The greenest building is the one still standing after a disaster
Construction choices are often the difference between a house surviving a hurricane or being torn apart. Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images When Hurricane Michael tore through the Florida Panhandle in 2018, a beach house called the Sand Palace was left standing , while more than half the buildings around it were destroyed.
In 2018, Hurricane Michael struck Florida’s Panhandle, destroying over half the buildings in Mexico Beach. One house, nicknamed the Sand Palace, remained intact. Its owners had built it to withstand wind speeds roughly double Florida’s building code requirements, using reinforced concrete walls on 40-foot pilings. While this made the house 15% to 20% more expensive than standard construction, it survived the storm. The example illustrates that buildings designed for resilience can endure disasters, even if their initial environmental impact appears higher due to extra materials like concrete.
Traditionally, a building’s green rating is based on its carbon footprint—the greenhouse gases emitted during construction, transport, and operation. The Sand Palace’s extra concrete increased its carbon footprint, making it seem less eco-friendly. However, this overlooks a critical factor: longevity. A building damaged by a flood, wildfire, or hurricane requires significant repairs, which can drastically increase its carbon footprint over time. As climate-related disasters become more frequent and intense, evaluating a building’s sustainability must consider its full life cycle, including potential damage and repairs.
Insurance companies are increasingly pushing for durable construction because they assess long-term risks rather than just initial conditions. They often offer discounts of 15% to 30% on hurricane coverage for homes fortified with reinforced roofs, impact-resistant windows, and other upgrades that meet wind standards. Unlike building codes, which are slow to adapt to climate change, insurers provide financial incentives for resilience. For builders, this means retrofitting or constructing homes to withstand disasters, reducing future repair costs and environmental impact.
A study of flood-prevention infrastructure in coastal Catalonia, Spain, found that while barriers and channel improvements initially emitted greenhouse gases during construction, they prevented an estimated 58 metric tons of carbon-equivalent emissions per flood. Within 25 years, the emissions avoided balanced out the initial emissions, well within the 50-year lifespan of the infrastructure. Financially, the payback period was just two years. This demonstrates that resilient designs can offset their higher upfront costs through avoided damage and lower long-term environmental impact.
Current green-building assessments, such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), focus on new construction and do not account for a building’s performance after a disaster. Three key costs are overlooked: the environmental impact of temporary housing, emergency generators, and transportation for displaced residents; the emissions from repairing or upgrading a damaged building to withstand future events; and the avoided damage, repairs, and downtime that resilient designs prevent. Including these factors in sustainability evaluations would provide a more accurate picture of a building’s true environmental and economic costs.
Researchers propose integrating resilience into existing construction standards, such as building codes and green ratings like *LEED*. This would require accounting for the materials, energy, and disruption caused by disasters. While engineering solutions like the *Sand Palace* already exist, the missing link is incentive. Insurers, code designers, and rating systems have a stake in reducing long-term costs, but current systems do not automatically reward durability. The goal is to make resilience the norm rather than the exception in construction, ensuring buildings remain functional and sustainable even after extreme events.
