My dad designed this building, and I would like to say that this is not an arbitrary title. While the term “greenest building” leaves a lot of room for question on its exact definition, the entire building was created with the conservation of energy and resources carefully considered. The materials for this building were all supplied locally. The vast majority of the lumber used was cut down on site, and they even used horses to drag the fallen trees. The work that went into the design that allowed the great efficiency that it has, and to create the internal system that collects the energy produced was no easy feat.

@Michael-

The fact that the building is a center not a home is not really important. The building was created for a client, and not intended to be making any sort of strive to win awards and ratings. The architect is simply an environmentalist who takes into consideration all that he can when designing his buildings. His goal is simple, to make a difference in whatever small ways he can, and although I am very bias, I think he has done a great job, and a lot more than many others out there.

Thanks for all the kind words. I think the fact that a building is out there that produces more energy than it uses should be praised, not scrutinized. Isn’t that why we are all here? Because we want more people to take the time and energy to think about the environment?

it is great to see people looking critically at both operating energy and embodied energy.

and since we are picking nits, since when has ‘unique’ been a synonym for ‘unambiguous’ ? Must be american English

Build a carbon neutral house not a “center”. Build it in the city or better yet the suburbs on a plot of land next to all the other existing carbon… positive(?) houses. That is where all the most wasteful construction occurs so exemplify how it can be done differently there, not in the woods. Build it for as much as or less than existing homes, not for millions of dollars. Build it for a family who will then live in it and tell us what they think not what the builders want us to believe.

This site is nothing more than a millionaires compound in a forest populated by new age hippies being used as window dressing for the press in another politically motivated stunt.

Prove the technology in the real world or nobody in the real world will take it seriously.

* Total emissions: 13.42 tonC/yr
* Offset from renewable energies: -6.24 tonC/yr
* Forest sequestration: -8.75 tonC/yr
* Net result: -1.57 tonC/yr

They only get there by including carbon sequestration in a local foundation owned forest! So I guess the secret to building a carbon neutral building is to buy or already own an adjacent forest. While this is true, it is not practical for most people.

The whole carbon offsets and carbon credits business leaves a bad tasted in my mouth. People fly in airplanes and then pay guilt money, indulgences, to companies that claim to somehow somewhere invest in projects that emit carbon at a lower rate than it would otherwise be emitted. You get the idea. An accounting scam… and such scams are multiplying. Is this another one? Hard to say, but we should all be skeptical.

I applaud green design, but as others have mentioned an analysis of the carbon emissions embedded in the construction process and in the materials would also put these claims of greenness in perspective.

Simply because someone criticizes something good doesn’t mean that they want it destroyed, or hate it, or even dislike it. Do I really think anyone is going to read my comments and seriously think about going green for green’s sake? Probably not. I’m in college, living in a dormitory that runs it heat off electricity in the winter straight from the local grid, eating fresh produce daily from halfway around the world, driving a mini-van by myself, and basically continually adding to all the carbon and energy waste that I care so much about NOT producing. I try to be as green as I can, but to fit in as a healthy member of society who can enact some real change, I need to go to college, and I need a car, and I need to eat. So I am well aware that I am open to hypocrisy. If I could, I would go green tomorrow, or at least, that’s what I’d like to think. But I don’t really know if I believe that. Would I really give up all those comforts of modern life that I’ve come to depend on?

So, yeah, I could be called a cynic, a hypocrite and an ignorant kid. Maybe I am. But I really think that as human beings we’re going to go with what’s easiest. We’ve already raped the earth pretty thoroughly, and we can go on denying it, or we can start to act. I say we act now to save what we can and fix what we’ve destroyed, if at all possible. But we need to be aware of how we tend to operate. We want what’s easy. It’s easy to be green and to keep green things in mind when building a new center in honor of Aldo Leopold by following LEED guidelines. But what we really need to do is learn to fight that tendency towards cultural and personal laziness (my own battle), and build all of our buildings green, in honor of people who DONT remind us of how we’ve failed as a race, in places that aren’t pristine and make us feel good about ourselves, in ways that solve the problem, not just meet the criteria.

So, no, I’m not bashing the Aldo Leopold Foundation Headquarters. It is a beautiful building heading strongly in the right direction. I just wish that it was a common incident indicative of a trend, and not something so rare as to be fascinating news.