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4 `--~ <br />C. Research <br />How do smart growth, sustainability and green building standards relate? <br />County government has a responsibility to address both global warming and <br />hazard mitigation to identify how local citizens are most susceptible to climate <br />change and to best minimize local energy consumption and greenhouse gas <br />emissions levels. <br />Conventional building construction, use, and demolition, together with the <br />manufacturing of building materials, have multiple impacts on local, regional, and <br />global environments. Nationally, when life cycle costs are .accounted for, <br />buildings account for 65% of all electricity consumption, 30% of all greenhouse <br />gas emissions, 30% of all raw material consumption, 30% of all landfill waste <br />generated, and 12% of all potable water consumption. Typical residential cost <br />centers and energy consumption are heating and cooling (46%), water heating <br />(17%), electrical appliances, including computers (31 %), and lighting (6%). <br />Focusing on local energy conservation through green building programs is a <br />community sustainability issue because it addresses energy and water <br />consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and landfill waste. <br />1) Smart Growth principles can be summarized in ten categories, as follows: <br />a. Create a range of housing opportunities and choices to provide <br />quality housing for people of all income levels. <br />b. Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration to create <br />great places to live, work, and play that respond to the community's <br />sense of how and where it wants to grow. <br />c. Create walkable communities thaf are desirable places to live, <br />work, learn, worship, and play. <br />d. Foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong sense of <br />place and craft a vision and set standards for development and <br />construction, which respond to community values or architectural <br />beauty and distinctiveness. <br />e. Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective. <br />f. Integrate mixed land use into communities as a critical component <br />of achieving better places to live. <br />g. Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical <br />environmental areas. <br />h. Provide a variety of transportation choices and therefore provide <br />citizens with more choices in housing, shopping, communities, and <br />transportation, <br />i. Strengthen and direct development towards existing communities <br />already served by infrastructure, seeking to utilize the resources <br />that existing neighborhoods offer, and conserve open space and <br />irreplaceable natural resources. <br />