Expert Q&As

This week, we caught up with Dan Gans to discuss energy efficiency.

When did the Hoboken Brownstone Company get its start?
I started my development business in Hoboken in 1980 with my partner George Vallone, and we've been within the community of Hoboken now for almost 30 years. We've done many different types of development; primarily residential.

Green building is growing in popularity and certain standards are now becoming the norm. What do you think could be improved?
Green building in the United States has turned a great deal of focus toward alternative energy, but not enough time is put into making more efficient buildings. In Europe, they're much more focused on the idea of energy conservation as opposed to renewable energy. One of the areas that we’re interested in explaining to LEED is that this needs to take a higher priority. We need to figure out how to create buildings that are really going to use less energy. I think that many of these buildings are falling short of the energy consumption goals they were built to achieve. These buildings often use more energy than similar older buildings. One of the reasons for that is because with modern technology, we ask for a lot more out of buildings than we used to.

Are there any specific areas that could be dealt with more effectively?
We need to make sure that the wall systems that we're building operate properly. Materials like autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) concrete do this. This is a material that's been used in Europe for 50 years. It has great thermal quality that can hold in cool or warm air and actually feed back to the interior space what's been created. Hoboken Brownstone is really dedicated to building our buildings with exterior wall systems that will save energy.

You mentioned renewable energy. Do you think there are improvements that could be made in that area as well?
Right now, we are trying to get support to do a geothermal project in a multi-family housing development. Geothermal is something that hasn't been pushed as much in this country. There are also things like solar hot water, which is pretty efficient, but not as prevalent as the more popular photovoltaic systems.

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