Industrial Buildings

Physical buildings are a large part of the supply chain. Whether it is manufacturing sites or distribution centers, they are substantial part of the operating costs (and carbon footprint) of a supply chain. On an annual carbon footprint, they typically an order of magnitude or more less significant than manufacturing or shipping a product. However, if you include the initial construction rather than just annual operating costs, the equation changes dramatically. There has been significantly more focus on looking at the building industry as a way to reduce growth in carbon emmissions.

There was a good article on three recent Sustainable Industrial properties in a magazine called Building Design+Construction. They profiled three industrial properties – a refrigerated DC, a dry goods DC, and a manufacturing site. Here were some things from the article that were worth sharing:

1) An overview of technologies divided between <5>5 year payback

2) There is now a commercially available roof unit that integrates T5 lighting, skylight, and PV panels (supplied by Daylight Technology of San Diego, USA). This could reduce install costs significantly.
3) LED lighting is available for external application (i.e. drop lots), but not commercialized for internal. One site took an external LED fixtures to use in a refrigerated environment.
4) Automated monitoring and control of a natural ventilation system. The two sites that had this system would typically be conditioned in those parts of the USA.
5) Hunter Industries is using white corrugated boxes to reduce lighting needed in the warehouse. I am not sure I agree with this approach. White packaging is typically more expensive and requires bleaching agents that are pretty bad for the environment. But a very interesting concept.

There is also a very large White Paper on Climate Change and buildings (http://www.loginandlearn.com/course/overview.php?courseid=1362). It provides some good detail on climate change issues and building impact. The one item that was interesting was payback trends for a project for an office building.