Jim Nicolow	- Download MP3-

While Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb may have transformed civilization, it turns out that sunlight actually can be better than the plugged-in kind.

Green building expert James A. Nicolow says there are numerous ways that naturally-occurring, free daylight can be incorporated into new and old Chattanooga buildings to improve energy efficiency.

“You have a lot of great historic buildings that in many cases were designed before the 1920s, when we tended to daylight buildings and think of windows as a way to introduce light into a building as opposed to just a view,” he said.

Mr. Nicolow, principal and director of sustainable development for architecture firm Lord Aeck & Sargent, will talk about “daylighting” Wednesday at the monthly meeting of the Chattanooga affiliate of the U.S. Green Building Council.

Daylighting involves controlling sunlight through the placement of windows and other surfaces to reduce the need for artificial lighting, which can generate a great deal of heat and energy use. Electrical energy use can be more than cut in half by taking advantage of daylighting, Mr. Nicolow said.

“In commercial and industrial projects, the single largest energy user is the lighting and associate cooling loads of that artificial lighting, so daylighting offers a huge opportunity to improve energy efficiency in buildings,” he said. “We knew how to daylight buildings before we had computers, so part of it’s just remembering what we used to do as a society before we had cheap electricity and artificial lighting.”

Mr. Nicolow has led numerous sustainability projects around the country, including the $7 million Blue Ridge Visitor’s Center in Asheville, N.C. and a $3.4 million project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

The concept of daylighting is something that few people realize is easy to do, said Anj McClain, director of Chattanooga’s GreenSpaces Resource Center. She said she hopes people leave Mr. Nicolow’s presentation with some ideas of how to incorporate daylighting into existing buildings or future projects.

“The way we build buildings now does not take into account things like daylighting,” Ms. McClain said. “We think more about aesthetics and (what) a building costs, and don’t take into account whole building design and what daylighting can bring and how it can save money on energy and on lighting.”

When it comes to Chattanooga’s progress toward sustainability and green building, Mr. Nicolow said, the Scenic City has distinguished itself has a regional leader in sustainable design.

“It seems like you don’t go that long without reading about something that’s happening in Chattanooga related to sustainability,” he said. “Nobody’s talking about new projects without in some way addressing green now in Chattanooga, and that’s a pretty exciting time.”

If you go

* What: Monthly meeting of the Chattanooga affiliate of the U.S. Green Building Council

* When: 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. today

* Where: Loose Cannon Studios, 1800 Rossville Ave.

* Cost: $10 for members, $13 for non-members, lunch provided