Rebuilding Greener? Green Building Diffusion After Extreme Weather Events

• In Event: Environmental Resilience and Sustainability in the Face of Threat and Risk

Abstract

As climate change unfolds, extreme weather events are posing growing threats to communities and their infrastructure. Nonetheless, such disasters can sometimes create opportunities to modernize and adapt the built environment for greater resilience. Amid rising concerns about climate change and energy use, green building practices offer a pathway toward more sustainable reconstruction. Some researchers argue that rebuilding to higher standards in the aftermath of disasters is often more cost-effective than making incremental improvements over time. However, a community’s ability to rebuild to greener standards is often constrained the negative economic shock it endures from the disaster and the resources available for recovery. By far, there has been relative less research systematically documenting the impact of natural disasters on sustainable rebuilding efforts.

In this paper, we empirically examine the diffusion of green buildings following flooding and hurricanes across the United States. We construct a panel data set of buildings certified by the United States Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program at the city level over the 2000-2019 period, merged with historical disaster data. Using a Poisson fixed-effects model, we find that a major flooding event, measured by a Presidential Disaster Declaration, increases the number of LEED-certified buildings within three to five years following the event, which supports the “rebuilding greener” hypothesis. Our results further indicate that the increase is primarily driven by commercial buildings, rather than those owned by government or non-profit organizations. In the meantime, we find that the number of certified green buildings decreases immediately following a major hurricane, but increases within five to eight years after the shock. This longer lag in sustainable rebuilding efforts may reflect the challenges communities face in recovering from the economic shock caused by hurricanes, which often inflict more severe damage than floods. We also perform the analyses using the gross floor area as another measure of green building diffusion and observe similar patterns.

In addition to destructive hazards such as flooding and hurricanes, we further examine the impact of annual temperature fluctuations, measured by anomalies in heating degree days (HDD) and cooling degree days (CDD), on the diffusion of green buildings across U.S. cities. While extreme temperatures may not directly trigger rebuilding, they can influence perceptions of future climate conditions and energy needs, thereby encouraging the adoption of more green building practices.  Our results generally suggest a strong positive effect of CDD anomalies on the number of certified green buildings, but the effect of HDD anomalies appears more mixed.

As one of the first few examining the effect of extreme weather on green building diffusion, this research provides new evidence on climate adaptation through the adoption of more sustainable building practices. It also informs research and policies regarding post-disaster recovery, adaptive rebuilding, and fostering sustainability in the built environment amid changing climate conditions.

 

  

Authors

• Qing Miao, Rochester Institute of Technology
  Presenting Author

• Mark A Bremer, National Grid
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Wei GUO, University of California, Riverside
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Allison Reilly, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Co-Author