October 7, 2009

Energy Efficiency vs. Renewables: The Great Green Debate

by Environmental Building Strategies in Energy, Renewable Energy Tags: energy, Renewable Energy, Solar No Comments

With the recent surge in money going towards renewable energy research and implementation, many people are forgetting a key factor in reducing our impact on the environment: energy efficiency.

Utilizing renewable energy in your home or commercial building is great, don’t get me wrong, but before this expensive option is employed, you should first look at the efficiency of your home or building’s energy systems.

If your building wastes energy, you should prioritize improving this aspect and use the money that you had set aside for a renewable project to accomplish the task.

Once you have collected enough savings from the efficiency retrofits, you can look to implement a renewable energy generation system. By following this succession your system can be sized accurately, and your benefit to the environment, the ultimate goal of all these measures, will be significantly better.

Benefits of Energy Efficiency

In the United States, buildings use 72 percent of electricity consumption, 39 percent of energy use, and produce 38 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions.

If we, as a nation, are looking to decrease our C02 emissions and conserve energy and electricity, we should look no further than the existing buildings in our country.

Recently, as new construction projects have been on the decline, the opportunity to retrofit existing buildings has been increasing. There is vast potential for energy savings in these buildings, which makes them prime project candidates.

A study done by a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist claimed that commissioning all of the nation’s commercial buildings would yield the greatest energy savings per dollar spent of any option, including wind and solar energy production. Commissioning involves fine tuning a building’s existing energy systems to improve performance and eliminate wasteful energy use.

After commissioning the building, and saving tons of CO2, energy and money, you can determine what systems need retrofitting.

The fact that commissioning alone has the potential to save the most energy per dollar spent just shows the prospective savings that upgrading a building’s energy systems would create. In the near future, all existing building upgrades should be green focused, as it not only makes environmental sense but economic sense as well.

The same Lawrence Berkeley study claims that $30 billion dollars in energy costs and 300 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions can be saved a year by existing building retrofit projects with paybacks of one year or less.

Renewables

Let’s be honest, renewable generation doesn’t always make economic sense. This is why federal, state and local municipalities have set up generous rebate and tax credit systems to offset the costs. Even with these savings measures, many solar and wind projects have long paybacks.

Take San Francisco, for example. On top of the 30 percent federal solar rebate and the California Solar Initiative rebate (currently at $1.10 per watt for commercial and residential solar installations), San Francisco offers a $1,500 rebate per kilowatt up to 10 kilowatts.

With all of these rebates you are still looking at 10 to 15 years or more to recoup initial costs. Ten years is not bad, but compare this to energy efficiency retrofit projects, which typically have paybacks of one to five years and produce significant energy and cost savings, and it doesn’t seem to make monetary sense to choose solar installation first.

What does make sense is to evaluate and implement efficient upgrades into your building or home and then look to install renewable energy generation down the line. That way, when you do implement the photovoltaic cells or wind turbine they can be smaller, less ambitious projects that still produce the same percentage of your buildings energy use as was initially desired.

If you use 30 percent less energy after the retrofits, you can make the renewable installation 30 percent smaller.

Success

There has been some success in getting government money to the energy efficiency sector. On September 14 the Department of Energy announced that it would allocate $454 million from the stimulus bill to a new program called “Retrofit Ramp-up.”

The initiative will save $100 million dollars a year in energy savings, according to the Department of Energy. It’s initially focused on whole-neighborhood efficiency retrofit programs that will produce significant cost effective solutions, especially ones that incorporate both public and private buildings.

The department’s hope is that these projects will provide successful sustainable business models for the rest of the country to follow.

The program provides funds to states, U.S. territories, counties, cities and Indian tribes to improve energy efficiency in the building and transportation sector. These entities have to fill out documentation explaining their project and how it will improve efficiency in their community. The applications are then reviewed by the Department of Energy and accepted or declined based upon the merits and potential energy savings of the project.

This is one of several programs funded by the stimulus bill that can be applied to energy efficiency retrofits. There is also a specific appliance upgrade program for residences that is quite comprehensive.

The future

The future seems extremely promising for all the green industries as many policy makers are starting to jump on the sustainable bandwagon. My hope is that the energy efficiency sector does not get overlooked. It may not be as flashy or exciting as renewable energy production but it is equally important. It is also a great place to start improving our eco-friendly practices and it is where money should begin funneling to first.

Once improvements are made in this sector it will be easier to move forward with renewable energy generation, especially small-scale on-site generation. As many buildings start to follow this model, the public will see renewable energy as a more viable and inexpensive solution to our current environmental situation.

In addition to energy savings, the energy efficiency sector has the potential to create a huge number of jobs. At a time when unemployment is rising above 10 percent in many states, job creation is exactly what our country needs. Estimates are that the existing building retrofits market is likely to be a $400 billion dollar industry, and it only makes sense.

Wouldn’t you move forward quickly with a project if you knew it would pay for itself in five years or less? Considering a huge portion of the existing 5 million commercial buildings in the United States could undergo retrofit projects and each project would employ construction workers, engineers, architects, project managers and planners, this industry alone could ignite job growth nationwide.

In light of the recent CO2 reduction benchmarks that are being pushed by President Obama (which will hopefully be more robust after the Copenhagen Conference), we need to act now. If the future of energy production is rooted in the success of renewable generation, the means to get to that end is energy efficiency retrofits.

— EBS Team —

March 2, 2009

Water – you’ll be drinking sh*% soon (literally)

by Environmental Building Strategies in Green Building, Uncategorized Tags: green, Renewable Energy, sustainability, waste, water 1 Comment

So a couple things are on my mind this week. The main one is water however. To date this blog has focused quite a bit on energy, materials, and sustainability however we’ve lacked on the water subject.

Since Karolina let me on to this movie FLOW I’ve been newly recharged to change the world. I can’t express in words how important it is that you see this documentary. It discusses the critical nature of our current water supply in a global context.

It also discusses how multi-national corporations such as Coke, Nestle, and Pepsi are literally destroying aquifers where the “set up shop.” The worst part is they do this in places around the globe that can least afford it. Companies like Coke suck up water that would otherwise be provided for indigenous people and then bottle it and sell it back to them for profit. Lets just ask ourselves, “Does that make sense?” Does it make sense to pay ridiculous amounts of money for something that falls from our skies? Should we start paying for air? How about sunlight?

The greatest part about it is that this bottled water we drink is rarely ever better for our health and of course when you throw in the future impacts of the plastic bottle its stored in, you have a recipe for disaster.

Besides the film, I wanted to share some things the world is doing for water and its conservation.
In Orange County California, wastewater is being treated and discharged back into the ground water. It then is recaptured and used for drinking, showering and such. This is a really important concept because quite often wastewater and sewage is treated and dumped into our oceans. We are dumping potentially viable FRESH water in the salty oceans. An interesting note that Australia does this already – in fact I’ve heard that their President was shown on TV drinking a glass of treated water. Besides that they capture much of their rainfall and understand capture and reuse much better than Americans.

In other interesting news, Ben Block from Greener Buildings talks about how water efficiency is key to energy savings here. Also on Greener Buildings is an interesting article about a mobile transportation device for wastewater treatment. That article can be found here.

Thats about all I have for now – I will leave you with this interesting tidbit I learned…

An investment in wind power produces almost three times as many jobs as the same investment in coal power. And an investment in solar power produces almost four times as many jobs, and energy efficiency, almost thirty times as many jobs as coal power.

–The EBS Team

December 12, 2008

The tipping point for mainstream green is coming!!!

by Environmental Building Strategies in Green Building, Renewable Energy, Uncategorized Tags: Green Building, Renewable Energy No Comments

What do you think the tipping point will be? Most trends start in the west and head east.

GREEN BUILDING is spreading everywhere and quickly: San Francisco, Oakland, New York, Miami, colleges like Duke and Harvard, towns such as Greenbergs Kansas, Boulder Colorado, and even resorts like Aspen are just a few examples. These areas are all a head of the curve, but many neighboring areas are developing similar and even more stringent plans.

I think the tipping point is soon and it will be when the neighboring towns that aren’t implementing green plans realize they can’t compete with a cleaner more economical way of living.

November 12, 2008

Residential Green Building can be fun!

by Environmental Building Strategies in Green Building, Renewable Energy Tags: Green Building, Reads, Renewable Energy No Comments

Couple describes building Green House!
Below are tid bits from the article –

“In addition, the house uses five Sunearth solar collectors to store the sun’s energy, a geothermal water furnace to provide cooling in summer and a backup heat source in winter, solar glass on the south and east sides of the house with overhangs to block the sun in the summer.”

“Banks do not like it,” he said. ” It doesn’t fit the standard, inefficient way of buildng. We’re so very far behind Europe.” More

November 6, 2008

Going Green (2 of 2)

by Environmental Building Strategies in Green Building, LEED Tags: Green Building, LEED, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Site, USGBC No Comments

4. “Conserve Building Materials, Reduce Construction Waste, and Sensibly Use Natural Resources.” Recycling old materials, using products like bamboo which has a short regeneration time, and focusing on attaining materials from nearby all contribute to the conservation of natural resources. 5. “Protect and Enhance Indoor Environmental Quality.” Monitoring levels of carbon dioxide as well as maintaining adequate air ventilation contribute to this environmental quality. It is also important to stray from using toxics that create a “new-building smell,” as well as to focus on aesthetics such as adequate daylight and views of the outdoors.