With desires for energy efficiency and healthier living conditions, developers turn to Moseley Architects for greener senior living facilities

Thirty years ago, green was just a color. But as much as 20 years ago, the word began to take on new meaning and is now used to describe a movement among construction products, practices and technologies for reducing the impacts of homes and buildings on the global environment. It’s taken some time for the “green movement” to make its way into every sector of design and construction, but these days, thanks to interest among residents and developers, it’s finally made its way into senior living. Though each party has different motives, together they’re driving demand for communities that are healthier, more energy efficient and friendlier to the planet.

“The attitude and focus used to be mainly about efficient use of space and financial resources,” says Mark Heckman, vice president at Moseley Architects. But with growing awareness for the impacts of green materials and designs, now the attention of seniors has turned to healthy living conditions. These days, they’re looking for features such as green spaces, outdoor activity areas and walking paths, Heckman says. But they’re also concerned with indoor air quality and the benefits of materials designed to reduce the presence of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Research shows that greener buildings are more than just feel-good measures. In cases where developers create healthier communities and better indoor air quality, those features have been shown to influence the health of residents. A study conducted by Harvard University shows that cognitive scores were 61% higher for people living in green buildings than those that weren’t. Meanwhile, the greener the building the better the results. Scores were 101% higher in what researchers defined as “enhanced green conditions.”

Developers and operators of senior living facilities also have their eyes on greener designs and construction methods, albeit for different reasons. According to the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction, building operations represent nearly 55% of global electricity consumption. In the case of senior living, it’s operators who foot the bills for energy. “This has been the case for maybe the past five or six years,” Heckman says. “They’ve woken up to the importance of this.” But that wasn’t true as little as 10 years ago, Heckman explains. “People are living longer, and these societal shifts are forcing senior communities to take a hard look at old paradigms,” he says. At the same time, investments into energy efficient and green living standards can be a hard sell for some senior developments—a large swath of which are backed by real estate investment trusts (REITs) and are therefore held accountable for expenditures aimed at improving performance. While governments and other long-term investors are willing to foot expenses that often take decades to show financial benefit, many senior living developments must be profitable from the onset. That has some property owners and developers turning to firms such as Moseley Architects for in-depth energy analysis and improvements that can be added to both operating ledgers and marketing. By leaning on data gathered by Moseley Architects, tracking the performance of the firm’s past projects, owner-operators can safely evaluate improvements. “They don’t have to convince anyone they’re trying to sell to that these things are working,” says John Nichols, director of energy analytics and informed design at Moseley Architects. The proof is evidence-based, he says.

Prime Candidates

With the evidence of energy analysis in hand, senior living developments mark prime candidates for improvement, Nichols and others suggest. Unlike other residential developments, senior living units tend to be homogenous in their design and appointments, including such things as appliances, lighting and HVAC equipment, simplifying any overarching strategies. But they also tend to consume more energy than the average residence, Nichols says, because they serve day in and day out as multi-use facilities. While residents in other types of developments spend much of their time at work and/or out and about, seniors are often less mobile and spend more of their time at home or participating in activities onsite. For this reason, in addition to residences, some senior living developments also incorporate such things as theaters, restaurants, dining facilities and salons. With commercial operations, such as retail spaces or offices, “We can do things like change all the temperature set points and turn off lights,” Nichols says. “That’s a huge energy savings. But you can’t do that here.” In some cases, with senior living facilities, “You have to ensure that every room in the building is comfortable 24 hours per day, seven days per week,” he says. But those same challenges mean even more opportunity for conservation when it comes to energy, Heckman says. For instance, instead of individual heat pumps, senior living developments can employ more efficient variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems, or other methods that pool resources to gain efficiency, he says. Add to that fewer exterior walls and smaller footprints for individual living spaces and, “You can easily make the case that this is much more efficient than those same individuals living in single-family dwellings,” Heckman says. Those types of consolidations also make senior living a prime candidate for another energy saving measure: solar energy.

Costs and technologies for photovoltaic (PV) improvements have come a long way over the past decade. While the size of solar modules remains roughly the same, with improvements in materials and wiring, and better production techniques in manufacturing, today’s panels now produce roughly twice as much energy as they did eight years ago, Nichols says. Moseley’s Architects can provide payback estimates illustrated through actual bid costs for solar arrays—not what manufacturers suggest an installation will cost to install or what it will produce, but real measurements based on a decade or more of tracked installations. That data shows that among the firm’s projects with solar arrays, installed costs have come down by 75% over the past 10 years, and they’re improving more yet. In some of the senior living communities designed by the firm’s architects, over a 25-year period, solar is expected to save $605,000 to $850,000, offsetting electricity use by 16-20%, while reducing CO2 emissions by over 3,000 tons. Under those circumstances, a solar array will pay for itself in about 10 to 13 years—sometimes much sooner if utility company rebates are involved. Those results offer a two-fold win for residents and operators of senior living communities, but ultimately benefit the entire planet. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, minus any changes in policy and technology, population and economic growth will lead energy-related CO2 emissions to increase through 2050. Seniors and senior living developers are now poised to do something about this dilemma.