The greenest building is the one still standing after a disaster

Traditional green building ratings often focus on the carbon footprint of initial construction, but a new perspective suggests that durability is the true key to sustainability. As The Conversation reports, homes built to exceed safety codes—such as those with reinforced concrete and high pilings—may have higher initial emissions but avoid the massive environmental cost of being demolished and rebuilt after a disaster. Insurance companies are currently the primary drivers of this shift, offering discounts of fifteen to thirty percent for fortified homes. Researchers are now pushing to integrate these long-term resilience benefits into official green-building standards to better account for the carbon and financial costs of disaster recovery.

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