Energy efficient innovation: Overcoming financial barriers

The inability to overcome financial barriers has crippled building professionals from implementing innovative and sound solutions in building projects, particularly when an environmental agenda is involved. This paper examines architectural endeavors in Europe, North America and Asia that emphasize energy efficiency and highlights the five circumstances from which financial obstacles emerge: (1) components interdependency, (2) speculative financial return, (3) lowest cost focused, (4) neglected innovative effort, and (5) financial misallocation. Plausible strategies for overcoming such barriers are proposed.