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TechnoratiBROOKLIN, Canada - Making buildings more environmentally friendly is the easiest and most effective way to cut climate-changing carbon emissions, often slashing energy costs by up to 70 percent. So why isn't there a massive effort to "green up" existing buildings and set green standards for all new construction?
North America's buildings are responsible for a staggering 2,200 megatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions -- 35 percent of the continent's annual total. A new report released Thursday says a rapid uptake of currently available and emerging advanced energy-saving technologies could slash emissions by 1,700 megatonnes (MT) of CO2 emissions by 2030.
A cut of that size would nearly equal the CO2 emitted by the entire U.S. transportation sector in 2000.
"Improving our built environment is probably the single greatest opportunity to protect and enhance the natural environment," said Adrián Vázquez, executive director of the tri-national Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) that produced the report, "Green Building in North America: Opportunities and Challenges".
Examples of green building strategies include energy efficient appliances, solar panels, ample windows that eliminate the need for electric light during daytime hours, and rooftop gardens that cool in the summer and insulate in the winter.
"Green building represents some of the ripest 'low-hanging fruit' for achieving significant reductions in climate change emissions," Vázquez told IPS.
Buildings are the proverbial elephant in the room in terms of energy and resource use, according to the report. In the U.S., they devoured 40 percent of all energy, with 1.24 million new single family homes being built every year. In Canada, buildings are responsible for 50 percent of all natural resources used. In Mexico, they use 25 percent of all electricity and produce 20 percent of the country's waste.
The most efficient buildings today use about 70 percent less energy than conventional properties. Despite proven environmental, economic and health benefits, however, green building accounts for a only small fraction of new homes and commercial buildings -- just two percent of the new non-residential building market, less than half of one percent of the residential market in the United States and Canada, and even less than that in Mexico.
It would seem that energy costs aren't high enough. Multi-billion-dollar government subsidies paid to the energy sector lowers the actual cost of energy, and tilts the market away from green buildings towards the cheapest built structures.
In Mexico, the government "greatly subsidises" electricity costs, especially in the hotter areas, said Vázquez. There is no financial incentive to build more efficient buildings in Mexico, and most people can't afford to pay higher costs up front even if they would save money in the long run, he said.
"We need a full lifecycle analysis and the Mexican government is very interested especially for the low-income housing it is building," Vázquez said.
"Greener buildings are more expensive to build but the payback is just five or six years," said Jonathan Westeinde, managing partner of the Windmill Development Group in Ottawa and the CEC's advisory group chair.
"The problem is that the tenant benefits from lower energy costs, not the building owner or developer," he said.
One way around this is for governments to make green building techniques the new normal standard for all new construction and renovation of existing buildings in North America. The report calls upon North American governments, industry and non-governmental leaders to set clear targets to achieve the most rapid possible adoption of green building in North America. This would include "aggressive targets for carbon-neutral or net zero-energy buildings, together with performance monitoring to track progress towards these targets".
Green buildings use less water, create less waste and are healthier for people and their productivity, boosting the benefits to governments and society as a whole, Westeinde, a developer, said in an interview. The annual cost of building-related sickness is estimated to be 58 billion dollars in the U.S., the report found. Green building has the potential to generate an additional 200 billion dollars annually in worker performance in the United States by creating offices with better indoor air.
Retrofitting existing buildings is where the bulk of the energy and carbon reduction will come from. A regulatory framework and new ways to finance such retrofits are crucial but currently governments are completely ignoring the building sector. The fact is commercial buildings are already replacing windows and heating/cooling equipment every eight to 12 years but will install equipment to meet the minimum standards, he said.
"The building industry also has the lowest research and development investment of any sector. There is a big potential for improvement there," he noted.
Canada has not been very interested in buildings as part of its climate change mitigation efforts. "Hopefully this will wake them up," he said.
Mexico's Ministry of the Environment is already very interested and supports green buildings for the housing and commercial building sector, said Vázquez.
Public interest in energy efficiency and green buildings has never been higher in all three countries, according to Westeinde. "People understand the necessity for doing something about climate change," he said.
© 2008 Inter Press Service
13 Comments so far
Show AllAs a planner, I know that developers will never ever do anything for the good of society, just because it is capitalism and the market dictates that, without govt. intervention, the cheapest thing will be what goes, furnaces, wiring, materials....so it is very difficult...unless planning and town boards make it mandatory.
It is very tough in small rural areas where everybody knows everybody and planning boards in many cases have realtors, etc. on boards, even though common sense and even state law frown upon this....
Same for SUVs, in another article, somebody mentioned tag renewals be based on the MPG or engine size of the vehicle as they do in Europe...we are very far behind....once again, after the transporation act of 1964, highways ruled, rails went under, except amtrak which is subsidized by govt....also, charging vehicles based on weight, since they contribute more to road wear and tear, which is once again subsidized by everybody, even a prius driver, etc....would make too much sense for this country....
Like the other poster said, these things are too simple to ever work in our convoluted, special interests controlled govt....
The only power we really have is to elect somebody new not controlled by special interests who may dramatically change our direction, all partisanship aside. Whether we are in recession or not is irrelevant, whether the end of our modern society is very close due to short-sightedness of our current govt. is a more appropriate question for anybody who can look out a few more years, or even to the next generation......vote wisely....
Your house pollutes and uses more energy that your car. Retrofitting houses would be a growth industry, provide jobs, clean up the environment and use less fossil fuels, but who is going to pay for it? The government is more than $9 trillion in debt and consumers are in huge debt too. I've got it, we won't go to war in Iraq and use that $500 billion to retrofit the 50 million homes...brilliant!
The easiest tax rebates available to homeowners are for a few new windows, better doors and more insulation. These improvements are popular because they work well and are cheap.
The other rebates, such as for hyperefficient furnaces, are rarely seen.
Tax Cautions: the window rebate especially is limited, so don't overspend on windows. If you pay no income tax in the first place you won't get anything back. And the biggest caution: Congress wrote the tax code, so if you don't understand it, ask them.
One thing all progressive activists could try is buying solar panels - they are pricey but pay off.
Just type solar panels on google and you can find good places to order solar panels.
If global warming continues, energy expenditures on heating should really drop. If you think this trend is going to continue, you might want to concentrate on energy-efficient cooling. FYI - A recent article from a former NASA scientist that threatened the big climate-change grants awarded to NASA:
http://met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf
It's not widely publicized, but there are tax deductions available to commercial building owners for greening up their existing buildings or for building a new commercial building that is energy efficient. This was enacted through the Energy Policy Act of 2005. These tax deductions can be substantial, say, $150,000 in a 20-story commercial building that installs more efficient lighting in the building envelope.
There are also rebates and credits available to homeowners from their local power company for installing energy efficient heat & air conditioning systems, solar panels, windows, etc.
We need more of these incentives, and they need to be publicized more.
Drake Landing probably has the heat storage issue down pat. It's an excellent strategy for a moderate-sized community or for a skyscraper.
I'm expecting to get much the same results with my smaller solar buildings, using much the same tactics, but I'll be storing and using heat on a shorter time scale, storing up perhaps 2 weeks of heat for a January cold snap. Storing seasonal heat for large communities is nice, especially in Canada, but a little lower in the frost belt I can do just as well and keep my solar system cost way down.
Let's win!
Yay, it's actually news!
http://news.google.ca/?ncl=1142378993&hl=en&topic=t
Here's an almost identical article on BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7288320.stm
Another relatively low-tech approach - google Drake Landing Solar Community for a way to reduce fuel consumption even further. Best implemented on a community basis.
Gosh I'm glad this is such a popular topic for discussion.
The real killer is heating. At least in places with a winter, it's common for heating to consume double the energy of every other application combined. As such, cutting your heating consumption in half has the same effect as stopping everything else altogether. And if it hasn't been done to a building, and the building wasn't built that way, it's very easy to lop off 50%. No degradation in lifestyle (unless you're going to miss the drafts), no new behaviours, just a bit of money and a lot of work. And when it's done, the savings go on and on.
Heating is the lion's share of the consumption, and it's so darned easy to reduce. Low hanging fruit!!
F y I, the power companies will very soon be charging people different rates for electricity, depending on peak need and available excess generation capacity.
Having some way to store heat/cold energy, when the rates are lower, will be a rapidly growing industry soon. Add timers to washing (dish + clothes) machines, and water heaters too.
Everybody's electrical service entrance (breaker/fuse box), will have telemetry signals measuring your actual use of power each day, and will scale the usage based of the variable price per kW-hr, which will be an instant motivation to shift power usage into off-peak hours.
Namaste
I think the key is this phrase: "Retrofitting existing buildings is where the bulk of the energy and carbon reduction will come from."
A new green building is a new, although smaller, increase in the Grand-total emissions. To descend upon a building that is already part of the Grand-total, and slash it's energy use, reduces the grand total. A much more positive result, to my way of thinking. Doing more, with less space, as is often not too difficult in North America, further reduces the demand for "more", green or not. Again, a positive result to my way of thinking.
Is your home weather sealed? Furnace and filter clean? That's the lowest hanging fruit of all, by a long shot.