where the checklist for Green certified building remains back only on papers (designs) even after the approval for the same gets certified.
Couple of years back in the year 2014 we came across the news of one such lawsuit being filed in Federal Appels Court for LEED certified platinum building where in Weyerhaeuser Company was to provide parallel PSL columns and beams, used for exposed wood members, treated with preservative PolyClear 2000, but they did not treat the PSL columns as certificate and ultimately water started to seep in the building as it got damaged. Though in the end, parties opted for a confidential settlement but this incident lead to a red flag on credibility of green certified buildings; in fact this was not the first incident as we remember during our peak time for green certified CAD Service designs we saw lot of bad press in news for green certified building designs during the year 2009, primarily this was due to recurring incidents of failure to live up to green standards.
We strongly believe nothing can possibly go wrong if builders and contractors are assuring implementation of sustainability pointers on LEED credit points in the project checklist like enhancing site potential, intensification in use of sustainable materials, confirm zero wastage of portable water and that the finest operations & maintenance practices are implemented. It’s high time now and we should be seriously taking the concept of sustainability by cutting down our consumption of polluting fossil fuels and by sensibly using energy also by eliminating irreversible damage to our planet.
But instead very unfortunately Green certifications are used primarily as the tax saving or better tax claiming back measure. Bestowed interests and influence to get green certification is the very reason why today there are so many so called sustainable buildings that are actually not sustainable; regrettably buildings are green washed to get certification for tax savings & these practices has led us to this stage where we are forces to rethink if green building design is good building design or merely an approach to save taxes.
Also we strongly support the fact that different buildings has different requirement; an element that works best for a building may not work well with another we argue that the standard checklist of green elements needs to go & we need to break free from one size fits all approach moreover authorities need to come up with an executable plan where use of certifications as a mere tool to gain tax savings has to be stopped.
