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Continuing Education Use the following learning objectives to focus your study while reading this month’s ARCHITECTURAL RECORD / AIA Continuing Education article. Learning Objective: After reading this article, you will be able to: 1. Explain how adding insulation is an easy way to meet green requirements and is a good investment for clients. 2. Understand how going beyond ASHRAE 90.1 can earn LEED points. 3. Determine how R-value indicates insulating properties. 4. Recognize the value of third-party certification in verifying manufacturers’ claims.

The easy part of environmental stewardship

Leading edge environmentally sensitive building projects today often incorporate special equipment to recycle water and heat, capture solar energy and manage the climate throughout the structure. But there is one familiar category that deserves early attention in every green design project — building insulation.

Although insulation products have been around for many years and we tend to take them for granted, they have many things going for them in today’s green projects.

Why insulation is good for green projects

Saves natural resources — The basic idea of thermal insulation, of course, is to resist the movement of heat and cold. In addition to making interior spaces more comfortable, insulation saves energy, a precious natural resource.

It takes energy to make insulation but the Alliance to Save Energy estimates that a typical pound of insulation saves 12 times the amount of energy needed to make it during the very first year of use.1 That means the energy consumed during manufacturing is saved during the first several weeks of the product’s use and the energy savings continues every month throughout the life of the structure in which it is installed. The more buildings use insulation – and the more insulation is used — the greater the savings.