Building for energy efficiency

The 10^th Biennial Conference on Business and the Environment was held in Vancouver, British Columbia this past week involving Canada, the U.S. and Mexico concerning the construction of residential and commercial buildings.

A report issued by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation at that conference stated that “green” construction could cut North America’s climate-warming emissions faster and more cheaply than any other environmental measure.

Traditional building techniques have resulted in North America’s buildings releasing more than 2,200 megatons per year. This represents 35% of the continents total greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. If the construction industry would take advantage of currently available and emerging energy-saving technologies this figure would be reduced by 1,700 megaton emissions in 2030! A cut of this size would nearly equal the CO2 emitted by the entire U.S. transportation sector in 2000.

Taking into account the life-expectancy of a building, residential or commercial, we would be taking a huge step toward preventing a very large chunk of future greenhouse gas emissions.

We already know it works. Newly built green buildings routinely reduce energy usage by 30-50% over conventional buildings, so these figures are not just ‘blue-sky’ theory. The most efficient buildings perform more than 70% better than conventional properties.

Municipalities around the world are getting the message and taking steps to ease the transition toward a more responsible habitation with our environment.

European Union leaders have agreed to commit to legislation setting firm targets for a 20% reduction on CO2 emissions before 2020. They have also agreed to reduce energy imports, liberalize internal energy markets to increase competition, reduce taxes on environmentally friendly products, and to achieve world leadership in renewable energy technologies.

Kate from Hills and Plains Seedsavers informed me recently that her home town of Adelaide in South Australia, has passed an ordinance that requires all new construction have rain water collection systems built into the home. Yeah! Great Idea! How about going a bit further and requiring all new buildings, residential as well as commercials have solar power panels installed. A good point she brought up would be to have money collected on your electricity bill go towards having them installed on every existing and new homes.

Back in the U.S., ten states have been identified as the best for solar power, but its not based solely on number of sunny days. The criteria for getting on this list is rebate programs, loans, tax exemptions, regulatory policies, and strong support for setting renewable energy usage targets.

A number of cities around the country, including San Francisco, Boston, Seattle and Scottsdale, Arizona, are leading the way with laws that require new public buildings to be green. So far, 54 cities and 23 federal agencies have adopted LEED standards for buildings, says Bill Browning, senior fellow for Rocky Mountain Institute and co-author of Green Development: Integrating Ecology and Real Estate. An industry has blossomed around the concept. At least 12,000 people, a record, attended the GreenBuild International Conference and Expo in Denver last November.

Clean Energy States Alliance tells us that more states are turning toward solar thermal heat and hot water heating, because of their efficiency and affordability, as well as their stable technology, and focusing on affordable housing to expand the market for solar.

The marketplace is always ready to supply us with what we need.

There are several companies that are currently making roofing shingles out of solar panel material. This one comes from OkSolar. Another step in the right direction.

Open Energy Corp has innovated the use of solar panels by embedding its “SolarSave” panels onto 4-foot-long plates that roofers can attach to wood, without needing an electrician which in turns can minimize labor costs.

Why aren’t we mandating these types of forward thinking improvements into new construction? Just adding better insulation and sealing cracks around windows and doors isn’t cutting it anymore. Consumers are a pretty savvy bunch. We know these products are out there. We know prices are coming down because of the proliferation of the technology. We also know that by changing the way in which buildings are currently being constructed we can save not only future money in lowered HVAC bills but cut down on the amount of carbon dioxide our buildings put into our atmosphere.

So what’s the hold up?

Green construction often adds less than one percent to the cost of a conventional building, but the payoffs can include energy costs cut by one-third.

Residential builders are slow to catch on to the trend, as they tend to look at what sold yesterday when deciding what to build today. Homebuilders mostly use the same means, methods and materials used 30 years ago. Architects and designers are rarely employed for homebuilding, and most would eagerly jump at the chance to design an energy efficient building. Small companies build most houses and they can’t afford architects, so it’ll take a while for the green trend to filter down.

This is a radical change to traditional building practices so naturally resistance is to be expected. People want energy efficiency but are not willing to pay for customized homes. What we need are a few brave small building companies to build these ‘customized’ homes in hopes that they will become the norm. This will lead the way to more companies selling this type of home and before too long everyone will be building them.

Another problem is the trend towards over-sized houses some of them outfitted with a full-body shower spraying more than 20 gallons of water per minute—enough to fill an entire bathtub in one minute. This type of extravagance should be taxed heavily to make the purchase of them less attractive, in my opinion. “Every three people putting in these shower systems negates the efforts of 100 people putting in efficient products,” wrote Alex Wilson, president of Vermont-based BuildingGreen, executive editor of Environmental Building News and author of Your Green Home. Federal regulations require low-flow, 2.5-gallon-a-minute showerheads. Yet these new multiple-head systems spray 10 times as much or more, “a small portion of which may briefly contact your body,” Wilson wrote, “en route from your water heater to your sewer line.”

“You can build a pretty mediocre house from an energy standpoint at 1,200 square feet and it will probably use a lot less energy than a state-of-art green home that is 3,500 square feet. And that’s a factor we need to be conscious of,” Wilson says.

Okay, so it’s clear that the green building movement is growing and it’s equally clear that not everybody cares about the environment, but those of us who do should be able to do something about it without it financially ruining us. Obstacles remain but it is vital to our health as well as the health of the planet that we not be discouraged. Toronto-based designer Bruce Mau, keynote speaker at the Building Energy ‘05 conference in Boston said “Now that modern technology has put us in a position that we can do anything, what will we do?”