By late February the renewable energy industry should have direction from the Ontario government on some of the major changes ahead for the province’s landmark feed-in tariff program. “I am hoping we will have an announcement then with the megawatt (MW) targets and pricing, then new rules and contracts in March, and application processi
How do you build a (nearly) net-zero-energy suburb in 2008, at the nadir of the economic crash, when no bank in the country is convinced you’ll be able to sell your more energy-efficient but pricier?
By selling some of them cheap, apparently. That’s the solution that architect Chris Krager and civil engineer Russell M. Becker hit upon for their five-and-a-half acre Solutions Oriented Living subdivision in East Austin, Texas, reports the New York Times. Krager and Becker sold their first block of homes well below market rates to a local neighborhood development corporation, which then re-sold them at a discount to low-income buyers. That convinced the bank there was a market for super-insulated energy-efficient houses — meaning that the only remaining challenge was convincing people who want to live in a Texas subdivision that it’s no big deal if their neighbors are low-income.
But it worked — the rest of the homes sold at market rates. Buyers were attracted by the potential to heat and cool their homes with on-site geothermal wells and get their electricity from rooftop solar arrays. The homes are small by today’s standards, between 1,000 and 1,800 feet, but just right for buyers looking to right-size.
Filed under: Cities, Green Home, Infrastructure, Living, Urbanism“I figured that while we were at it, we might as well take all of our interests as a design firm and put them into one prototype project,” Mr. Krager said. He wanted to “examine sustainability on a more holistic level, that would not just look at green buildings, but in our interest in affordability, in the economic and social components of sustainability as well.”
In late 2011 President Obama announced the Better Buildings Challenge, a $4 billion program sponsored by the DOE with the support of a number of public and private sector partners. The program aims to make American buildings 20 percent more energy efficient by 2020 by directing federal agencies to engage in performance contracts (driving efficiency with zero taxpayer funds) as well as mobilizing major companies to invest in efficiency upgrades to their own buildings and plants.
The list of partners in the Better Buildings Challenge is impressive, including major building service providers such as Schneider Electric and Transwestern, as well as industrials with large building portfolios such as Saint-Gobain and General Electric. To date, 1.6 billion square feet of space have been committed to the program, and that figure will grow as more companies, government agencies, and other organizations get involved.
But is it enough to reach the 20 percent goal by 2020? Four billion dollars may sound like a lot, but some studies have indicated that reducing energy consumption in U.S. buildings will take much more than that. A 2009 study from McKinsey found that a potential $1.2 trillion in gross energy savings sit latent in the U.S building stock - but it would take $520 billion in upfront investment to unlock those savings and reduce projected energy demand by 23 percent. The amount of capital directly engaged for the Better Buildings Challenge is less than 1 percent of the $520 billion McKinsey believes is needed. So the 20 percent reduction by 2020 may be a stretch with these funds alone.
However, the announcement could have a ripple effect on the energy service company (ESCO) market and in energy efficiency investment more broadly. In the federal sector alone, President Obama has ordered federal agencies to invest $2 billion in energy efficiency. That money will likely be spread out over the next few years and will go to energy performance contracts with the 53 ESCOs qualified to do federal work. That, in turn, will put ESCOs in a better cash position to build new capacity and reach more customers.
Other emerging trends in building efficiency policy might help the U.S. chip away at the funding gap. Regulations such as PACE financing are starting to lower the bar for commercial building owners to engage in efficiency upgrades in cities from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. And commercial benchmarking laws in cities like New York and San Francisco will soon make energy efficiency even more of a differentiator in commercial real estate markets.
The Better Buildings Challenge follows shortly after the announcement of a major zero energy building initiative by the General Services Administration, the federal government's real estate manager. GSA will launch zero energy retrofits of 30 federal buildings around the United States over the next few years. The federal government has long adopted a "lead by example" approach to efficiency in commercial buildings, and these two major federal energy efficiency initiatives will help accelerate investment in efficiency not only in the public sector, but also in the private sector.
A panel formed to study solutions to increased flooding in Singapore has urged the government to require green roofs on new and retrofitted buildings. The 12-member panel, which was created after torrential rains caused flash flooding across eastern and central Singapore last year, said improved weather modeling and infrastructure improvements are needed to handle a surge in stormwater runoff caused by urbanization in Singapore. In the meantime, however, the panel urged simpler steps to reduce and delay flooding, including better storage tanks, porous pavements, and rain gardens. Such rooftop gardens, which are often added to reduce heat or for aesthetic reasons, can also absorb six to 34 liters of water per square meter and limit the spread of water flow, local contractors said. After flash floods doused large sections of Singapore last June for the second consecutive year, a government official warned that the country's existing drainage system is not equipped to handle the region's "changing" weather patterns.
Photo by Pete Hill/flickr/Creative Commons
Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360
An admirable goal, sure. But is it possible?
A report last year from the International Energy Agency (IEA) found that it’s possible to provide universal access to modern energy by 2030. The price-tag for such an ambitious achievement isn’t even that high, relatively speaking: $48 billion a year, or just 3 percent what’s currently spent on global energy.
The IEA’s vision of energy for all, though, includes a significant amount of electricity from coal and other fossil fuels. Providing universal access to energy, it says, would take around 220 gigawatts of new electricity generating capacity, with some 45 percent of that being delivered via extensions to existing national grids. Of that additional grid-delivered energy, more than 60 percent would come from fossil fuels, the IEA figures.
Clearly, sustainable energy for all is an even taller order. But can it be done?
The UN believes it can, if the goal of universal energy access is coupled with two other targets: doubling the rate of improvement in energy efficiency and doubling the share of renewable energy globally.
If we can go from almost no mobile communications to more than 5.3 billion cellphones in use in just two decades, there’s reason to believe energy could undergo a similar transformative change, says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.
“Twenty years ago, the idea of universal access to mobile communication would have seemed preposterous,” he said last fall upon announcing the Sustainable Energy for All initiative. “A similar paradigm may next emerge in distributed energy generation.”
Making that happen is more than possible, Ki-Moon believes … it’s imperative.
“At a time when so many economies are struggling, some may claim that sustainability is a luxury we cannot afford,” he said. “But the opposite is true: Depleting our natural resources will deplete our chances of true prosperity. We need to reduce global emissions, conserve the wealth of nature, empower the world’s most vulnerable populations, and catalyze low-carbon prosperity for all. None of this will be possible without a clean energy revolution.”
Does Canada need more energy supply or more insulation? Clearly, this is a gross simplification but it is estimated that almost a third of Canada's current energy consumption is used for heating and cooling buildings and homes. This number could be cut in half with proper conservation initiatives.
