GO SOLAR, Alternative Energy, or Home Energy Audit

Energy

No matter what kind of remodeling you are doing you should first think about reducing energy use. Over the past 60 years, our access to inexpensive energy has allowed building design to ignore location and orientation. Unfortunately, this trade-off of historical design wisdom for standardized building comes at great cost to our environment. We are using our natural resources at an unsustainable rate. According to Paul Hawken, author of “The Ecology of Commerce”, today’s population uses in one day what it took nature 10,000 days to create.” To say it in another way, we are living on our energy capital (stored petroleum and coal) and squandering our income (Solar energy) If you ran your company on your capital savings and ignored current income, you would not be in business very long.

Green building is a step toward reversing that trend.

Based on 1998 figures, the heating, cooling, and lighting of buildings consumed 36% of energy in the US. A significant portion of this energy is in the form of electricity; residential buildings alone consume 35% of all electricity in the US. However, the energy that buildings require starts accumulating long before the buildings and homes are even in existence. The energy required to extract, transport, manufacture then retransform materials to the point of use require a substantial amount of energy at a significant cost to the environment.

The sum of all the energy required by all the materials and services (including the cost of upkeep and maintenance) that go into constructing a building is called the embodied energy. The unit of measure for embodied energy is British thermal unit per round (Btu/lb) It is highly dependent on factors such as geographical location and the technology used during the manufacturing process. For example, stones excavated from a nearby hillside for a new patio have lower embodied energy than stones that must be transported from another state. Embodied energy figures give us a realistic base for comparison to assess different products or technologies for use in our homes.

To better understand embodied energy, let us consider a brick in your exterior wall. Where did it come from? First, clay had to be extracted from the earth. Then, it was transported to the brickworks where the clay was molded into brick form. Then fired in a kiln. Eventually the brick is transported twice more- to a retailer and then again direct to your building site - before the brick was put into your house However, this is only the direct embodied energy of the brick. Embodied energy also includes indirect energy, including mining equipment to extract the clay, trucks to transport the clay, and kilns- anything that had a proportion of its energy invested in that brick.

The embodied energy in recycled buildings materials is generally much less then the embodied energy in materials produced from raw, or new, materials. Although using recycled materials can involve transporting, cleaning, and sorting, the total energy requirements are still far less than energy used in extracting and refining a virgin resource.

This section will help you assess the embodied energy that goes into your home, the products you use, and the way you live. In this way, you can understand and appreciate the complexity of construction, and its profound affect on everything around us. Our goal is to help you make appropriate choices when planning your remodeling project.

Effects of Fossil Fuel on Use

Green building will help wean us off our dependence on fossil fuels. Currently, the US relies on fossil fuels(oil, coal, and natural gas) for 86% of its energy needs, despite their polluting effects. Burning these fuels spews tons of fine particles (ulfur dioxide, toxic metals, and other pollutants) into the air. The Union of Concerned Scientists (USC) estimates that fine particles alone may cause 64,000 deaths a year, or more deaths than result from auto accidents. In addition, drilling for oil, natural gas and mining for coal harms the environment by polluting natural surroundings and disrupting local wildlife populations. Given that the building sector is the second largest user of energy, changes in current building behavior is critical to reducing fossil fuel emissions and environmental damage, including the larger international issue of global climate change.

Using Less Energy

In addition to investing in renewable energy sources, as homeowners we can make simple changes to our homes that save energy- always the best environmental solution! It is estimated that 43% of American energy is wasted. The US department of Energy estimates that we could save anywhere from 50 to 94% of our home energy consumption by making energy-saving changes in our homes.

Green building reduces energy consumption in many ways. First, we can decrease the embodied energy of the building through efficient design, using recycled and local materials, and by recycling construction waste. Second green building design reduces building energy consumption over its lifetime.

Installing ceiling insulation and double glazed windows in every US home can save more oil then the Artic National Wildlife Refuge can produce at its most optimistic projections, at about 1/20 the cost. Strategically placing windows and skylights can eliminate the need for electrical lighting during the day, which is often when electricity is at highest demand from utilities. A whole house fan can cool a house over night, rather then relying on air conditioning. Additionally, houses can maximize passive heating and cooling. South facing windows with overhangs can reduce heating costs by 20 to 30 %, and prevailing breezes, shading, and natural plantings can keep houses cool in the summer using the same physics that cause global warming.

This list only scratches the surface of the possibilities for reducing building energy requirements. The financial benefits are obvious; less energy leads to lower energy bill. Additionally, decreasing energy consumption, and thus reducing alterations in the global climate, could help prevent further environmental degradation. Keep in mind it is the impacts of energy use that we are trying to avoid- not the energy itself. In other words, reducing use of specific non-renewable, polluting energy sources (for example, coal or oil), should be a higher priority than increasing the use of renewable energies such as solar generated electricity.

Use renewable Sources of Energy

When we discuss “renewable “we are referring to solar, wind, geothermal, and bio-mass energy sources.

For building green, we do not need fossil fuels or nuclear power- we need services they provide. Most often, we want heating, lighting, energy, and fuel, and this we can obtain from other renewable sources- such as wind, sun, biomass. As Amory Lovins, president of the Rocky Mountain Institute has said for many years. “People want hot showers and cold beer: they don’t care where the energy came from.” Renewable energy just needs to prove better or cheaper.

"Life is good, and getting greener everyday." www.alwaysbuildgreen.com