Many people have the wrong idea about "green" houses. They think of Mongolian-style yurts, or solar-mounted rooftops, or kitchen counters made of recycled glass. But going green rarely entails anything that exotic or expensive, says Karl Bren, executive director Earthcraft Virginia. "It's just a matter of paying attention to the details. Like making sure the [HVAC] ductwork isn't leaking."

Green building doesn't have to be expensive, stressed Bren and two other panelists at a Wednesday panel discussion hosted by the Richmond branch of the Urban Land Institute. Anecdotal evidence backed up by formal studies generally conclude that erecting commercial and residential buildings according to green standards costs only 1 percent to 3 percent more than conventional building. Those costs can be recouped many times over in the form of lower energy bills, lower water bills, lower maintenance and improved health.

An up-front expenditure of an additional $3 to $5 per square foot can yield $50 to $60 in savings over a 20-year period, said Sandra Leibowitz Earley, a principal with Sustainable Design Consulting. The more effort a developer makes early in the project on setting goals and assembling an integrated design team, she added, the more favorable the economics look.

While green, or sustainable, building consumes more up-front resources in design costs, it can shave expenses by reducing the size of HVAC systems, and it reaps big, easy-to-measure savings in lower utility bills. By better controlling moisture and mildew, green buildings also reduce the incidence of asthma -- now the leading cause of admittance into emergency rooms, Bren said.

Whether your priority is energy independence from foreign despots or reducing the carbon dioxide emissions implicated in global warming, switching to green building standards must be a central element of national energy policy. According to Earley, buildings account for 37 percent of all U.S. energy use, 12 percent of water consumption, 40 percent of non-industrial waste and 35 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. As an aside, buildings also are far more polluted (in ways that effect humans) than the outdoors.

The Richmond region is five to seven years behind more progressive regions of the country in embracing green building techniques, the panelists said, but the message is catching on. Bren's not-for-profit enterprise provides a certification process, similar to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), for residential housing. Earley's shop, located in downtown Richmond, provides sustainable design services to builders and developers -- mainly in the Washington area but in the Richmond region as well.

The third panelist, Lynn J. Rogien, is the green project manager for W.M. Jordan, one of the region's largest commercial construction companies. When viewed on a life-cycle basis, green commercial buildings offer superior rates of return for investors, he said. While up-front design costs and construction costs are marginally higher, he said, utilities are significantly lower. So are O&M (operations and maintenance costs).

And here's the kicker: Developers can charge higher lease rates.

"The market demand is changing," Rogien said. "Developers have discovered that they can make a higher return on investment when they make a green, or high-performance, building. Our country is in a paradigm shift. We're changing the way we do business construction."