energy efficiency

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McKinsey & Co: Energy Efficiency is Like Free Money

August 4, 2009 in analysis, business benefits, energy efficiency, integrative design by nils | Add your comment

Reflection

We're leaving money on the table by not improving energy efficiency (image by pfala, CC 2.5 licensed)

Would you spend $520 to save $1,200? That's the choice McKinsey & Co is offering to the U.S. about energy efficiency. In their new report on energy efficiency, released last week, McKinsey shows how the U.S. can reduce its non-transportation energy use by 23%, eliminate the emissions of 1.1 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually, and save $1,200 billion, for a cost of about $520 billion.

They do recognize that achieving these results requires some new thinking on our parts:

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We Must Reduce Energy Use, Not Just CO2 Emissions, To Prevent Catastrophic Global Warming

July 15, 2009 in analysis, carbon mitigation, energy generation, solar electricity, solar thermal by nils | 2 comments

playing with fire

Playing With Fire (image by charles chan, CC 2.0 license)

An article in Sunday's Science Daily reports on research showing that more than half of the Earth's warming since the dawn of the industrial age is due to the heat released from our energy use, not atmospheric warming due to the greenhouse effect.

While the greenhouse effect is still a significant contributor - and will become more so as GHG levels in the atmosphere rise - simply the heat released when burning fuels is also being stored in the atmosphere, as well as in the earth, sea, and arctic ice.

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Roundup: This Week’s Classics

April 27, 2009 in energy efficiency, green building by nils | Add your comment

Links

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:

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Passive House Presentation In San Francisco Thursday 23 April

April 22, 2009 in green building by nils | 1 comment

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

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.

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My “Testimony” at Menlo Park City Council Last Night

April 22, 2009 in policy by nils | Add your comment

Menlo Park City Council Chambers Sign

Menlo Park City Council Chambers Sign

I went to the Menlo Park City Council meeting last night to provide an in-person comment on their Climate Action Plan (CAP) draft. The draft has been circulating for comments for a few months and last night was the presentation of the comments from council staff to the council. As you may recall, my friend architect Matt Harris and I provided a comment on the CAP.

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Report and Insights From The Passive House Conference – Part 1

April 20, 2009 in energy efficiency, green building by nils | 6 comments

This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series Passive House Conference 2009
A school in Reidberg, Germany, built using the passive house approach

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.
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Individual Action Is Not Enough

March 26, 2009 in agriculture, analysis, energy efficiency, green building, opinion, policy by nils | Add your comment

Someone entered this topic in an online forum to which I subscribe:

The main problem with lowering the carbon level is down to individuals, to behaviour, to good citizenship and that is the biggest challenge of all... how many times to you see careless behaviours? how do you change that?

I just had to respond. I think this attitude is the best way to make sure that end in the end, nothing good happens. I'm reprinting my comment on the topic below, unedited (even though you all know about passive houses already).

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How Should Local Planning Commissions Reward Energy Efficiency?

March 20, 2009 in analysis, energy efficiency, policy by nils | 2 comments

SATOR Magic square

It's code for something! (Image by Marco Fedele, CC 2.0 licensed)

As I discussed in my earlier post, Code changes and incentives are critical for energy independence, it's going to be tough to change the energy efficiency of our building stock until building and planning commissions provide incentives to owners and builders to take those extra steps, and spend that extra money.

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Code Changes And Incentives Are Critical For Energy Independence

March 18, 2009 in accelerating change, energy efficiency, green building by nils | 1 comment

Clovers at Blarney Castle Garden

Clovers at Blarney Castle

Patricia hit the nail on the head in her last post, No Blarney here! - Turning up the Heat:

Where are the codes and incentives?

Or rather, how do we get people to build and renovate houses to energy efficiency levels that are significantly above code?

The Architecture 2030 website has a great reference on how much beyond code you must build to achieve their interim and final energy efficiency goals. For example, in California's we have a new 2008 version of the energy efficiency code, usually called "Title 24." To meet the Architecture 2030 interim goal of buildings that use half as much energy as their conventional peers (the "initial 50% reduction target"), buildings in California need to be 10% more efficient than required by this new building code.

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Slideshows About The Passive House Concept

March 17, 2009 in energy efficiency, green building by nils | Add your comment

Bronwyn Barry's Passive House Conference Report

Bronwyn Barry's Passive House Conference Report

I was contacted the other day by Bronwyn Barry, a designer and rater at Quantum Builders, and a member of the Passive House California organization up in Berkeley, so I did what any normal internet user would do - I Googled her. And I was excited to find, as one of the first results, a slideshow she'd made and put up on Slideshare. It's a trip report from her visit to the 3rd Annual North American Passive House Conference held in Duluth last November. And, not only is Bronwyn's presentation there, but there are several others, including one from Tim Eian, a German-born architect now working in Minnesota, and several others:

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