Construction of energy-efficient buildings made with eco-friendly materials is expected to take off in the Inland area when the economy improves, experts say.

Membership has risen sharply in the Inland chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, which some architects, planners and builders say sets the gold standard for environmental building guidelines. A fledgling group just two years ago, the chapter now has 236 members.

And the number of Inland projects aiming for the council's green seal of approval also has swelled more than tenfold in the past four years, from about a dozen to more than 200, said Bonnie Montoya-May, a Corona-based urban planner who heads the Building Council's Inland chapter.

"It's definitely a growth industry," said Joseph Marfi, director of sustainable design and construction for Turner Construction Co. in Southern California. "The only market that's growing is green."

Owners may see more up-front costs with such specially designed buildings, but it can save energy and money in the long run. For example, the Woodcrest library, a county branch south of Riverside, is slightly bigger and open more hours a week than the older Rubidoux branch. But because of a high-efficiency design, Woodcrest uses about 22,000 kilowatt hours less electricity in a year than Rubidoux.

Utilities at the Woodcrest branch cost the county about $2,100 less each year than at the Rubidoux branch, according to county data.

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Stan Lim / The Press-Enterprise

Barbara McFarland, of Riverside, reads to her grandson Kai Venzon at the Woodcrest library, which has Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification.

The U.S. Green Building Council, founded in 1993, is a nonprofit organization with members from all areas of the building industry. The council sets widely accepted building design and construction standards that:

Aim to reduce harmful effects to the planet by generating less waste and using less energy;

Save money by increasing efficiency and;

Create a better environment for those who use the buildings.

The council awards Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, certification for using features such as low-flow bathroom fixtures, natural light and ventilation, recycled or locally made building materials and solar power.

The public should care about green practices, proponents say, because they may visit, work or live in some of these buildings.

The Woodcrest library, which opened in 2007, earned LEED certification for components such as skylights, a wall of windows and natural materials, including wood and stone.

"It feels very open and airy. The ventilation is good. I go to the other libraries in Riverside and I feel like the A/C is always blasting," said Riverside resident Minh Nguyen.

Nguyen, who studies at the library several times a week, also pointed out the natural light and the view provided by the windows -- a vast swath of sky with mountains in the distance.

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Stan Lim / The Press-Enterprise

Ambient light streams through a bank of glass at the Woodcrest library. Features of the building, which opened in 2007, include skylights, a wall of windows and natural materials, including wood and stone.

The library "fits well in the environment," she said.

GREEN RULES

Riverside and San Bernardino counties both now have policies that say new county buildings must be more efficient, and San Bernardino's must meet LEED standards. San Bernardino County supervisors approved their guidelines in 2007, and Riverside County followed suit this February.

In the past two years, San Bernardino County has done a slew of energy-efficient projects, such as replacing older lighting and air conditioning, that have saved an estimated 2.7 million kilowatt hours of electricity, said Carl Alban, the county's director of architecture and engineering.

Southern California Edison equates that savings to pulling the plug on 375 houses, Alban said, "so that's a big step forward from an electricity perspective."

While interest is growing, the green building trend has been slow to take off here.

About 200 Inland projects are seeking LEED certification, but Riverside and San Bernardino counties have just 18 certified public and private buildings between them. The Woodcrest library is the only Inland county government building that's completed and certified.

Riverside and San Bernardino counties have lagged behind urban centers such as Seattle and Chicago, which each boast more than 75 certified public and private buildings, according to Building Council statistics.

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"A lot of this has been put off by the recession," San Bernardino County spokesman David Wert said. "The county would ordinarily be building more."

Montoya-May said she attributes the lag to Inland builders being too busy before the economic slowdown to learn about green building. She considers the current surge in interest as a positive side-effect of the downturn.

In addition to rising membership in the building council's Inland chapter, Montoya-May said 600 people receive the group's e-mails, come to workshops or request information.

FUTURE PROJECTS

More projects are on the horizon. Riverside County is building a Palm Desert sheriff's station that officials hope to get certified. San Bernardino County is building a High Desert government center and a Crestline library that are going for silver certification, the building council's second-highest standard.

Even in the private sector, some business owners are following the green path.

McDonald's franchisee Candace Spiel plans to turn her Riverside restaurant into the first LEED-certified Golden Arches in the West, with water-saving bathroom fixtures, a runoff-reducing parking lot and recycled building materials.

She'll be replacing a mid-1960s building, so some of the changes will save on utility costs in the long run. But Spiel said products such as adhesives and paints that emit fewer pollutants can cost more up front, and the return on that investment isn't a fiscal one.

"For our project, I wanted to have credibility in the community," she said.

"So many people can say, 'We have a green building,' or 'This is a green product,' and sometimes you don't know who to believe and who not to believe -- and the standard is the U.S. Green Building Council," Spiel said.

Cost differences may have discouraged some potential green projects. Meeting LEED standards can beef up a project's price both because materials may cost more and because the certification process requires lengthy documentation of where every stick and stone in a building comes from.

Keeping the initial cost increase as modest as possible is the first hurdle to convincing someone to build green, said Marfi, of Turner Construction. Turner trains contractors how to reduce added "green" costs, with the goal of keeping increases below 2 percent of the total.

Over the life of a project, having a more efficient building recoups those up-front costs, Marfi added.

WHAT'S NEXT

Anticipating demand for workers, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday announced $27 million in grants for programs that will train students in hands-on jobs such as installing solar panels, maintaining electric vehicles and researching technology. The San Bernardino Community College District received $869,651 for green-building pre-apprenticeship programs.

Pasqual Gutierrez, whose firm HMC Architects designed the Woodcrest library, said how soon the green building boom happens will depend on the consumer.

Marfi said people just need to see some successful projects as proving grounds, then "it's going to be a frenzy after that."

For Monty Hempel, director of the University of Redlands' Center for Environmental Studies, the proving ground has been his department's building. Opened in 2005 and LEED-certified in 2006, it is partly underground, with an open courtyard, rooftop plantings and benches made of recycled sidewalks.

The proof came when people from other programs started asking if they could hold their classes in the building.

Visitors marveled that a partly subterranean building gets so much light, and at its other features, Hempel said.

"They didn't expect that it would be so quiet, that we would have hummingbirds in our courtyard almost within weeks of opening," he said.

Reach Alicia Robinson at 951-368-9461 or arobinson@PE.com