A quarter-century ago, in the wake of America’s first energy crisis, a young scientist named Amory Lovins came to the Rocky Mountains and built himself a radical house based on a radical idea. The country could save both energy and money, he believed, by combining common sense and unconventional technology.

Mr. Lovins did achieve substantial energy savings, and many of his innovations, from better insulation to multiple-pane windows to more-efficient refrigerators, eventually became familiar fixtures in American homes….

Now, Mr. Lovins has completed a renovation that he hopes will demonstrate how much more energy-efficient houses can become. But the project also serves as a reminder of the still-enormous gulf between what is technologically possible and what society is able or willing to pay for….

Some of his proudest advances stem from mundane changes. He installed an electric stove made by a Swiss company that is 60% more efficient than other models he found. The savings stem partly from pots designed specifically for the stove. The pots eliminate warping that typically occurs with copper cookware, wasting heat.

He also has shaved energy use by insisting on an unconventional plumbing design. Typically, residential pipes that carry water would be ½-inch wide and turn at right angles. But that builds up friction, requiring electric pumps to work harder to propel the water. So Mr. Lovins had ¾-inch-wide pipes installed that run diagonally across ceilings and walls to minimize friction.

“If it looks pretty,” he says, “it probably doesn’t save energy.”

Source: Climate Progress

Keep it Green

Greencon

There are roughly 85,000 supermarkets in America.  Generally speaking, they are artificially lit boxes surrounded by dark asphalt and contain row upon row of doorless display refrigerators.  There is, to say the least, room for improvement.  Hannaford, which has about 160 supermarkets in the northeast, decided to try something completely new and on July 25th opened the first LEED Platinum certified supermarket, which is located in Augusta, Maine.  With Maine’s governor, John Baldacci, in attendance, the plaque was personally awarded at the opening by Rick Fedrizzi, president of the USGBC.

Southern Liberties, LLC, recently completed a massive overhaul of this Philadelphia rowhouse and documented the process on the blog, Building Green on Montrose.  The 100-year old, 1,850 square foot home now has three bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms, and the owners hope to obtain LEED Platinum certification for their efforts.  It’s listed for sale at $565,000 and incorporates some of the following green strategies:

Beginning today, the Swedes are trying to get the European Union back on track toward improving its energy efficiency.

At an informal meeting of energy and environmental ministers from the 27 E.U. member states that starts today in Åre, Sweden, the host country hopes to refocus the other European states on what it calls “eco-efficiency.”

In addition, the Swedes, who currently hold the E.U. presidency, will stress the need for Europe to be unified in its goals ahead of U.N. climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark, this winter, said Johanna Martin, a spokeswoman for Sweden’s energy minister, Maud Olofson.

“We’re looking at how to make sure the European Union comes to Copenhagen speaking with one voice,” Martin said. “We are facing challenges with the economic recession, and we still need an ambitious and good agreement in Copenhagen.”

The European Union must adapt, said Sweden’s environment minister, Andreas Carlgren, while previewing the meetings.

“If we are to manage climate change with growing economies, we must adapt the way we build, live and move around,” Carlgren said. “Global demand for environmental solutions that contribute to that transformation will be great. By adapting early, the E.U. can gain a competitive edge while doing our bit for the climate.”

As part of its efficiency push, the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, released regulations for electrical appliances yesterday that, combined, will save power equal to the annual consumption of Sweden and Austria. Unlike directives, which E.U. countries may modify according to national demands, regulations are enforced as is throughout the region.

The regulations affect industrial motors, circulators, televisions, refrigerators and freezers and project to save 135 terrawatt-hours of electricity each year by 2020. For example, only TVs that currently have above-average efficiency will be allowed on the market by late next year.

The design specifics come as the union has lagged in its overall efficiency goal of cutting electricity consumption by 20 percent. Unlike its other prominent initiatives — which promise to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent and employ 20 percent renewable power by 2020 — the efficiency mandate is not binding on the E.U. member states.

The nonbinding nature of the mandate has produced what might best be described as lollygagging on energy efficiency. Last year, surveying what legislation had already been passed, the commission concluded that Europe was on track to achieve an energy savings of 13 percent by 2020.

As part of its efforts to increase that percentage, the Swedish presidency will push for the implementation of three efficiency directives, Martin said. The first will implement a labeling system for car tires, highlighting fuel-efficient brands, and the second will improve labeling on all household electric goods.

“We do have labeling today, but we’re looking at how to make it easier to understand for consumers and producers,” Martin said.

Perhaps most difficult to put together will be a revised directive focused on buildings, which account for 40 percent of European energy consumption. The European Parliament, which is composed of regional lawmakers directly elected from the member states, passed a preliminary bill calling for buildings to produce as much energy as they produce by 2019.

Many European governments find the Parliament’s position economically infeasible and will fight any attempt to include the provision in a final directive.

Source: Scientific American

Keep it Green

Greencon

Buried deep within the 1,428-page American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) bill, is Section 201, pages 320–348. It is this section that makes H.R. 2454 worth passing.

No matter what else is compromised or changed in the climate bill now working its way through the Senate, Section 201 must not be changed or weakened.

Why? Because all other energy and emissions reduction approaches pale in comparison to what Section 201 will accomplish. Without it, we simply cannot meet the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets called for in the bill. We won’t even come close.

Section 201 covers building energy codes – that’s right, building energy codes – that will transform the entire built environment in the United States by 2050. That’s because Section 201 affects all new building and major renovations. By 2050, more than three-quarters of the built environment in the U.S. will be either new or renovated.

Section 201 requires updating national building energy codes to meet the following energy reduction targets:

• in 2010, 30% below the baseline energy code (IECC 2006 and ASHRAE 90.1-2004),

• in 2014-2015, 50% below the baseline energy code, and

• every three years after, out to 2029-2030, an additional 5% reduction.

The targets outlined in Section 201 are simply more effective than any other energy and emissions reduction approach. The graphs compare Section 201 with the call by some in Congress for a massive U.S. effort to build 100 new nuclear power plants in an attempt to move the country toward energy independence and significant greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

The proof is in the data. There’s simply no comparison.

Whereas the 100 nuclear power plants only act as a replacement energy source, the updated building energy codes of Section 201 actually reduce energy consumption, eliminating the need for more plants. The codes also achieve more than six times the emissions reductions as 100 nuclear power plants. The codes accomplish all of this at a fraction of the cost.

Here are the facts:

• Since June 2006, over 60,000 new homes have been designed, built, and certified to meet a minimum 50% energy reduction below the baseline energy code for heating and cooling.

• Studies by the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory illustrate that meeting a 30% residential energy consumption reduction target below code will save households in every region of the U.S. between $403 and $612 per year after the cost of efficiency measures is factored in.

• At current energy prices and mortgage interest rates, NREL estimates that the average cost-neutral point for home efficiency upgrades is a 45% energy reduction below code.

The targets in Section 201 are set at a reasonable and beneficial pace for change that will achieve the reductions necessary within the timeline called for by the scientific community. Implementing these targets will reduce building sector energy consumption by:

• 18.35 Quadrillion Btus from projected 2030 levels (the equivalent of approximately 240 1,000-MW power plants), saving consumers an estimated $218 billion in annual energy bills (2007 dollars),

• 18.7% below 2005 levels by 2030, and

• 40.4% below 2005 levels by 2050.

Implementing the targets in Sec. 201 would also reduce building sector CO2 emissions by:

• 20.3% below 2005 levels by 2030 and

• 48.8% below 2005 levels by 2050, leaving only 34% of President Obama’s 83% building sector reduction target to be accomplished with other clean energy sources.

It is clear that the building energy code targets set in Section 201 are not only essential for achieving the energy consumption and GHG emissions reductions needed, but that they also are the most cost effective approach for doing so.

What about China and India? The U.S., through our multi-national architecture and engineering design firms, heavily influence the global built environment. As our firms move the U.S. built environment into the 21st century they will, in both practice and influence, move China’s and India’s as well (see a list of multi-state and national firms that have adopted the 2030 Challenge in Appendix B of the Architecture 2030 Fact Sheet).

To read Architecture 2030’s complete analysis of H.R. 2454, Section 201 with sources and citations, download the Architecture 2030 Fact Sheet.

For high resolution versions of the graphs accompanying this article, please see:

U.S. Building Sector Energy Consumption Projections (2005-2050)

http://www.architecture2030.org/news/images/Energy_2005-2050_LG.jpg

U.S. Building Sector CO2 Emissions Projections (2005-2050)

http://www.architecture2030.org/news/images/CO2_2005-2050_LG.jpg

Keep it Green

Greencon

In a recent press release, PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. (NYSE: PNC) announced plans to install a 2,380 square-foot, soil-based living wall on the southerly exterior of the company’s Pittsburgh headquarters building, One PNC Plaza.  The living wall, pending municipal approval and installation in September 2009, will be the largest green living wall in North America.  Produced by Green Living Technologies and designed byMingo Design, a careful arrangement of locally-sourced plants will brand the building with PNC’s logo.

PNC will have the 24-ton wall mounted directly onto One PNC Plaza with a panel system and stainless steel bracketing.  The irrigation system — which is estimated to require only 15 minutes of watering per week — is built into 602 panels of soil-based growth medium.

Certainly, the wall will provide cooling benefits for the building, but there’s also an element of exhibition at play.  PNC Director of Corporate Real Estate, Gary Saulson, commented, “The wall will be a fitting reminder that PNC is the world-leader in green building.”  PNC has a large inventory of green buildings and bank branches, of which, we’ve mentioned Three PNC Plaza and 800 17th Street / PNC Place.  The company is actively engaged in this space, so we’ll try to mention more of what’s going on, particularly with their green bank branches.

Source: Jetson Green

From 1990-2005, Europe was the only region of the world that managed to reduce its per-capita carbon footprint while increasing its standard of living.

How did the Europeans do it?

One big answer is the European city. The majority—76 percent—of Europeans are “urbanized.” These aren’t the mass-transit-less cities blighted by what the United Nations calls “low-density suburbs surrounding city cores, commonly referred to as ‘urban sprawl’.”

They’re on a totally different model—livable, dense cores, with excellent mass-transit systems. Turin, Italy, and Bordeaux, France, have invested billions of euros in a network of trams with links to the high-speed intercity European railway network. In Bordeaux, traffic has dropped by 30 percent. With fewer cars on the road, bicycling is far more pleasant: ridership has tripled. Turin, meanwhile, has been re-structuring its inner city, restoring it to architectural prominence.

On a smaller scale, Güssing, Austria, has cut its carbon emissions by over 90 percent simply by banning fossil-fuel use for public buildings, and it uses an innovative technology to convert waste-wood to natural gas. There’s a lesson there for those wary of command-and-control measures—they sometimes work just fine.

In Germany, Freiburg uses a command-and-control directive to make energy efficiency for homes mandatory: German law stipulates a maximum waste of 75 kilowatt-hours per square meter, “roughly a quarter of the energy lost from a typical Victorian house in Britain,” but in early 2008 Freiburg was mandating 65kWh/m2, while contemplating lower figures. The city’s inhabitants rely on trams and bicycles to move about town, using car-shares when necessary.

Other German cities have simply banned older automobiles and trucks, an approach Amsterdam has emulated. The absence of such older vehicles means less particulate matter in the air, making cities that much more livable—and healthier too.

Last year, Milan passed anti-congestion legislation, charging vehicles up to 10 Euro to enter the city center. Letizia Moratti, Milan’s mayor, has publicly predicted a 30 percent reduction in pollution and a 10 percent reduction in traffic. Electric and hybrid cars are permitted to enter the restricted zone without paying a fee of any kind. The money the tax raises is funneled toward buses, cycle paths, and green vehicles.

The legislation essentially copies the ground-breaking London anti-congestion scheme, implemented in 2003, which has successfully reduced both traffic and carbon dioxide emissions in the London metro area.

Such initiatives have contributed to a groundswell of support across the European urban landscape for radical approaches to climate change on a decentralized, municipal scale.

Several months ago, over 350 mayors across Europe signed onto a covenant to reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020, including large, core metropolises such as Paris, Brussels, Rome, Stuttgart, Barcelona and Nottingham. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg supported the idea. It’s worth noting that the massive northeast conurbation that includes New York City had one of the smallest carbon footprints in the United States in 2005.

This is in line with studies such as the one carried out by David Dodman that have suggested that urban areas in general emit far less carbon-emissions per-capita than non-urban areas. Per-capita emissions in New York and Barcelona are only a third of the national average for the U.S. and Spain, respectively, and those of London are around half of Britain’s national average.

The lessons are clear. As urban theorist Mike Davis notes,

The city is our ark in which we might survive the environmental turmoil of the next century. Genuinely urban cities are the most environmentally efficient form of existing with nature that we possess because they can substitute public luxury for private or household consumption.

However, Davis’s view is somewhat gloomier than that suggested by optimistic studies of urban per-capita greenhouse emissions like Dodson’s. Cities draw much of their consumption from agricultural or manufacturing hinterlands, with supply chains thousands of miles long. Anyone looking at the “made in X East Asian city” sticker on most manufactured goods, knows this. The carbon-cost of such goods is often counted in the producing and not the consuming location.

It is for such reasons that restructuring cities’ infrastructures must go hand-in-hand with a restructuring of regional planning. Cities must be both “genuinely urban,” as Davis writes, and surrounded by greenbelts, the “agricultural estates” of the city that urban critic and polymath Lewis Mumford spent his life advocating. Such a style of planning will result in much shorter supply chains—and is probably part of the reason Latin America’s countries, robust food producers, have such low carbon-footprints.

It’s a big change, but far from an impossible one.

Source: Solve Climate Blog

Keep it Green

Greencon

When you think of manufactured homes, you might think of the ranch house with vinyl siding that you gingerly pass on the interstate as it travels on the back of a wide-load truck.  You might also think about a LEED Platinum home and imagine a roof spotted with photovoltaic panels, windmill in the front yard, and geothermal dug deep into the ground.  The newest offering from New World Home turns both of these ideas on their heads.

This home in Cobb County Georgia is the first LEED Platinum factory-built home in Georgia and the first in Georgia to obtain Platinum certification without the aid of renewable energy sources (cf. RainShine House).  Moreover, the home earned EarthCraft Gold certification, as well the the National Green Building Certification Gold, which is administered by he NAHB Research Center.  The house has:

• Spray foam insulated walls and rafter;
• FSC wood from sustainably harvest forests;
• Pre-cast, insulated concrete foundation;
• Energy Star rated doors, windows, roof, ceiling fans, and appliances;
• Low-flow WaterSense fixtures and tankless water heaters;
• Gutters that collect 100% of rainwater for irrigation;
• Low or no VOC paints, adhesives, and finishes; and
• Non-added formaldehyde cabinets, floors, and trim.

New World Home calls the design platform New Old Green Modular (NOGM or “Nogum,” if you want to say it out loud).  The platform incorporates a holistic approach to historically inspired green homes, whose models are named after famous ecologists.  The process results in homes that are manufactured, transported, erected, and finished in less than 100 days.  This allows New World Home to have a supply model similar to Dell Computer’s where the house is built on-demand.  This is different than traditional models where developers build spec homes and have to pay carrying costs waiting for the homes to sell.  It’s a model that’s catching on in this economy.

By building in a factory setting, connections can be tighter and the thermal breaks can be minimized.  Outdoor contaminants such as mold and mildew can be avoided during the building process and construction waste is easily diverted and reused.  Even the foundation is factory-made, which uses 50% less concrete and carries a 25-year warranty against water damage.

Co-Founder and President of the Product Division, Mark Jupiter, describes his rationale for not adding power generation or geothermal to his designs: “We wanted to prove a point that using a standard supply chain: Owens Corning for the windows, standard foam insulation, a standard HVAC system … that we could produce a home that uses 50 percent less energy and thousands of gallons less water.”

Photo credit: New World Home.

Using seven recycled shipping containers, architect Bernard Morin and wife Joyce Labelle built this contemporary residence in St. Adele, Quebec.  The home is the first of many to come for their new company, Maison Idekit, which will help homeowners turn containers into architecturally unique, and inexpensive, homes.  The company has two more residential projects set to break ground in the next couple months using a total of twelve container modules.

IDEKIT’s first home is 3,000 square feet with four-bedrooms.  It cost about $175,000 (R1.5m) to build and turns container design on its head.  Rather than feature the exposed containers on the exterior, the containers are exposed on the inside — you can even see serial numbers, dents, and corrugated detail in several places throughout the home.  On the outside, the home has five inches of insulation that is topped by brown wood siding.

Photo credits: Maison IDEKIT.

Source : Jetson Green

Keep it Green

Greencon

By SUSAN SAULNY