World Energy Use - There's No Tomorrow - Let's Fix This!

klapauzius said:

Yes, the study on better insulation found that this will save Germany 30-50 billion in the next 30 years or so. Not much, but it is a net-positive investment.
But keep in mind, the average German uses half (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) the energy the average American uses.

And that is not because of more efficient insulation, but because of LESS wastefulness. Of course Germans are not better people than Americans, when it comes to the environment.
But energy prices are much higher in Germany, which forces people to be more conservative.

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Not about insulation? Seriously?!



The newly built house I rented when I lived in Germany from Nov, '87 through Dec, '90 was not built to PassivHaus standards, and was not built with the Energiewende or Third Industrial Revolution in mind - yet it was by far the most efficient building I lived anywhere in the world. Germany's STARTING building energy efficiency is higher than the current US TARGET of LEED platinum - and there are only a couple dozen of buildings in this country at that level! I could travel more and eat out more in Germany because I didn't have to pay so much for utility bills - in spite of the per unit cost of energy!

More efficient insulation, radiant heat, thermal mass construction - that is absolutely about LESS WASTEFULNESS! :shock:

AndyH said:

The newly built house I rented when I lived in Germany from Nov, '87 through Dec, '90 was not built to PassivHaus standards, and was not built with the Energiewende or Third Industrial Revolution in mind - yet it was by far the most efficient building I lived anywhere in the world. Germany's STARTING building energy efficiency is higher than the current US TARGET of LEED platinum - and there are only a couple dozen of buildings in this country at that level! I could travel more and eat out more in Germany because I didn't have to pay so much for utility bills - in spite of the per unit cost of energy!

More efficient insulation, radiant heat, thermal mass construction - that is absolutely about LESS WASTEFULNESS! :shock:

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If you build stone houses, they are naturally better insulated than wooden houses, so yes, they are naturally better insulated than in the US.
The cost a great deal more to build also.

I guess the bottom line is this:
For new construction it is definitely worthwhile to invest in good insulation.

For existing homes, before you start thinking about insulation (unless it is non-existent), do a careful cost-benefit analysis and put your money where it saves the most energy/$....which might not be insulation.

Seattle offers energy audits and incentives for energy efficiency improvements, with the amount of incentive related to the improvements achieved. I never took one, but would be curious to see what recommendations similar audits elsewhere come up with.

klapauzius said:

If you build stone houses, they are naturally better insulated than wooden houses, so yes, they are naturally better insulated than in the US.
The cost a great deal more to build also.

I guess the bottom line is this:
For new construction it is definitely worthwhile to invest in good insulation.

For existing homes, before you start thinking about insulation (unless it is non-existent), do a careful cost-benefit analysis and put your money where it saves the most energy/$....which might not be insulation.

Seattle offers energy audits and incentives for energy efficiency improvements, with the amount of incentive related to the improvements achieved. I never took one, but would be curious to see what recommendations similar audits elsewhere come up with.

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Stone is a better conductor of heat than wood, Klap - stone is not an insulator.

I think your position accurately reflects the thoughts of most people. The point of this thread is that this position is incorrect. This is proven by RMI's deep energy retrofit info and info provided by the US and German Passive House folks for just two expert examples.

http://www.rmi.org/retrofit_depot

A deep energy retrofit is a whole-building analysis and construction process that achieves much larger energy cost savings—sometimes more than 50% reduction—than those of simpler energy retrofits and fundamentally enhances the building value.

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Here's a look at the passive house process as performed by Thorsten Chlupp, a builder in Alaska. This gent's originally from Germany and has been working with the Cold Climate Housing Research Center and building PassiveHouse buildings to Alaska. Give the first 10 minutes a watch as Thorsten gives a broad overview of US house efficiency before getting into the 'guts' of passive house construction.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtHkvpRI6fc[/youtube]
http://www.cchrc.org/

AndyH said:

Stone is a better conductor of heat than wood, Klap - stone is not an insulator.

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Thanks for pointing that out, I would never have figured that out...
Yes, I am aware of this, but we are not talking about your average medieval castle here, but about air-filled concrete blocks.

To be very precise here, both wood and stone conduct heat, albeit at very different rates.
When you retrofit, I am very curious to hear your $/sqft figures and the annual savings.

klapauzius said:

AndyH said:

Stone is a better conductor of heat than wood, Klap - stone is not an insulator.

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Thanks for pointing that out, I would never have figured that out...

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?? You're the one that said this, yes?

If you build stone houses, they are naturally better insulated than wooden houses, so yes, they are naturally better insulated than in the US.

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klapauzius said:

Yes, I am aware of this, but we are not talking about your average medieval castle here, but about air-filled concrete blocks.

To be very precise here, both wood and stone conduct heat, albeit at very different rates.
When you retrofit, I am very curious to hear your $/sqft figures and the annual savings.

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I have no desire or intention to retrofit anything so don't hold your breath waiting for my figures. I've already done a number of side-by-side comparisons of different building styles and goals, that's why I'm working toward a passive solar building made from a high percentage of natural materials. It won't be a 'slightly better than average house' that will require a ton of money thrown at it to make it 'net zero' - I'm talking about totally off grid, no furnace, no AC, no traditional HVAC system at all. It costs less per square foot than code-compliant building, is carbon negative, and if I opt for propane for the kitchen stove will have a maximum annual 'utility bill' of $100 (I don't however as I plan on a biogas digester for cooking fuel). I lived in one in New Mexico and did some maintenance work on another in East Texas and the building works well in both locations.

I'm not interested in arguing, and certainly not in 'fighting' for such a mediocre non-solutions as a McMansion with enough PV to run a small country in order to make it net-zero. That's not the point of this thread at all.

Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century
http://www.ren21.net/

Beyond the transformation of power grids and transport, many
experts also pointed to coming transformations in buildings and
construction. They noted that change could be much slower than
with power and transport, due to the long lifetimes of buildings. But
they framed transformation in terms of new renewables-integrated
building materials and components becoming standard products,
and in terms of the acceptance and adoption by architects/engineers
and developers of renewable power, heating, and cooling technologies
as standard elements of homes and commercial buildings. This
would usher in a new era of building design and construction, said
experts, including the adoption of so-called "near-zero-energy,"
"net-zero-energy," and “passive” buildings noted in Chapter 2.

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http://www.ren21.net/REN21Activities/GlobalFuturesReport.aspx

Village Homes, Davis, CA

http://www.villagehomesdavis.org/public/about

Village Homes is a seventy-acre subdivision located in the west part of Davis, California. It was designed to encourage both the development of a sense of community and the conservation of energy and natural resources. The principal designer was Mike Corbett. Construction on the neighborhood began in the fall of 1975, and construction continued from south to north through the 1980s, involving many different architects and contractors. The completed development includes 225 homes and 20 apartment units.

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This subdivision incorporates Permaculture - which uses rainwater harvesting, swales and planting to use water in the landscape, street/house orientation for passive solar building, etc.

What are some of the features of Village Homes that help it to achieve sustainability?

Many factors promote sustainable living, such as land use, runoff management, solar construction, food consumption, pest management, green architecture, etc.
We have 23 acres in greenbelts, orchards, vineyards, vegetable gardens, and edible landscape. Swales run through the Village to catch rainwater and deep water the trees planted near them. Two thirds of the homes are still active solar as well as our Community Center and our Pool. Residents may harvest fruit from common area trees and vines. Harvesting goes by the honor system; residents pick only what their families can consume. We spray only lime sulfur on our fruit trees to be as organic as possible.

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http://www.rmi.org/PDF_reducing_solar_pv_soft_costs

Wow, and I thought contractors in Germany were among the most expensive....
This graph shows labor costs, right?

UkrainianKozak said:

dgpcolorado said:

Among the claims of proponents: fusion won't produce radioactive waste like fission power. Nope, the intense radiation of the fusion reaction will make containment vessels and other process components radioactive.

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Yes, but it is much better then to have a contaminated process components then to have radioactive waste from the reaction on top of it.
You can reuse contaminated components and materials in many cases, you can't say so about radioactive waste from current nuclear plants.

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Why worry about pipe dreams, thorium salt reactors are proven 1950's technology and make 90-99% less waste than a uranium reactor, cost about the same but use less fuel, cannot support a sustained melt down and do not make plutonium in any significant portion.

Read superfuel, there are 1000's of years worth of thorium in sands throughout the US.

Also we definitely need population controls, because of our nature having the number of people on the planet that we do we are running in a massive energy deficit just to produce factory food, believe me, if we need to ACTUALLY DO THE RIGHT THING at some point and depend on crop rotations and mother nature like we did historically there will be a massive dieoff. just look at what happened in n korea after they couldn't produce enough synthetic petrochemical nitrogen fertalizer, then compare to what happened when a well prepared Cuba when they encountered the same issue. neither faired well, people did starve and go malnourished, Cuba did much better because they prepared but inevitably could not produce as much food using correct and proper methods of agriculture.

We destroy our surroundings to survive, it is our nature, even more so if anything starts becoming hard.

its unfortunate people can't get along and use common sense on these types of issues.

realistically 1 billion souls can be sustained in harmony on this planet while maintaining the wild portions of the world, what good does it do to be foolish and allow hard limitations to kill us because we have no common sense or self control.

sadly we forget

1. reduce (the most important element) remember only 50 years ago most homes were not over 40 degrees in the dead of winter. Depression era houses DID use less energy because people did not expect an incubator of one temperature. As a people we do not live in ways that are sustainable; MANY things will need to end going into the future especially if we continue to overpopulate an already fully populated world.

2. reuse the 2nd most important, nothing should be trashed but re-used

3. recycle - if the item is worn beyond reuse then recycling is more efficient than making from virgin stock but it should not be our primary method of dealing with waste.

rmay635703 said:

Also we definitely need population controls, because of our nature having the number of people on the planet that we do we are running in a massive energy deficit just to produce factory food, believe me, if we need to ACTUALLY DO THE RIGHT THING at some point and depend on crop rotations and mother nature like we did historically there will be a massive dieoff. just look at what happened in n korea after they couldn't produce enough synthetic petrochemical nitrogen fertalizer, then compare to what happened when a well prepared Cuba when they encountered the same issue. neither faired well, people did starve and go malnourished, Cuba did much better because they prepared but inevitably could not produce as much food using correct and proper methods of agriculture

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Chances are good that the 9 billionth citizen of earth will be born about 60 years from now and that this will be the highest population number ever.
No controls needed, just educate women, increase overall economic well being, and populations start to drop.
The 1st world is not growing in population at all, the developing world is following hard on our heels...overall birthrates are way down.
Currently at ~ 2.5 births/woman (remember, 2.1 is the replacement rate, just to keep numbers not from dropping), down from 4.9 in the 1960s.

There will be no overpopulation catastrophe. The world can carry 9 billion people for a while and it will be constantly going down from there.

Japan is good example of how this goes. Its population peaked in 2010 at 128 million, and is now in decline.

klapauzius said:

Wow, and I thought contractors in Germany were among the most expensive....
This graph shows labor costs, right?

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Yes it does, Klap. It's more than just hardware and labor costs though..

The work done in the Bundesrepublik triggered a US DoE project to reduce BOS and 'soft' costs for US installations. I'm not sure we're winning yet...

http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2013/3301.html
http://www.rmi.org/simple

Non-hardware costs — also referred to as soft, balance of system, or business process costs — include permitting, inspection, interconnection, overhead, installation labor, customer acquisition, and financing. The report also highlights that certain processes often categorized as soft costs, such as permitting and interconnection, may not appear significant when measured in terms of dollars-per-watt, but are costly in that they pose significant market barriers which slow PV deployment.

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AndyH said:

The work done in the Bundesrepublik triggered a US DoE project to reduce BOS and 'soft' costs for US installations. I'm not sure we're winning yet...

http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2013/3301.html
http://www.rmi.org/simple

Non-hardware costs — also referred to as soft, balance of system, or business process costs — include permitting, inspection, interconnection, overhead, installation labor, customer acquisition, and financing. The report also highlights that certain processes often categorized as soft costs, such as permitting and interconnection, may not appear significant when measured in terms of dollars-per-watt, but are costly in that they pose significant market barriers which slow PV deployment.

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Bummer...at $180/kW installation etc. I would fill up the rest of my roof with panels...I could easily get another 2-3 kW up in addition to the 4 kW already there. I think panels can be bought quite cheap these days. In effect, so cheap, at these costs it would even be longterm financially sound to put them up here in Seattle.


That would almost make us net independent.
I think there is a bit more to it though...last time I asked for a quote in 2012, adding another 2kW would have cost me ~ 12k, so more like $6000/kW, with about half of that NOT coming from panels.

BTW, I am no fan of McMansions, but i generally think, IF you make your home energy neutral, it does not matter what size it has...

rmay635703 said:

Why worry about pipe dreams, thorium salt reactors are proven 1950's technology and make 90-99% less waste than a uranium reactor, cost about the same but use less fuel, cannot support a sustained melt down and do not make plutonium in any significant portion.

Read superfuel, there are 1000's of years worth of thorium in sands throughout the US.

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Somehow, every time I see someone promoting Thorium reactors, they always speak of them as if they are already an obvious and established technology.

While promising, we should at least acknowledge the technology is still in the research and/or preparatory stages. "proven 1950's technology" obviously depends on context. Proven in terms that matter - a track record of operation at commercial scale - has not yet been established.

klapauzius said:

BTW, I am no fan of McMansions, but i generally think, IF you make your home energy neutral, it does not matter what size it has...

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Just a quick comment on this if I may.

This is a perfectly valid point of view - please don't take any part of our conversation as an attempt to suggest that everyone on the planet 'should' be living in a mud hut.

From a net-zero perspective, absolutely - if one has the income to build a Highlands castle and then add enough generation to take it off grid, then more..er..power to them.

From a carbon zero standpoint, however, a family interested in going well beyond just net zero might make different choices. Some are building in cob or rammed earth or strawbales or other local/indigenous materials. Others are choosing 'tiny houses'. Others are opting for ecovillages and shared infrastructure.

My personal explorations have been in the carbon zero direction (can I get to carbon negative?), and in working to expand the 'commonly assumed' range of options so that should someone read this in future they'll know that it's OK if they think that there must be more than net zero or LEED platinum.

PassivHaus processes being deployed in commercial buildings:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9MSm4pwLig[/youtube]

-> 0.5-3.0% upfront (3% in this article, 0.5 for hot-weather residential)
-> 10-15% annual return on investment

Passive house construction completely destroys Energy Star, LEED, or other so-called energy efficient build processes.

Here's a look at a home in Oregon - first from the viewpoint of the home owners, and then a YouTube playlist that shows the construction process. Contractor was Hammer&Hand from Seattle and Portland. http://hammerandhand.com/

PassivHaus construction requires that architects and crews pay significant attention to detail - especially with thermal bridges and air infiltration. The overview from the heating/ventilation contractor shows how much smaller heating and AC requirements become, and the info from the home owners testifies to the comfort. This type of construction results in a building that uses only 10-15% of the annual energy for heating or cooling as a conventional house in the same location.

Homeowner impression:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXllA6O3gYY[/youtube]

Mechanical Room - heating/cooling/ventilation

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPWcrJouK3o[/youtube]

YouTube page
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb7XA65lOrTLd_-dw9plIP773XaT-r0Ai

Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTKUSpk2118&list=PLb7XA65lOrTLd_-dw9plIP773XaT-r0Ai

Another view - Ten-star energy efficiency in Australia

- Zero stars means the building shell does practically nothing to reduce the discomfort of hot or cold weather.
- A 5 star rating indicates good, but not outstanding, thermal performance.
- Occupants of a 10 star home are unlikely to need any artificial cooling or heating.

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http://www.nathers.gov.au/eer/index.php

Houses built in 1990 averaged about 1 star on the NatHERS scale. Before the introduction of national energy efficiency regulations for houses in 2003, less than one per cent of Australian houses achieved 5 stars.

Many well designed houses are now being built above 6 stars or more, and examples are available on the Your Home website at: http://www.yourhome.gov.au

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Introducing Josh's House, a project and video series following the design and construction of two 10 star energy efficient family homes in the Fremantle suburb of Hilton, Western Australia with Josh Byrne environmental scientist & presenter on ABC TV's Gardening Australia, his young family and sister in law.

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This house is being built by conventional contractors and tradesmen, in the same time frame, and for the same cost as conventional building.
http://joshshouse.com.au/

The house has a 3kW PV system and in the first six months of occupancy (4-person young family) it generated twice the electricity needed to run the house. :shock:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B_xhMwsGGo[/youtube]

Another Solution - John Jeavon's Grow Biointensive project. What if we could rebuild the soil, not deplete it, while growing food? What if we could grow our food using much less water, no chemical/petroleum inputs, with much less energy (all renewable and efficient), and on much less land than conventional agriculture does today? What if we could do this with openly-pollinated seed?

This process is born from French Intensive gardening and biodynamic farming and an evolution of Alan Chadwick's Biodynamic French Intensive system. Jeavon's work began on a research farm in Palo Alto, CA, in 1972 before moving to their permanent home in Willits, CA in 1980. It's being used around the world and has support from peer-reviewed science behind it. It uses the best available practices that include intensive planting to create growth-supporting microclimates, growing plants for both food and compost, integrated pest management, and companion planting.

When properly used, the techniques included in GROW BIOINTENSIVE sustainable mini-farming can build the soil up to 60 times faster than in nature, while making possible per unit of production:

67 to 88% reduction in water consumption
50% reduction in the amount of purchased fertilizer required
94% to 99% reduction in the amount of energy used
100% increase in soil fertility, with an increases in yield
200% to 400% increase in caloric production per unit of area, and a
100% increase in income per unit of area.

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http://www.growbiointensive.org/
http://www.growbiointensive.org/Self_Teaching.html

http://blogs.worldwatch.org/nourishingtheplanet/tag/john-jeavons/

http://www.cefs.ncsu.edu/whatwedo/energy/growbiointensive.pdf

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPeAvYrfKkU[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afHd9EhsJ1U[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0XLCNAAXGo[/youtube]

AndyH said:

Best background info I've yet seen in one place - Dr. Chris Martenson's "Crash Course" is three years old now, but seems on the mark. This video gives an overview of energy and availability. Oil is not the only resource that's peaking - take a look at copper, coal, and uranium. This - more than anything else we have on this forum - shows exactly why we'd be wise to be planting wind turbines and solar panels as quickly as we can.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfAQktktGgQ[/youtube]

The entire program is available in this Youtube playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7E8A774DA8435EEB

And at the main website:
http://www.peakprosperity.com/crashcourse

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The Crash Course, originally released in 2008, has been updated for 2014.

http://www.peakprosperity.com/crashcourse

This is highly, highly recommended - it's still the single best 'big picture' overview I've yet found.

Here's a quick summary that discusses the 2008 Crash Course and the 2014 updates:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqAcRA7DWck[/youtube]