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

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
AndyH said:
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...
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. ;)

We can suppose doing the following calculation. Imagine building a house with a given heating/cooling demand (via heat pumps), and putting enough PV on it to make it Net-Zero. We can, as you point out, go for a little insulation and a lot of PV, or vice versa.

We can see this is an optimization problem. At what level PV and insulation, do we achieve the lowest total cost of ownership over a 30 year period (the lifetime of the PV and a mortgage). Assume present mortgage rates, current PV install costs and energy getting more expensive only at the rate of inflation.

The answer.....the optimum house is about half as insulated as a passive house, or about 5x better insulated than a 1980s US house. In other words, at the current price of PV, it does not pay to build passive houses.....you can build cheaper net-zero with half as much insulation.

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/net-zero-energy-versus-passivhaus" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The rub is that as PV gets less expensive (and assuming cheap storage keeps the market rate for PV electricity from going to the dogs), the optimum insulation versus PV shifts more and more to the PV.

It appears likely that PV will get cheap well before most houses in the US or elsewhere get anywhere near passive house insulation levels.

So the crystal ball says....PV loaded (and slightly better insulated) McMansions for everyone.
 
woodgeek said:
We can suppose doing the following calculation. Imagine building a house with a given heating/cooling demand (via heat pumps), and putting enough PV on it to make it Net-Zero. We can, as you point out, go for a little insulation and a lot of PV, or vice versa.

We can see this is an optimization problem. At what level PV and insulation, do we achieve the lowest total cost of ownership over a 30 year period (the lifetime of the PV and a mortgage). Assume present mortgage rates, current PV install costs and energy getting more expensive only at the rate of inflation.

We are quite excited to be undertaking this calculation ourselves over the next year.
While the cost balancing includes a bit more than just a little more insulation, it is a simple optimization calculation as you say.

If building, the cheapest optimization is simply the facing of the house, where you put the windows and overhangs.

The energy use of the occupants is another important aspect. If I'm soaking in my hot tub daily, even in January, and the kids are playing in the heated pool daily, while the 5 plasma TVs are on, etc, etc, I don't care how many solar panels you have, you won't make it.
 
Interesting view, Woodgeek, thanks.

There's more to PassivHaus and Earthships than the PV VS. Insulation component - though that's certainly a significant part.

What PassivHaus and Earthships provide goes well beyond a 'return on investment'. Look at indoor air quality, overall thermal comfort/stability, sound envelope, efficiency of use (multiple functions from each piece, for example) and overall carbon footprint.

The Rocky Mountain Institute has been promoting and performing 'deep retrofit' or 'deep efficiency' design and they've show repeatedly that a deeper design approach results in jumping completely off the PV VS. Insulation curve into a hyper-efficiency zone that's less expensive overall - in dollars and in materials.

Andy
 
I think we agree that houses that are more insulated and better airsealed than current US houses are healthier, more comfortable, and can be easily heated by a greater variety of sources (versatile).

To put some numbers down, a thermal envelope can be quantified by a home heating index, which is BTU(heating)/sqft.HDD, calculated by dividing the seasonal heating BTU required by square footage and heating degree days. Lower is better.

Before the 70s, most US houses were 10-25, all were un-airsealed and many were uninsulated.

During the 70s, most were insulated, but airsealing was unknown....the median US HHI dropped to 10 or so by the 90s.

In the last decade, the importance of airsealing became clear. Current best codes (only used in a few states) get new construction to about 5. Affordable (<$5k) energy retrofits can get existing houses to the 4-7 range, and are subsidized in many states. These retrofits generally have a ROI that is reasonable, 10 years or less at current energy prices. Such retrofits are relatively common...I have done one, and my 1960 vintage house is now at HHI=5 or so. My neighbor in a 1957 house did so too, independently, and is at ~6 or so.

These insulated and airsealed houses (new or retrofit) have all the comfort and IAQ benefits you describe, relative to 20th century houses.

Passive houses are **defined** as having an HHI = 1. They do cost more per sqft than building a HHI=5 or HHI=2 house, and they do require more embodied energy. I have not seen any evidence that they are more comfortable or healthier than an insulated and airsealed HHI = 2 or 5 house. People buy them because they want them, not because they are the best way.

Deep energy retrofits, DERs, to get existing houses to HHI = 1 (or close), appear to cost $100,000 or up, all the way to the cost of rebuilding the house and beyond. The ROI on these projects is often >100 years at current energy costs. They are undertaken, like new passive houses, for many reasons. Often the financial analyses are dubious, assuming very high future energy costs, arguments around embodied energy of the existing structure, imposing a 'resilience' premium (doomstead), or motivating comfort/IAQ benefits that could be had at much lower cost (with a less deep retrofit) or all of the above.

I like proponents of the 'pretty good house' or PGH with an HHI of 2 or 3 (depending on a climate specific cost optimization), with enough solar to get to net-zero. Less cost and embodied energy than a passive house, with all the comfort and health benefits, and net-zero.

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/guest-blogs/pretty-good-house" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
A disadvantage of super-sealed houses is indoor air quality. I have radon in my house — lots of uranium in the sedimentary layers of the Rockies — so I look forward to summer when I can keep the windows open most of the time. Decades ago there were some home-brew heat-capturing ventilating systems but I never seem to hear about them anymore. I presume that the newer super-sealed houses you are talking about must have some sort of ventilation system, right? Are such devices available? (If they sell them at places like Home Depot, I'm not aware of it, not that I would know what to call such a device to search for it.)

Just curious.
 
Yes. 100%. Modern airsealed houses require forced ventilation at an appropriate amount. In un-airsealed houses, the rate of ventilation changes with the outside temp and wind. It might not be enough fresh air 10% of the time. 20x more than needed 10% of the time, and typically 5x more than needed, leading to e.g. dry air in the winter, outdoor allergens inside, etc. In a modern house, the right amount of air is supplied, 24/7, filtered.

You are thinking of a Heat Recovery Ventilator...HRV. As odd-ball item in the US, they are too expensive for what they are...a couple blowers and a heat exchanger core. They are code required in Canada...and much cheaper there. In the US at current costs, you have to crunch the numbers for payback. A nice HRV professionally installed might never pay back in energy savings, relative to a cheaper solution, like a simple timer on a bathroom fan that runs it 30% of the time. That's what I have, but my house is leaky enough I only need it it during the warm seasons.

If you have radon, you should get a radon abatement system. Usually a pipe under your slab that pulls a small negative pressure, and exhausts it outside with a small blower. So systems work passively like a chimney to achieve the suction.
Radon is bad, but most of the folks it kills are also smokers.
 
^Thanks for the info about the "HRV"; it is interesting to read about the various devices and methods used.

As for the radon, my testing showed it at a moderate level of 5-6 pCi/l. Even after mitigation I think they target 3 pCi/l or thereabouts. Not that much difference. As you may know, the action threshold of 4 was pretty arbitrary and was based on uranium miners' exposure. And mitigation would involve major surgery on my house.

The idea behind the HRV would be to lower radon a bit and get some fresh air, since my house is pretty much sealed from mid October to April, when the OAT is lower than inside (which I keep in the 52ºF - 62ºF range, unless the sun heats it up a few degrees more — I designed a "sun-tempered" house based on an NREL seminar I attended).
 
woodgeek said:
I think we agree that houses that are more insulated and better airsealed than current US houses are healthier, more comfortable, and can be easily heated by a greater variety of sources (versatile).
Cannot agree with this at all. More insulation can be better or can be worse, depending on how it's implemented and whether we're talking about 'a box to keep conditioned air in' as is common in the US or whether we're talking about buildings that use thermal mass. I'll agree with 'more comfortable' overall. When looking at typical US building and air sealing, better sealed houses generally are not healthier - up through the destruction of the building from mold. A building can be heated by many sources regardless of it's state of insulation, though the 'fuel bill' will change...

Shifting paradigms completely to look at insulation/sealing/embodied energy/comfort/etc. for a thermal mass passive solar building results in a dramatic change. The roof is the most highly insulated 'face' (about R44), while the E, N, and W sides have only ~R14. No effort is made to make it airtight and the building is fitted with at least one ~10" fresh air tube per room that are used at least some parts of every day year-round - the air is always fresh. Temperatures inside the house stay within a comfort range year-round. This building has no HRV, no HVAC, no fans, much less embodied energy than any other type of construction, and the only utility bill is propane for cooking and a back-up hot water heater.

woodgeek said:
Passive houses are **defined** as having an HHI = 1. They do cost more per sqft than building a HHI=5 or HHI=2 house, and they do require more embodied energy. I have not seen any evidence that they are more comfortable or healthier than an insulated and airsealed HHI = 2 or 5 house. People buy them because they want them, not because they are the best way.
I cannot agree with this at all. PassivHaus CAN cost more than a more typical US building, but if you scroll up a bit you'll find that they're being built and renovated in the US for the same or slightly less than a typical project in the same area. Embodied energy will likely be higher but will vary with climate. People buy them because they 'look more normal' than other options and because they cost nearly nothing to live in. We have evidence in this thread - via both interviews from owners and from data collection efforts - that shows how and why they're more comfortable - from an air quality standpoint, from a thermal stability standpoint (day/night, through the year, and room to room), and from a 'utility bill' standpoint.

woodgeek said:
Deep energy retrofits, DERs, to get existing houses to HHI = 1 (or close), appear to cost $100,000 or up, all the way to the cost of rebuilding the house and beyond. The ROI on these projects is often >100 years at current energy costs. They are undertaken, like new passive houses, for many reasons. Often the financial analyses are dubious, assuming very high future energy costs, arguments around embodied energy of the existing structure, imposing a 'resilience' premium (doomstead), or motivating comfort/IAQ benefits that could be had at much lower cost (with a less deep retrofit) or all of the above.
Sorry, no. In the 1990s, yes - today, no. This thread contains an example from an Austin Tx builder doing full PassivHaus retrofits for at or less than market prices per sqft. These are the primary buildings in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, etc. As they are deployed in greater numbers in the US (in other words, when builders learn how to build them and we get more manufacturers making doors and windows on this side of the Atlantic) prices will come down.


If you're in a cold climate and interested in learning from folks building and living in Passive Houses tailored to cold, these are the experts (not surprisingly, the guy in the lead emigrated from Germany)
http://www.reina-llc.com/
http://www.arcticsun-llc.com/
http://www.cchrc.org/

For very hot/humid climate, this builder is in the lead:
http://equitablegreengroup.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/passive-house-the-evolving-exterior/

For the paradigm shift...
http://earthship.com/Systems/comfort-in-any-climate
http://renew.org.au/earthships/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/92949340/...he-Quest-for-Sustainable-Housing-in-Australia

From up-thread...

houseenergy.jpg


A PassivHaus in Austin, TX costs about $300/year for all utilities. A similar-sized Earthship just East of Austin in the same climate zone has an annual energy bill of about $75.

Deep-retrofit thinking can change the entire problem. For example - if we continue to think about a 'normal' house and believe that more efficiency=more money - then we are less likely to build more efficient houses. If we change the problem, though, we find that we can build an efficient house that will take care of us for a long time and will cost about the same amount of money as a custom house in that area. But once complete it's not an insulated box that one must bolt PV onto - the payment for that building includes PV, solar-thermal hot water, water collection and filtration, grey water processing and food production, and black-water processing. Water serves four functions before it's returned to the environment. The building can be completely off-grid - all grids save the back-up propane tank. Annual propane bills range from about $100/year in the high plains of New Mexico to about $200/year in upstate NY. This is a house that collects and treats it's own water; uses the sun for heating, cooling, electricity, hot water, and food production; costs about the same per sq foot as 'conventional' housing without solar; and has the lowest embodied energy of any typical home building process in the developed world. A paradigm shift breaks the 'cost-benefit' chart. :lol:

I'm still looking for the embodied energy charts from Freney's Earthship work. I'll link it here when I find it.
 
Ok. There are many solutions...we both appear to be optimists.

I am frankly skeptical that either passive houses or earthships will ever become mainstream.

I think that 'pretty good house' construction: using conventional materials, current best practices for ventilation and moisture management, insulation and airsealing levels sufficient to reach HHI in the 2-3 range (about 2-3x better than current codes) and grid-tie PV represents the lowest total cost of ownership net-zero house. This approach is easier to achieve than passive houses (which may or may not be net zero), and is compatible with consumer acceptable floor-plans and exterior appearance.

Extreme climates like Alaska excepted.

I also think that RE will get to close to 100% energy penetration, and be cheap, before most US houses reach a PGH or a passive house standard of efficiency. And that will be ok.
 
woodgeek said:
Ok. There are many solutions...we both appear to be optimists.
Good to hear. :)

woodgeek said:
I am frankly skeptical that either passive houses or earthships will ever become mainstream.
On Earthships we agree. I think it would be a mistake if we did not adopt PassivHaus at least as enthusiastically as Germany, however.

woodgeek said:
I think that 'pretty good house' construction: using conventional materials, current best practices for ventilation and moisture management, insulation and airsealing levels sufficient to reach HHI in the 2-3 range (about 2-3x better than current codes) and grid-tie PV represents the lowest total cost of ownership net-zero house. This approach is easier to achieve than passive houses (which may or may not be net zero), and is compatible with consumer acceptable floor-plans and exterior appearance.
That's fine - and I agree that your suggestions are a move in the right direction. It's just that the suggestion that ultra-efficiency requires 'unconventional materials' is misleading. Hit the link to the Australian 10-star house for one example - less expensive for both construction and operation while absolutely blowing away efficiency - using box-stock materials and only slight tweaks in attention to detail.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=363734#p363734
- 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.


Seriously - why settle for using too much just because we can 'pencil it out' when we don't have to - especially when it's less expensive to do it better?

It's not like world population is going down, or like we're not at or near peak-oil, or peak most other resources, and it's not like climate change isn't requiring better efficiency just so we can keep our place... ;)
 
Andy, Passivehaus costs significantly more than others in northern climates.
The better windows and insulation is pretty well balanced by the much smaller HVAC needs (possibly as little as a couple of heat mats).
However, the VERY tight requirements required take a lot of time and care. It is not easy to get that low level of air exchange.

We designed a Passivehaus home, cost significantly more (30-40%). It isn't completely unreasonable if you have the money.

Using passive solar gain strategies, many of which are used in most Passivehaus houses, can be a very inexpensive way to save a lot of energy.
Heck, you can build a house that is 40% more energy efficient than a 'to code' built house at no extra cost. 75% better is still fairly easy.
90% isn't too expensive.
The price climbs fairly quickly, at least in the north, when you are working on that last 10%.
 
Zythryn said:
Andy, Passivehaus costs significantly more than others in northern climates.
The better windows and insulation is pretty well balanced by the much smaller HVAC needs (possibly as little as a couple of heat mats).
However, the VERY tight requirements required take a lot of time and care. It is not easy to get that low level of air exchange.

We designed a Passivehaus home, cost significantly more (30-40%). It isn't completely unreasonable if you have the money.

Using passive solar gain strategies, many of which are used in most Passivehaus houses, can be a very inexpensive way to save a lot of energy.
Heck, you can build a house that is 40% more energy efficient than a 'to code' built house at no extra cost. 75% better is still fairly easy.
90% isn't too expensive.
The price climbs fairly quickly, at least in the north, when you are working on that last 10%.
How long ago did you price your build?

A huge part of prices for these buildings (and their carbon footprint...) was a result of shipping doors, windows, and other hardware from Europe. US manufacturers didn't have certified products until mid-2013. I don't know if we have North American sources for other hardware yet.

Overall I agree - I think PassivHaus is one way but not the only way to dramatically increase efficiency. I see it as the 'high tech/high energy' path. I'm going in the Earthship direction as it's about as low-tech as possible, doesn't use any special windows or films or doors, and has the additional benefit of an amazingly tiny carbon footprint.
 
Good point, it was two years ago.
Passivehaus isn't all that high tech and certainly isn't high energy, unless you are talking about embedded energy, in which case it may be, but isn't necessarily.

A net zero house (very different than a Passivehaus) uses more energy, however it produces more as well, thus bringing it to net zero for a much lower cost (again, in cold climates).

Earths hips are a very cool idea, I've studied them, although not as much as you. Very popular in the southwest as I understand.
Not so workable in Minnesota ;)

We actually are starting to see Habitat for Humanity start to build NetZero housing in MN and WI!
Very exciting times that we live in when NetZero and earth ships and Passivehaus is starting to gain traction!
 
Low-energy building science and building science in general have both come a long way in the last 40 years. Energy codes for US housing have improved, and retrofitting has been done and is getting better in its methods. We lag **some** EU countries on building energy use (per HDD) and much more can be done, but the amount of energy to heat and cool US homes has decreased over the last 40 years, despite significant increases to population and average home square footage per capita. This 'ok' trend will no doubt continue for some time. Simple easy/cheap energy retrofits could easily drop US home HVAC demands by 25-40% below current, and could easily be accomplished over a decade or two (since they usually only require a few days work at each house). Current payback on these retrofits varies with the price of fuel...electric resistance, oil or propane, ROI is <5 years, nat gas or heat pumps more like 10 or more.

The homes we are discussing that break from this trend are all the result of some sort of calculation.....if there is no limit to how efficient we can make a house, what goal are we trying to reach during design?

For Earthships, IIRC, the goal is to achieve close to 100% passive solar heating and natural cooling, at minimum cost, through high thermal mass, earth tempering and large amounts of direct solar gain. The designs only seem to work well in certain climates, and are very unconventional in appearance.

For Passive houses, the goal is to have close to 100% passive heating and cooling, using only normal structural elements as thermal mass, and superinsulating, airsealing and HRV'ing to a level where (Northern European) BTU loads match typical body heat, appliance heat, and small amounts of direct solar gain. This works out to be about 1 BTU/sqft.HDD and is a bar (one of several) that must be met to be certified a 'passive house'. The resulting designs do require special and expensive detailing and windows, but are close to conventional in appearance.

The goal of 'Net-Zero Energy' is obvious enough, but not sufficient to constrain the design for PV versus insulation. Optimizing for lowest cost at current PV prices does not require passive house insulation, and the optimum is moving towards less and less insulation as PV gets cheaper. Before several years ago, the cost optimum was close to passive, now it isn't. Certainly many going Net-Zero still go Passive House too, mostly for bragging rights, not cost optimization, so the ideas are often conflated, but they needed be. In the future they certainly won't be.

Still another design option is just to ask what insulation levels minimize total cost of ownership on a 30 year horizon, including current heating and cooling energy costs, with certain assumptions regarding financing (which correspond to something more like a 10 or 15 year simple payback). What is that called? It is roughly the house design called for by the most current energy codes in the US. This is exactly the calculation that DoE does to develop housing codes. Of course, most locations use old insulation codes, but I would still argue that there are far more houses being built at 2013 codes in the US, than the other three kinds above put together. And as modern code adoption moves forward through different states and towns, I expect that will continue to be true.

So, which is the 'right' design? If it became possible to buy 100% carbon free RE tomorrow at prices comparable to current electrical rates, then those 'lowest cost Net-Zero' houses would be built to the same insulation specification as '2013 code houses', and the only difference would be whether the RE came from an on-site array or an off-site RE source! Both would be zero carbon for energy, and cost the same amount. IOW, once industrial PV reaches grid parity, then any 2013 code house that buys that power becomes just as zero carbon energy as any other net-zero or passive house, and at lower cost and embodied carbon that those other kinds (by virtue of using less materials).

So, what is the difference then....its all in bets on the future. IF you are a doomer, and think society will collapse to 19th century tech...then an Earthship is your way to go. If you think energy will be available but scarce in the future, and will be much more expensive than now (for any set of reasons), then you build an expensive Passive House, and say it will pay for itself in that future. If you are worried about AGW and CO2, you build Net-Zero, on whatever budget and PV/insulation mix you prefer. If you are the DoE, you think (inflation corrected) energy costs will be about the same for the next 30-50 years, and you come up with the 2013 energy code design.

You can look at the DoE/current code position as a Business as Usual (BAU), ostrich head in the sand approach if you want (esp if you want to sell expensive Passive Houses, Deep Energy Retrofits and MREs to doomers). You can point to the Germans (worried about future energy costs and availability) and say they are making the wiser choice.

Instead, I propose that cheap solar (and storage) changes all the calculus a lot. When we say 'solar will soon reach grid parity cost', we are saying the German's have made the wrong bet. And the US DoE has made a better bet (perhaps for all the wrong reasons, but whatever). If PV gets big after it gets cheap (the usual order of events), then the cheapest way to make a house Net-Zero is to build a house much closer to a 2013 energy code than a passive house, and power it with PV (either on site, or from a grid supplier, your choice).

For example: I energy retrofit my 1960 split level place to a performance roughly the same as current energy codes, switched it from heating oil heat and DHW to air-source heat pump for both, fully electrified, and buy 100% of my electricity for the house and the LEAF from PA wind farms, at $0.124/kWh, a price that is currently $0.01/kWh cheaper than my conventional utility. My site is too shaded for PV. The energy retrofit cost $6k and some DIY, the HVAC switch cost $18k (or $10k more than installing central air, which I would have done anyway), and I save ~$4k per year on home energy costs. By some reckoning, my 1960 house is now 'net-zero carbon energy', and I am getting a 25% ROI on my energy investments.
 
Excellent post!
The only quibble I have is that you and I are defining "net zero" differently.
The definition I am most familiar with, and the one I am using, is that the house will generate as much energy as it uses over a year.

By necessity, this generally means the net zero house uses little energy, although not as constrained as Passivehaus. This is because few high energy set ups will allow enough generating power on site.

It also does not generally include transportation energy. We do hope to expand our solar in the next few years to cover our transportation energy as well.
 
Zythryn said:
Excellent post!The only quibble I have is that you and I are defining "net zero" differently.

You are completely right, and I AM talking about something different. You are talking about Net-Zero Site Energy. On my shaded lot in the woods, I can't do Net-Zero Site Energy. If I bought 100% of my electricity from a neighbor's PV array, I would NOT be Net-Zero Site Energy (since the energy was made off site), but I would still think my carbon footprint for energy would be nearly zero (and nearly the same as if I was NZSE).

I care about the carbon footprint of my household energy more than where it comes from (on site or off site). Since I can't do PV, off-site RE is the best I can do vis-a-vis the carbon emissions from my household and EV energy.
 
Zythryn said:
Good point, it was two years ago.
Passivehaus isn't all that high tech and certainly isn't high energy, unless you are talking about embedded energy, in which case it may be, but isn't necessarily.

A net zero house (very different than a Passivehaus) uses more energy, however it produces more as well, thus bringing it to net zero for a much lower cost (again, in cold climates).

Earths hips are a very cool idea, I've studied them, although not as much as you. Very popular in the southwest as I understand.
Not so workable in Minnesota ;)

We actually are starting to see Habitat for Humanity start to build NetZero housing in MN and WI!
Very exciting times that we live in when NetZero and earth ships and Passivehaus is starting to gain traction!
It is an exciting time overall! Yes, I suspect the 2-years since the quote is important, though also think there are still very few builders qualified to build PassivHaus. (Apparently there's been a fall-out between the German PassiveHaus 'mothership' and the US organization, and specs/standards are starting to diverge a bit. I'm not sure how that's affecting training, certification, adoption, etc.)

I'm originally from Nrn Michigan and agree that keeping a house warm through a 9-month winter requires plenty of wood. ;) I've been in San Antonio about 13 years now and it's a complete 'energy flip' - 9 months of air conditioning...and dammit, I can't find a wood-fired air conditioner anywhere (and one can only take off so many clothes...). :lol:

You're right - I was looking at embodied energy for PassivHaus.

I don't know why people think that Earthships don't work in the upper Midwest. There are more than a dozen of various generations of buildings across Canada, and they're scattered through Colorado, Montana, S Dakota, and Upstate NY. They require a bit more auxiliary heat in the winter depending on the design, but still work well. The couple in Freeville reported that while they spent $200 for propane their first year, the house wasn't yet complete, the greenhouse wasn't fully insulated, and it normally takes 12-18 months for the thermal envelope (all the earth in the berms and below the house) to stabilize.
http://freevilleearthship.blogspot.com/
http://collingwoodearthship.wordpress.com/earthshipcanada/
http://earthship.com/canada
http://earthship.com/montana
"24 below zero this morning. It might as well have been 50 below.
No fires, no heat: 63°. People spent a lot of money keeping their house at 63°."

Very cool to hear that Habitat is building net-zero and PassivHaus!

I hope I don't come across as preaching or teaching as that's not my intent. I'm just trying to figure out what's available and am surprised at how far behind the rest of the world we appear to be. One example - from the earlier chart we can see how the US and German building codes compare with regards to energy use. There's a petition/telephone effort here in Texas to get the state to adopt the current building code - the standard here is the 2009 code though the 2012 code is current. I'm also shocked at how challenging it is to build to a higher performance spec - the web of out of date rules and bureaucracy are more effective at keeping performance low than at encouraging the 'stragglers' to keep up...it's sad and crazy. My personal goal is carbon neutral and while some of the local regulators have heard about solar panels, net-zero doesn't trigger a lot of recognition from officials. Trying to talk about carbon-zero would probably result in a free 'huggy coat' and some time in a special room at the county hospital. ;) :lol:

Push for Texas to update the energy code...failed in 2012...failed in 2013...
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/917/403/343/
http://texasgreenreport.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/comptroller-combs-update-building-energy-codes-now/
The Texas A & M analysis found that homes built to the new energy codes – known as the 2012 Residential Code and the 2012 International Energy Conservation Codes – would save a homeowner up to 25% per year in Dallas and up to 20% in Houston in total energy use, while reducing the summer peak use – the most energy used on a hot summer hour – by 14 to 26 percent depending on the area of the state.
 
Reddy said:
Andy, I haven't read this entire thread so I don't know if this has been posted, but here's a out-of-the box solution. There are more recent developments (videos, federal grants, results, etc.) that you can easily find with google.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=driving-on-glass-solar-roads

Maybe crazy to think that we could be driving trucks on PVs, but it does present some very nice solutions to the problems you've been discussing. Placing PVs in/on roads does not consume any farmland, wilderness areas, sensitive areas, etc. It doesn't displace or kill endangered or protected species. It shouldn't require an EIS review. It places/concentrates power production close to the population centers (e.g., more roads exist where more people live). It has the potential to add additional transmission capabilities and connect to the existing grid anywhere a road crosses a power line. It widely distributes power across the entire nation, thus reducing or eliminating the need for storage. Other benefits? Now if we can only get this cheap enough to make immediate financial sense, and not have to wait 30-50 yrs for payback.

And it begins. Not in the USA, of course, but it begins. ;)

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014...-worlds-first-solar-powered-bike-lane/382480/

The Netherlands Gets the World's First Solar-Powered Bike Lane

817e7c829.jpg


http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1025

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep4L18zOEYI[/youtube]
 
Solutions: Edible Education and the Edible Schoolyard Project

The total US agriculture system - farming and meat production - is now the number one producer of greenhouse gases, the primary source for coastal dead zones, and uses about 20% of the fossil fuels we use every year. To add insult to injury, we waste about 25% of the food we grow, fertilize, fumigate, and transport 1500 plus miles. The Edible Schoolyard Project and Edible Education presents the problems and highlights solutions. The good news? ALL of the problems are being solved - the replacement agriculture system is growing. And it's a very good thing!

The 2015 Edible Education lecture series is underway now at Berkeley. The first three presentations are here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7OFJd0uhJY3TYa0tT0PRU5albuNCfrHa

Here's Michael Pollan's intro talk from 2015:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwa3ppwvn-k[/youtube]

The complete 2012 series is here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7OFJd0uhJY1SeLPqm-HvmC7xXl6-Fbj2

Additional info:
https://www.youtube.com/user/ESYProject
http://food.berkeley.edu/edible-education-101/

Welcome to the future of food - already in progress.
 
Remember the discussion up thread about which organism's path we'd follow - a gentle rise to balance or overshoot/crash? It's done. The data are in and it shouldn't surprise anyone that we can't grow our way out of anything on a finite planet. Welcome to massive overshoot already in progress.


The first part of this interview talks specifically about the Limits to Growth research, how it spawned the Club of Rome, and how mainstream economics worked to discredit the message in exactly the same way that the fossil fuel industry mangled the message on climate and GHGs and the tobacco industry lied about cancer.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnMSDlo8Sh8[/youtube]


http://www.donellameadows.org/archives/a-synopsis-limits-to-growth-the-30-year-update/
http://www.clubofrome.org/?p=326
http://www.donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf


Remember that admonition about how people are smart but crowds are stupid? It appears that humanity isn't any more intelligent than field mice after all.

I guess "we could have done better" isn't the worst epitaph, eh?
 
Back
Top