BuyGreenRealty.com - Green Real Estate

Green Real Estate Topics

Below you will find a listing and brief description of the most pertinent Green Real Estate Topics. (Please note that this is only a brief listing of topics. Our Green Real Estate Articles cover these topics and many more in-depth).

Energy Efficiency

Energy Efficiency can be defined as the production of an ample amount of energy without producing energy waste, or unused energy. Most home owners buy appliances, windows, heating and cooling units, siding, roofing, and the like without ever considering the considerable cost savings and tax breaks associated with purchasing energy efficient products.

Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is a collection of methods to create and sustain development which seeks to relieve poverty, create equitable standards of living, satisfy the basic needs of all peoples, and establish sustainable political practices all while taking the steps necessary to avoid irreversible damages to natural capital in the long term in turn for short term benefits by reconciling development projects with the regenerative capacity of the natural environment.

Green Building

Green building is the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings and their sites use and harvest energy, water, and materials, and reducing building impacts on human health and the environment, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal — the complete building life cycle.

Green building is also sometimes known as sustainable building or environmental building, although there are slight differences in the definitions. The practice of green building can lead to benefits including reduced operating costs by increasing productivity and using less energy and water, improved public and occupant health due to improved indoor air quality, and reduced environmental impacts by, for example, lessening storm water runoff and the heat island effect.

Green building is an essential component of the related concepts of sustainable design, sustainable development and general sustainability.

Practitioners of green building often seek to achieve not only ecological but aesthetic harmony between a structure and its surrounding natural and built environment. The appearance and style of sustainable homes and buildings can be nearly indistinguishable from their less sustainable counter-parts.

Natural Building

Natural building involves a range of building systems and materials that place major emphasis on sustainability. Ways of achieving sustainability through natural building focus on durability and the use of minimally-processed, plentiful or renewable resources, as well as those which, while recycled or salvaged, produce healthy living environments and maintain indoor air quality. "Natural building" is a general term with different interpretations by its – mostly – self-directed practitioners.

The basis of natural building is the need to lessen the environmental impact of buildings and other supporting systems, without sacrificing comfort, health or aesthetics. To be more sustainable, natural building uses primarily abundantly-available, renewable, reused or recycled materials. The use of rapidly renewable materials is increasingly a focus. An emphasis on building compactly and minimizing the ecological footprint is common, as are on-site handling of energy acquisition, on-site water capture, alternate sewage treatment and water reuse.

Solar Power

Solar power is the technology of obtaining usable energy from the light of the Sun. Solar energy has been used in many traditional technologies for centuries and is fast becoming a popular form of environmentally friendly energy production in Real Estate.

Wind Power

Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into more useful forms, usually electricity using wind turbines. Wind energy is ample, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and reduces toxic atmospheric and greenhouse gas emissions if used to replace fossil-fuel-derived electricity.

Sustainable Architecture

In the broad context, sustainable architecture, seeks to minimize the negative environmental impact of buildings by enhancing efficiency and moderation in the use of materials, energy, and development space. Sustainable architecture applies techniques designed to maintain or prolong the life of structures.

Straw Bale Construction

Straw-bale construction is a building method that uses straw bales as structural elements, insulation, or both. It is commonly used in natural building. It has advantages over some conventional building system because of its cost and easy availability, and its high insulation value.

Renewable Energy

Renewable energy is energy derived from resources that are regenerative or for all practical purposes cannot be depleted. For this reason, renewable energy sources are fundamentally different from fossil fuels, and do not produce as many greenhouse gases and other pollutants as fossil fuel combustion.