If this school were sitting a zero-carbon design exam it would get a very good mark. Take a look at its answer paper. Use of proven low energy design methodologies: tick. Use of robust construction techniques: tick. Use of renewable technologies with very generous government grants: tick. Potential to form a standardised design for use in other schools: tick. Future-proofed against climate change: tick.

Passivhaus school design | iPHM international Passive House Magazine - 100% hand picked news

Sean Fitz of Kenn for Green has an article about cool roofs featuring the Menlo Park Green Ribbon Committee's Alex Cannara's crusade to get us all to install or retrofit cool roofs in Menlo Park and around the world:

Painting your roof white your cause this process to be greatly reduced, which in turn reduces the heat and infrared energy produced. This in turns keeps structures and areas cooler causing less energy to be expended in cooling.

But It's Delicious!

Remember when you were a kid and your Mom told you to do something "just because I said so." Didn't that make you not want to do it? But when she said "if you do it, I'll get you some ice cream!" you were much more motivated, weren't you?

Don't tell me what to do; instead, make it worth my while to do the right thing - and then I'll probably do it.

There was an interesting post a few days ago on the Consilience blog about local incentives and mandates for green buildings around the country:

I particularly like the Portland "feebate" program, which:

... allows the city to assess a fee against developers who have constructed buildings that only meet the state building code. But this fee is waived for buildings that achieve at least a Silver LEED certification. Buildings which achieve LEED Gold or Platinum certification will receive rebates for their accomplishment. This will be a self-sustaining program by using the fee revenues collected from those buildings which are not LEED certified to finance incentives for the green buildings.

The fact that the program is self-sustaining is critical in these cash-strapped times.

There are other approaches to incentives - for example, Sunnyvale's new green building program includes FAR (floor area ratio) and building height incentives for achieving goals above the base mandate; for residential buildings, the bonuses include height and density, for multi-residential, and additional lot coverage for single-family homes.

What green building mandates and incentives are you particularly excited by? Answer in the comments section.

Smokestacks (image by shoothead, CC 2.0 licensed)

Some good news from China this week, and a blueprint for addressing the huge amount of energy used, and GHG's generated, by the built environment:

• China has become the world leader in building clean coal power plants, although they have a ways to go still, according to this New York Times article.
  

  China’s improvements are starting to have an effect on climate models. In its latest annual report last November, the I.E.A. cut its forecast of the annual increase in Chinese emissions of global warming gases, to 3 percent from 3.2 percent, in response to technological gains, particularly in the coal sector, even as the agency raised slightly its forecast for Chinese economic growth.

• The World Business Council for Sustainable Development just published a report on the changes needed in the building sector - which uses 40% of our end-use energy, and contributes 40% of the greenhouse gases - to chieve the energy usage rduction goals prescribed by the IPCC. I'll be blogging more about this report later this week, but for now, here's the link to the report:
  

  “Energy efficiency is fast becoming one of the defining issues of our times, and buildings are that issue's ‘elephant in the room'. Buildings use more energy than any other sector and as such are a major contributor to climate change,” said Björn Stigson, president of the WBCSD.

• From Treehugger, a list of twitterers to follow on green building and green architecture:
  

  There are some great people twittering about the latest in eco-friendly architecture and building design. Check out a few of the people we think you should follow to stay updated.

2009 AIA Convention Registration, Moscone Center, SF (image by F.J., CC 2.0 licensed)

I got my first issue of GreenSource magazine a few days ago (a gift subscription from my daughter - well done Julia!) and it's filled with good stuff.

One of the many fun features is a page on "GreenSource Top AIA Convention Picks" - referring to the American Institute of Architects convention which was held last week in San Francisco. They list twelve sessions, from the dozens on the program, that they think would be of the most interest to their readers. Well, even though I live in the Bay Area, I missed the convention, but on the AIA convention site I found they have handouts from many of the sessions, including a number that GreenSource recommended.

On the AIA 2009 National Convention Education Seminar Materials page you can find such presentations as:

• The Art and Science of Designing to Net-Zero
• Carbon Neutral Buildings, Fact or Fiction?: Moving from Buildings to Communities
• Applications of BIM to Sustainable Design: Performative Environments, Strategies for Incorporating Green Approaches into BIM

Obviously, just having the materials is not as good as attending the sessions themselves, but they often do allow you to get a sense of the topic.

I hope the AIA keeps this page up and open to the public - it's a great resource!

Links

I surf across hundreds of articles a week as I learn more and more about green building, energy efficiency, and climate change. Most are interesting, but a few become touchstones that I end up talking about with others, and returning to again and again. Some candidates for that status that I found in the last week are below:

• In a New York Times Op-Ed, Bjorn Lomborg (of The Skeptical Environmentalist fame) argues that emissions reduction goals like the Kyoto Protocol are never going to work. Instead, we have to replace our dirty energy sources altogether with non-polluting sources. (Of course, increasing energy efficiency is a cheap way to replace half our energy usage.)
  

  Fortunately, there is a better option: to make low-carbon alternatives like solar and wind energy competitive with old carbon sources.

  Lomborg set of a firestorm of controversy when he argued in 2001 that although global warming was important, we would be much better off as a planet investing in other areas of human suffering, such as finding a cure for AIDS and wiping out malaria. He now has a more recent book about climate change specifically: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (Vintage)

• Green Building Advisor's Peter Yost describes the goals of the Thousand Home Challenge put up by Linda Wigington of Affordable Comfort.
  

  Encourage all manner of organizations to undertake deep energy retrofits, document the way in which 1,000 of these projects from all over the country achieve 70%+ total household energy savings, and develop the tools needed to make it possible to do thousands more

• In "Forgotten Pioneers of Energy Efficiency" on Green Building Advisor's "Musings of an Energy Nerd" blog, Martin Holladay describes the Saskatchewan Conservation House, built in 1977, the shining - and forgotten - example that would later influence Dr. Feist in Darmstadt to develop the PassivHaus.
  

  The nearly airtight building had triple-glazed windows, R-40 wall insulation, R-60 roof insulation, and one of the world’s first heat-recovery ventilators.

• Treehugger reports on Professor Eberhard Jochem, recently awarded the first Bayer Climate Prize. Eberhard, of the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI), has shown through his experiments and theories that improving energy efficiency 80 percent in the industrialized nations is not only possible, but profitable.
  

  More than almost any other researcher, Professor Jochem has worked out and proven that improving energy efficiency is the central lever for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the various areas of our industrialized society.

The "Hammer Man" kinetic sculpture at the Frankfurt Conference Center

On Thursday 23 April (tomorrow as I write this) I will be giving a brief talk about passive houses and my recent visit to the 13th International Passive House Conference in Frankfurt last week. The talk will be in San Francisco at the Prana Restaurant on Howard St., starting at 7pm.

[I] will provide a report on the 13th International Passive House Conference... This is the premier conference on passive homes, homes so energy-efficient that they don't require a furnace or air conditioner to keep their occupants comfortable.

This meeting is designed for those interested in green homes to meet each other and discuss the topic. It is for anyone interested in building a green home or remodeling homes with green technologies/techniques. Learn about the techniques used and meet some of the green building thought leaders in the Bay Area. Architects, professional builders, suppliers, real estate agents, and anyone else with a special love of green homes are welcome to join in the discussion to help further general knowledge and interest. A great place to meet others with similar interests!

The location is:

PRANA RESTAURANT
540 Howard St
San Francisco CA 94105
415-278-0495

For more information, visit the Green Making Meetup site.

I hope to see some of you there!

A school in Reidberg, Germany, built using the passive house approach

I got back yesterday from the 13th Annual Passive House Conference in Frankfurt, Germany. My biggest takeaways from the conference are:

• While the growth of passive houses in Europe is impressive, even in Europe there are still marketing challenges
• The opportunity to use energy efficient buildings as a hedge against climate change is immense
• We are way behind on energy efficient building here in the U.S. - in fact, essentially no one in the U.S. is doing this kind of building.

Over the next few days I'll be posting about things I learned at the conference, and also about the implications of what I saw for building - and for climate change mitigation - in the U.S.

Not only are there more than 30,000 certified Passive House buildings in Europe, representing a lot of tons of CO2 averted, their level of building science and technology is very advanced. The exhibitors showed a number of innovative insulation materials (most of which are not available in the U.S.), many different very highly efficient window and door options (most of which are not available in the U.S.), highly efficient heat recovery ventilation systems (most of which are not available in the U.S.), and several innovative building technologies (available in the U.S.? I don't think so). Even so, I thought the exhibition was remarkably small, with about 70 vendors, indicating that even in Europe, there's a huge amount of growth potential.

Several of the presentation sessions reported on studies comparing the performance of buildings constructed or renovated using the passive house approach - super-insulated, super-airtight, with heat recovery ventilation - to buildings using other energy efficiency approaches such as the European "low energy house" standard (which is more similar to U.S. energy efficiency codes). They found, as expected, that energy use in the passive house buildings, as well as comfort levels and measured air quality levels, were significantly improved. One study compared to identical apartment buildings, next to one another on the same street, one of which was renovated as a passive house, the other as a low energy house. Both buildings were instrumented with a variety of sensors, and then tracked over a two year period. The energy bills for tenants in the passive house were 1/3 those for the low energy house.

Obviously, these results reflect not only a savings for the tenants, but also a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, at a relatively low additional cost for the building.

Some future post topics:

• What do you do if you want to build a highly efficient house, using the passive house approach, in the U.S.?
• How does the passive house approach compare to other energy efficiency and "green" standards like California's Title 24, LEED, Green Point Rating, and HERS?
• How does the passive house approach work for buildings other than single-family residences?
• If passive houses are so great, how can we get more of them in the U.S., and what will it take to make a significant dent in the U.S.'s greenhouse gas emissions via energy efficient buildings?
• How do passive houses and  "zero net energy" interact?
• How about passive houses in temperate and semi-tropical climates like California and Florida, where it's not heating, but cooling, that takes the most energy?

If you have other questions about the passive house approach or the conference, let me know in the comments and I'll tell you what I know or find some answers for you.

Some of my goals include:

1. Build relationships and potential partnerships with vendors of mid-price, Passive House-certified building materials and components
2. Learn how people are building passive houses in temperate climates like Italy and Spain, that most closely resemble the climate in California
3. Learn how builders and vendors are marketing passive houses in different countries in Europe and how that can be applied here in the States
4. Create a level of excitement, vision, possibility, and expectation for turning the passive house standard into "business as usual" in California

I plan to blog several times during the conference and from Frankfurt - including lots of pictures.

A mythical character (image by Eddi 07, CC 2.0 licensed)

A handful of good articles from the past few weeks, on climate change and sustainable building.

• 'A "Manhattan project" to develop new breakthrough technologies is not a priority component of the effort to stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm.'
  Climate Progress, the "indispensible blog" according to Tom Friedman, lays down the law on what is and isn't going to solve the climate change crisis.
• Climate policy myths
  Grist Magazine's online edition is presenting, and debunking, the top myths related to climate change and the policies needed to address it.
• "Now buildings must evolve again"
  Building Sustainable Design magazine, from the UK, discusses how builders need to start reincorporating passive efficiency elements into their high-rise building designs.
• "Western European architects, engineers, and builders are ahead of us [in the U.S.] in the widespread use of passive design techniques"
  Gerry Yudelson tells us what Europeans already know about sustainable design, but we Americans either don't know or have forgotten.

I hope you find these as interesting as I did - let me know in the comments.