With all of the attention being paid to global warming and environmental issues this past year, are consumers dreaming of a green Christmas, decking the halls with Trex composite lumber and searching for a free-range partridge for their pesticide-free pear tree?
Not exactly.
"So far we're just buying what we need for the best price," said Janet Robinson of Valley Center, Kan., taking a breather on one of the benches outside Westlake Center on Friday afternoon. Robinson and her daughter, Lindsay Goode of Seattle, were toting numerous Macy's shopping bags.
For Pat Evans of Chattaroy, in Spokane County, fulfilling the wish lists of her grown children was challenging enough without focusing on Earth-friendly presents.
"As far as going green, it's not going that way right now," said Evans.
Environmentalists and solid-waste officials are urging shoppers to consider the ecological effects of their purchases. They're trying to cut down on the amount of trash going to landfills, whether it's packaging and wrapping paper or unwanted gifts. They're concerned about the resources used to make the products and transport them to the stores and then on to homes. The resources include greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels and petroleum-based plastics.
continue
Sunday 25 November 2007
Thursday 22 November 2007
Canada house cuts energy consumption to zero
TORONTO, (Reuters Life!) - A state-of-the-art Canadian home is offering relief from the high energy bills that come in a cold, northern climate, by generating as much energy as it consumes over a year.
The house, called the Riverdale NetZero Project, in Edmonton, Alberta, is equipped with energy-efficient appliances and a solar power system and is part of a zero-energy project put together by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
"Everybody has always been frustrated by energy bills," said Gordon Howell of Howell-Mayhew Engineering in Edmonton, who is part of the team working on the Riverdale house.
"They're sensing that they want to do something to be responsible themselves for their energy consumption."
For the Edmonton house, one of 12 planned for Canada, 80 percent of the savings will come from reducing the amount of energy used. That includes wall and ceiling insulation, a ventilation system with heat recovery and high-performance windows that don't let heat or cool air escape.
"It's stunning what efficiency can do," said Howell, an electrical engineer specializing in solar power.
Solar energy, which is more expensive to install than energy-efficient products, provides the remaining 20 percent of the energy savings in the house, which is due to be completed by March 2008.
The building uses solar energy to heat water and help heat the home in winter, as well as to help with summer cooling.
By Naomi Kim
continue
The house, called the Riverdale NetZero Project, in Edmonton, Alberta, is equipped with energy-efficient appliances and a solar power system and is part of a zero-energy project put together by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
"Everybody has always been frustrated by energy bills," said Gordon Howell of Howell-Mayhew Engineering in Edmonton, who is part of the team working on the Riverdale house.
"They're sensing that they want to do something to be responsible themselves for their energy consumption."
For the Edmonton house, one of 12 planned for Canada, 80 percent of the savings will come from reducing the amount of energy used. That includes wall and ceiling insulation, a ventilation system with heat recovery and high-performance windows that don't let heat or cool air escape.
"It's stunning what efficiency can do," said Howell, an electrical engineer specializing in solar power.
Solar energy, which is more expensive to install than energy-efficient products, provides the remaining 20 percent of the energy savings in the house, which is due to be completed by March 2008.
The building uses solar energy to heat water and help heat the home in winter, as well as to help with summer cooling.
By Naomi Kim
continue
Sunday 18 November 2007
Gadgets to Spur Energy Conservation
Can glorified glow lamps stop blackouts and slash energy costs? Manhattan-based ConsumerPowerline thinks so. This winter, about a thousand participants in the company's energy-conservation program will receive small plug-in boxes that glow red when power demand peaks, urging them to turn off space heaters, defer dishwasher runs, or otherwise save electricity.
Energy suppliers respond to spikes in demand by gearing up extra production capacity. That can be so expensive that many utilities are willing to pay to promote conservation during periods of peak use. ConsumerPowerline pays apartment complexes, companies, and institutions to conserve on cue, then resells the resulting "negawatts"--reduction in demand--to utilities in New York, Massachusetts, and California.
Currently, ConsumerPowerline requests negawatts from its participants by paging them or sending them faxes, e-mails, or voice mails. This month, however, the firm received its first shipment of digital gauges, each about the size of an air freshener, that download information over a low-bandwidth satellite pager network. In the coming weeks, the company will distribute the gauges to participants in its program and, in some cases, display them in public spaces. Humphrey Wong, ConsumerPowerline's manager of incentive innovations, hopes that the devices will lead to an additional 5 to 10 percent drop in power consumption among organizations that already deliver reductions of 15 percent or more.
"We're trying to provide a relatively inexpensive tool for people to be informed about when to make good energy decisions," Wong says. That tool, the Joule, was developed jointly by ConsumerPowerline and MIT Media Lab spinoff Ambient Devices, based in Cambridge, MA.
When a utility schedules what's called in the business a "demand response event," Ambient signals the appropriate Joules to turn from green to blue and to display a countdown to the time at which the utility wants negawatts. Two hours before the event, the blue light begins to pulse. Finally, the Joule glows red to signal the start of the event, and it displays a new countdown that lets the user know when the event will end.
Wong hopes that, in addition to increasing conservation among current participants in ConsumerPowerline's program, streamlined communications will enable the company to reach out to individual homeowners--a largely untapped market--thereby multiplying its capacity to deliver negawatts.
The Joule isn't Ambient Devices' first foray into demand response. Since 2004, major California utilities have been testing Ambient's Energy Orb, a glass sphere that changes color to indicate the state of the grid. One utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, adopted the Orb as a commercial product last year, distributing 2,000 Orbs to customers who have agreed to supply negawatts. Like all of Ambient's products, the Orb receives its instructions over the pager network.
Ambient is also testing a new signaling device with EnBW, Germany's third-largest utility. Because energy prices in Germany vary by the hour, the new device will receive even more information than the Joule will. Its three-inch-square LCD screen is large enough to display crude graphs of hour-by-hour pricing for the next 24 hours as well as a forecast of the following day's energy prices and weather.
Most U.S. utilities are currently piloting time-specific pricing schemes like the one in Germany, and Wong hopes that this will create a new market for the Joule: helping residential and small commercial consumers track price shifts. Many utilities are planning to break their residential rates into just a few categories--a level of complexity the Joule could handle. Southern California Edison (SCE), for example, plans just three pricing categories: off peak, regular peak, and critical peak (the latter likely limited to the hottest summer afternoons, when the grid is most at risk).
Wong says that on such days, the Joule could make a major difference. "If one home turns off their air conditioner, that's one kilowatt. But if you get 1,000 homes, all of a sudden you're talking about one megawatt."
Ambient and ConsumerPowerline, however, will soon face competition thanks to new utility-installed meters that will use the cellular-telephone network and Wi-Fi, rather than satellites, to relay pricing information. SCE's $1.7 billion SmartConnect program, for example, aims to install smart meters in five million southern California homes and businesses between 2009 and 2012.
Paul De Martini, who directs the SmartConnect program, says that the meters will communicate with the utility via the cellular network, then broadcast pricing and local power-consumption information to home networks, probably using a low-power form of Wi-Fi called ZigBee. De Martini says that at least 20 companies, including giants such as General Electric, are developing ZigBee-enabled devices to pick up, interpret, and display that information. De Martini's team at SCE has assembled a device of its own: a battery-powered ZigBee refrigerator magnet with green, orange, and red LEDs that represent off-peak, normal-peak, and critical-peak pricing. A commercial version of such a device could be cheap enough to give away.
De Martini thinks that an even more effective means of encouraging conservation will be devices that display household power consumption in real time. "The thing that really works well for people is when they can see it dynamically, kind of like when you're at the gas pump and you can see how much it's costing you as the dial clicks around," he says. That dynamic view, he predicts, will not only shift consumption from peak to off peak, but it will actually reduce total power consumption.
Ambient and ConsumerPowerline may survive by incorporating ZigBee into their own devices. But Wong says that his company won't make that move unless this winter's pilot test proves that the Joule display motivates enough negawatts. "We know there will be a behavioral response," he says, "but we need to understand the full value of that behavioral response."
By Peter Fairley
continue
Energy suppliers respond to spikes in demand by gearing up extra production capacity. That can be so expensive that many utilities are willing to pay to promote conservation during periods of peak use. ConsumerPowerline pays apartment complexes, companies, and institutions to conserve on cue, then resells the resulting "negawatts"--reduction in demand--to utilities in New York, Massachusetts, and California.
Currently, ConsumerPowerline requests negawatts from its participants by paging them or sending them faxes, e-mails, or voice mails. This month, however, the firm received its first shipment of digital gauges, each about the size of an air freshener, that download information over a low-bandwidth satellite pager network. In the coming weeks, the company will distribute the gauges to participants in its program and, in some cases, display them in public spaces. Humphrey Wong, ConsumerPowerline's manager of incentive innovations, hopes that the devices will lead to an additional 5 to 10 percent drop in power consumption among organizations that already deliver reductions of 15 percent or more.
"We're trying to provide a relatively inexpensive tool for people to be informed about when to make good energy decisions," Wong says. That tool, the Joule, was developed jointly by ConsumerPowerline and MIT Media Lab spinoff Ambient Devices, based in Cambridge, MA.
When a utility schedules what's called in the business a "demand response event," Ambient signals the appropriate Joules to turn from green to blue and to display a countdown to the time at which the utility wants negawatts. Two hours before the event, the blue light begins to pulse. Finally, the Joule glows red to signal the start of the event, and it displays a new countdown that lets the user know when the event will end.
Wong hopes that, in addition to increasing conservation among current participants in ConsumerPowerline's program, streamlined communications will enable the company to reach out to individual homeowners--a largely untapped market--thereby multiplying its capacity to deliver negawatts.
The Joule isn't Ambient Devices' first foray into demand response. Since 2004, major California utilities have been testing Ambient's Energy Orb, a glass sphere that changes color to indicate the state of the grid. One utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, adopted the Orb as a commercial product last year, distributing 2,000 Orbs to customers who have agreed to supply negawatts. Like all of Ambient's products, the Orb receives its instructions over the pager network.
Ambient is also testing a new signaling device with EnBW, Germany's third-largest utility. Because energy prices in Germany vary by the hour, the new device will receive even more information than the Joule will. Its three-inch-square LCD screen is large enough to display crude graphs of hour-by-hour pricing for the next 24 hours as well as a forecast of the following day's energy prices and weather.
Most U.S. utilities are currently piloting time-specific pricing schemes like the one in Germany, and Wong hopes that this will create a new market for the Joule: helping residential and small commercial consumers track price shifts. Many utilities are planning to break their residential rates into just a few categories--a level of complexity the Joule could handle. Southern California Edison (SCE), for example, plans just three pricing categories: off peak, regular peak, and critical peak (the latter likely limited to the hottest summer afternoons, when the grid is most at risk).
Wong says that on such days, the Joule could make a major difference. "If one home turns off their air conditioner, that's one kilowatt. But if you get 1,000 homes, all of a sudden you're talking about one megawatt."
Ambient and ConsumerPowerline, however, will soon face competition thanks to new utility-installed meters that will use the cellular-telephone network and Wi-Fi, rather than satellites, to relay pricing information. SCE's $1.7 billion SmartConnect program, for example, aims to install smart meters in five million southern California homes and businesses between 2009 and 2012.
Paul De Martini, who directs the SmartConnect program, says that the meters will communicate with the utility via the cellular network, then broadcast pricing and local power-consumption information to home networks, probably using a low-power form of Wi-Fi called ZigBee. De Martini says that at least 20 companies, including giants such as General Electric, are developing ZigBee-enabled devices to pick up, interpret, and display that information. De Martini's team at SCE has assembled a device of its own: a battery-powered ZigBee refrigerator magnet with green, orange, and red LEDs that represent off-peak, normal-peak, and critical-peak pricing. A commercial version of such a device could be cheap enough to give away.
De Martini thinks that an even more effective means of encouraging conservation will be devices that display household power consumption in real time. "The thing that really works well for people is when they can see it dynamically, kind of like when you're at the gas pump and you can see how much it's costing you as the dial clicks around," he says. That dynamic view, he predicts, will not only shift consumption from peak to off peak, but it will actually reduce total power consumption.
Ambient and ConsumerPowerline may survive by incorporating ZigBee into their own devices. But Wong says that his company won't make that move unless this winter's pilot test proves that the Joule display motivates enough negawatts. "We know there will be a behavioral response," he says, "but we need to understand the full value of that behavioral response."
By Peter Fairley
continue
Friday 16 November 2007
Biofuels bonanza facing 'crash'
The biofuels bonanza will crash unless producers can guarantee their crops have been produced responsibly, the UN's environment agency chief has said.
Achim Steiner of the UN Environment Programme (Unep) said there was an urgent need for standards to make sure rainforests weren't being destroyed.
Biofuel makers also had to show their products did not produce more CO2 than they negated, he told BBC News.
Critics say biofuels will lead to food shortages and destroy rainforests.
They point to the destruction of Indonesia's peat swamps as an example of biofuel folly.
The swamps are one the richest stores of carbon on the planet and they are being burned to produce palm oil.
Mr Steiner implied that because of Indonesia's inability to police its land use, biofuels from palm oil grown by the nation might never be deemed to be sustainable.
But he said some biofuels could be considered sustainable. He highlighted ethanol production in Brazil, and a dry land crop called jatropha, which is resistant to pests and droughts.
Mr Steiner urged investors not to turn their backs on developing second or third generation fuels that would use non-food crops and burnable waste.
He feared that beneficial biofuels might be lost as part of a consumer backlash.
False economy
One of the scientists, Tad Patzek from University of California Berkeley, US, said: "In the long-run, the planet cannot afford to produce biofuels because we're going to run out of the land and water and environmental resources.
"In addition, because of the land use changes, drying up peat-swamps, burning tropical forest, these biofuels involve up-front enormous emissions of greenhouse gases that will never be recouped by their later use," he told BBC News.
Professor Patzek also doubted Mr Steiner's confidence in Brazilian ethanol. "The [IPCC] description of Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol production as 'highly advanced' and 'a model' is somewhat of an exaggeration.
"It's neither good nor a model," he said.
Brazilian producers are adamant that their bio-crops are not grown on rainforest land - but the environmental group Friends of the Earth Brazil claim that peasant farmers - dispossessed by biofuel conglomerates - are moving to the Amazon to seek new land
Mr Steiner said Brazil had enough land to ensure that biofuel cropping could be sustainable.
By then much of the Indonesian peat swamps - one of the most valuable stores of carbon in the world - will have been torched.
The only way of stopping may not be through the UN or the Indonesian government, but through one or more private philanthropist with a burning desire to own an Indonesian swamp.
continue
Achim Steiner of the UN Environment Programme (Unep) said there was an urgent need for standards to make sure rainforests weren't being destroyed.
Biofuel makers also had to show their products did not produce more CO2 than they negated, he told BBC News.
Critics say biofuels will lead to food shortages and destroy rainforests.
They point to the destruction of Indonesia's peat swamps as an example of biofuel folly.
The swamps are one the richest stores of carbon on the planet and they are being burned to produce palm oil.
Mr Steiner implied that because of Indonesia's inability to police its land use, biofuels from palm oil grown by the nation might never be deemed to be sustainable.
But he said some biofuels could be considered sustainable. He highlighted ethanol production in Brazil, and a dry land crop called jatropha, which is resistant to pests and droughts.
Mr Steiner urged investors not to turn their backs on developing second or third generation fuels that would use non-food crops and burnable waste.
He feared that beneficial biofuels might be lost as part of a consumer backlash.
False economy
One of the scientists, Tad Patzek from University of California Berkeley, US, said: "In the long-run, the planet cannot afford to produce biofuels because we're going to run out of the land and water and environmental resources.
"In addition, because of the land use changes, drying up peat-swamps, burning tropical forest, these biofuels involve up-front enormous emissions of greenhouse gases that will never be recouped by their later use," he told BBC News.
Professor Patzek also doubted Mr Steiner's confidence in Brazilian ethanol. "The [IPCC] description of Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol production as 'highly advanced' and 'a model' is somewhat of an exaggeration.
"It's neither good nor a model," he said.
Brazilian producers are adamant that their bio-crops are not grown on rainforest land - but the environmental group Friends of the Earth Brazil claim that peasant farmers - dispossessed by biofuel conglomerates - are moving to the Amazon to seek new land
Mr Steiner said Brazil had enough land to ensure that biofuel cropping could be sustainable.
By then much of the Indonesian peat swamps - one of the most valuable stores of carbon in the world - will have been torched.
The only way of stopping may not be through the UN or the Indonesian government, but through one or more private philanthropist with a burning desire to own an Indonesian swamp.
continue
Sunday 11 November 2007
Home solar collectors create buzz
Are your electric bills going through the roof? A solution just may be up there: The roof, for now, is a place to install solar collectors that convert the sun's energy directly into electricity.
Solar water heating for home use and as means of heating pool water has been both an affordable and popular technology for many years. Now, harnessing the sun's power to create energy to power one's home is increasingly popular.
Photovoltaic (PV) systems convert sunlight directly to electricity. They work any time the sun is shining, but more electricity is produced when the sunlight is intense and strikes the PV modules directly (as when rays of sunlight are perpendicular to the modules). Best of all, PV allows you to produce electricity from a clean, renewable resource, without noise or air pollution.
Beyond the standard "vanilla" PV panels, recent aesthetic innovations include solar tiles that look like ordinary roofing.
A typical energy roof uses about 300 square feet of surface. In a sunny climate, it produces many thousands of kilowatts of clean energy per year. Any excess power you have can be fed back into the utility company grid for a credit on your bill.
Before you decide to buy a PV system, there are some things to consider:
First, PV produces power intermittently because it works only when the sun is shining. This is not a problem for PV systems connected to the utility grid, because any additional electricity required is automatically delivered to you by your utility. In the case of non-grid, or stand-alone, PV systems, batteries can be purchased to store energy for later use. Batteries are also an option for storing excess power, even when connected to the utility grid.
Second, if you live near existing power lines, PV-generated electricity is usually more expensive than conventional utility-supplied electricity. Although PV now costs less than 1 percent of what it did in the 1970s, the amortized price over the life of the system can still be higher than what most people pay for electricity from their utilities.
State and federal tax credits and solar rebate programs help make PV more affordable, but they typically can't match today's price for utility electricity in most cases. This condition is rapidly changing as utility prices continue to increase, making PV a sensible and cost-effective alternative. Also, PV system reliability and durability are excellent, with a typical PV system lasting up to 30 years with minimal maintenance.
Third, unlike electricity purchased monthly from a utility company, PV power requires a high initial investment. This means that buying a PV system is like paying years of electric bills up front. Your monthly electric bills will go down, but the initial expense of PV may be significant. By financing your PV system, you can spread the cost over many years, and rebates can also lighten your financial load. Many PV installation companies have teamed up with lending institutions that offer creative financing.
The price for a PV system depends on a number of factors, including whether your home is under construction and whether PV is integrated into the roof or mounted on top of an existing roof. The price also depends on the PV system rating, manufacturer, retailer and installer.
The size of your system may be the most significant factor in any measurement of costs versus benefits. For example, a 2-kilowatt system that meets nearly all the needs of a very energy efficient home could cost $16,000 to $20,000 installed, or $8 to $10 per watt. At the high end, a 5-kilowatt system that completely meets the energy needs of many conventional homes can cost $30,000 to $40,000 installed, or $6 to $8 per watt. These prices are rough estimates.
By James and Morris Carey
full article
Solar water heating for home use and as means of heating pool water has been both an affordable and popular technology for many years. Now, harnessing the sun's power to create energy to power one's home is increasingly popular.
Photovoltaic (PV) systems convert sunlight directly to electricity. They work any time the sun is shining, but more electricity is produced when the sunlight is intense and strikes the PV modules directly (as when rays of sunlight are perpendicular to the modules). Best of all, PV allows you to produce electricity from a clean, renewable resource, without noise or air pollution.
Beyond the standard "vanilla" PV panels, recent aesthetic innovations include solar tiles that look like ordinary roofing.
A typical energy roof uses about 300 square feet of surface. In a sunny climate, it produces many thousands of kilowatts of clean energy per year. Any excess power you have can be fed back into the utility company grid for a credit on your bill.
Before you decide to buy a PV system, there are some things to consider:
First, PV produces power intermittently because it works only when the sun is shining. This is not a problem for PV systems connected to the utility grid, because any additional electricity required is automatically delivered to you by your utility. In the case of non-grid, or stand-alone, PV systems, batteries can be purchased to store energy for later use. Batteries are also an option for storing excess power, even when connected to the utility grid.
Second, if you live near existing power lines, PV-generated electricity is usually more expensive than conventional utility-supplied electricity. Although PV now costs less than 1 percent of what it did in the 1970s, the amortized price over the life of the system can still be higher than what most people pay for electricity from their utilities.
State and federal tax credits and solar rebate programs help make PV more affordable, but they typically can't match today's price for utility electricity in most cases. This condition is rapidly changing as utility prices continue to increase, making PV a sensible and cost-effective alternative. Also, PV system reliability and durability are excellent, with a typical PV system lasting up to 30 years with minimal maintenance.
Third, unlike electricity purchased monthly from a utility company, PV power requires a high initial investment. This means that buying a PV system is like paying years of electric bills up front. Your monthly electric bills will go down, but the initial expense of PV may be significant. By financing your PV system, you can spread the cost over many years, and rebates can also lighten your financial load. Many PV installation companies have teamed up with lending institutions that offer creative financing.
The price for a PV system depends on a number of factors, including whether your home is under construction and whether PV is integrated into the roof or mounted on top of an existing roof. The price also depends on the PV system rating, manufacturer, retailer and installer.
The size of your system may be the most significant factor in any measurement of costs versus benefits. For example, a 2-kilowatt system that meets nearly all the needs of a very energy efficient home could cost $16,000 to $20,000 installed, or $8 to $10 per watt. At the high end, a 5-kilowatt system that completely meets the energy needs of many conventional homes can cost $30,000 to $40,000 installed, or $6 to $8 per watt. These prices are rough estimates.
By James and Morris Carey
full article
Saturday 10 November 2007
High heating bills make winterizing your
Ideally, consumers in cold regions have winterized their homes by now in an effort to save energy and money.
But for busy people, back-to-school season soon becomes Halloween, and before you know it Thanksgiving is approaching, and the winterizing to-do list was lost in the bustle.
It's not too late, and it's worth doing. Heating bills this winter likely will be much higher than last year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts. Winter months are predicted to be 4 percent colder, and energy sources for heat will be more expensive.
This winter's spending for natural gas, used to heat more than half of U.S. homes, is expected to be 10 percent higher. Spending on heating oil will see the biggest jump, 22 percent, followed by propane at 16 percent. Electricity spending will rise about 4 percent, and electricity customers are coming off a 9 percent price increase during 2006, the largest increase since 1981.
In dollars, average heating expenditures this winter will be between about $900 and $1,800, depending on the fuel, with electricity the cheapest and heating oil the most expensive. Of course, owners of larger homes will pay more than those averages.
For a few regions and fuel types, you can shop different suppliers for the best prices. But most energy savings will come in one of two other ways: You have to take steps that allow you to lower the thermostat or, keeping the thermostat the same, you need your furnace to turn on less often, mostly by keeping your paid-for heated air indoors longer.
If you are pinched for time and money, here are heat-saving tips that you could probably complete in three hours for less than $100.
Make a plan. Many of the usual home-heating tips are useless unless they allow you to set the thermostat lower.
Sit down with pen and paper and devise a plan for controlling temperature in your home. At what times of day can you set the thermostat really low, without risk of freezing pipes, of course? While you're home, can you set the temperature at 68 degrees instead of 72 if everyone in the household agrees to wear sweaters and slippers around the house? Can you be comfortable at 64 degrees? Will flannel pajamas and an extra blanket allow you to lower the temperature into the 50s at night?
If someone is home all day, make it a routine to open drapes on the sunny side of the house to let in heat. Otherwise, close drapes to help further insulate windows.
If you're undisciplined about adjusting the thermostat, buy an Energy Star-rated programmable thermostat. This device is easy to install and costs about $100. It's basically just a timer that sets your thermostat to a prescribed temperature at various times during the day and night. If you are diligent about controlling temperature the old-fashioned way, by walking over to the thermostat and setting it by hand, you don't need a programmable thermostat. If you're not diligent, you could make back the cost of the $100 programmable thermostat in one year's worth of energy savings.
Seal leaks. This seems like obvious advice, but you have to take the time to find and seal leaks. Walk around the inside of your home. Hold a candle or other flame near the seams in your windows and exterior doors. If the flame and smoke blow inward, you know you have a leak.
"For a pretty modest investment, you can get products like caulking, weather-stripping and foam sealant to plug up those leaks," said Ronnie Kweller, spokeswoman for the Alliance to Save Energy, a group that promotes efficient and clean use of energy.
Also, check recessed lights, baseboards, electrical outlets to exterior walls and unfinished spaces behind cupboards and closets. As an alternative to adding expensive storm windows, you can cover drafty windows with plastic sheeting installed on the inside.
Then examine the exterior of your house, looking for cracks and gaps, not only around windows and doors, but in pipe cutouts to the outdoors, chimneys and the foundation. For more on sealing, see the publication "A Do-it-Yourself Guide to Energy Star Home Sealing" by the Environmental Protection Agency. Call 888-782-7937 or get it online at www.energystar.gov (Look under Home Improvement for the Air Seal and Insulate link).
Seal ducts. Seal leaky air ducts at joints, starting at the furnace air handler, and insulate ducts that run through unheated basements or attics.
In a typical house, about 20 percent of the air that moves through the duct system is lost due to leaks and poorly sealed connections, according to the federal Energy Star program.
But duct tape isn't the answer. It's a poor way to seal duct cracks and seams. Use a mashed potato-like duct sealant called mastic. Use the water-based kind. You paint it on duct joints and tiny holes, and it hardens. Or use metallic duct tape with an UL-181 rating. Search the EnergyStar site for the online brochure, "Duct Sealing" (Also under Air Seal and Insulate).
Close vents. If you have a central heating system with ductwork, go around the house and close heating vents in rooms you don't use daily, especially those where you can close the door and seal off the room. If you have rooms with individual thermostats, keep seldom-used rooms cool.
Change furnace air filters. Buy a dozen filters to last you through a year's worth of monthly changes. If you already have filters in the house, you will be more likely to change them monthly. You don't need fancy air filters. Cheap ones that cost $1 or less each work. Also, cover the filter slot with a piece of wide tape to make sure all the air goes through the filter. Dirty filters block airflow through your heating and cooling systems, increasing your energy bill and shortening the equipment's life.
Do it now. Make energy improvements before the end of the year to take advantage of tax credits that expire after Dec. 31. The credit probably won't amount to big bucks, but it is worth learning about. For example, you would get back 10 percent of what you spend on sealing and insulation, up to $500. So spending $100 gets you back $10.
"People definitely want to get on it before the end of the year and have all their receipts in place," Kweller said. Find details about tax credits online at www.ase.org/taxcredits and www.energystar.gov/taxcre dits.
continue
But for busy people, back-to-school season soon becomes Halloween, and before you know it Thanksgiving is approaching, and the winterizing to-do list was lost in the bustle.
It's not too late, and it's worth doing. Heating bills this winter likely will be much higher than last year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts. Winter months are predicted to be 4 percent colder, and energy sources for heat will be more expensive.
This winter's spending for natural gas, used to heat more than half of U.S. homes, is expected to be 10 percent higher. Spending on heating oil will see the biggest jump, 22 percent, followed by propane at 16 percent. Electricity spending will rise about 4 percent, and electricity customers are coming off a 9 percent price increase during 2006, the largest increase since 1981.
In dollars, average heating expenditures this winter will be between about $900 and $1,800, depending on the fuel, with electricity the cheapest and heating oil the most expensive. Of course, owners of larger homes will pay more than those averages.
For a few regions and fuel types, you can shop different suppliers for the best prices. But most energy savings will come in one of two other ways: You have to take steps that allow you to lower the thermostat or, keeping the thermostat the same, you need your furnace to turn on less often, mostly by keeping your paid-for heated air indoors longer.
If you are pinched for time and money, here are heat-saving tips that you could probably complete in three hours for less than $100.
Make a plan. Many of the usual home-heating tips are useless unless they allow you to set the thermostat lower.
Sit down with pen and paper and devise a plan for controlling temperature in your home. At what times of day can you set the thermostat really low, without risk of freezing pipes, of course? While you're home, can you set the temperature at 68 degrees instead of 72 if everyone in the household agrees to wear sweaters and slippers around the house? Can you be comfortable at 64 degrees? Will flannel pajamas and an extra blanket allow you to lower the temperature into the 50s at night?
If someone is home all day, make it a routine to open drapes on the sunny side of the house to let in heat. Otherwise, close drapes to help further insulate windows.
If you're undisciplined about adjusting the thermostat, buy an Energy Star-rated programmable thermostat. This device is easy to install and costs about $100. It's basically just a timer that sets your thermostat to a prescribed temperature at various times during the day and night. If you are diligent about controlling temperature the old-fashioned way, by walking over to the thermostat and setting it by hand, you don't need a programmable thermostat. If you're not diligent, you could make back the cost of the $100 programmable thermostat in one year's worth of energy savings.
Seal leaks. This seems like obvious advice, but you have to take the time to find and seal leaks. Walk around the inside of your home. Hold a candle or other flame near the seams in your windows and exterior doors. If the flame and smoke blow inward, you know you have a leak.
"For a pretty modest investment, you can get products like caulking, weather-stripping and foam sealant to plug up those leaks," said Ronnie Kweller, spokeswoman for the Alliance to Save Energy, a group that promotes efficient and clean use of energy.
Also, check recessed lights, baseboards, electrical outlets to exterior walls and unfinished spaces behind cupboards and closets. As an alternative to adding expensive storm windows, you can cover drafty windows with plastic sheeting installed on the inside.
Then examine the exterior of your house, looking for cracks and gaps, not only around windows and doors, but in pipe cutouts to the outdoors, chimneys and the foundation. For more on sealing, see the publication "A Do-it-Yourself Guide to Energy Star Home Sealing" by the Environmental Protection Agency. Call 888-782-7937 or get it online at www.energystar.gov (Look under Home Improvement for the Air Seal and Insulate link).
Seal ducts. Seal leaky air ducts at joints, starting at the furnace air handler, and insulate ducts that run through unheated basements or attics.
In a typical house, about 20 percent of the air that moves through the duct system is lost due to leaks and poorly sealed connections, according to the federal Energy Star program.
But duct tape isn't the answer. It's a poor way to seal duct cracks and seams. Use a mashed potato-like duct sealant called mastic. Use the water-based kind. You paint it on duct joints and tiny holes, and it hardens. Or use metallic duct tape with an UL-181 rating. Search the EnergyStar site for the online brochure, "Duct Sealing" (Also under Air Seal and Insulate).
Close vents. If you have a central heating system with ductwork, go around the house and close heating vents in rooms you don't use daily, especially those where you can close the door and seal off the room. If you have rooms with individual thermostats, keep seldom-used rooms cool.
Change furnace air filters. Buy a dozen filters to last you through a year's worth of monthly changes. If you already have filters in the house, you will be more likely to change them monthly. You don't need fancy air filters. Cheap ones that cost $1 or less each work. Also, cover the filter slot with a piece of wide tape to make sure all the air goes through the filter. Dirty filters block airflow through your heating and cooling systems, increasing your energy bill and shortening the equipment's life.
Do it now. Make energy improvements before the end of the year to take advantage of tax credits that expire after Dec. 31. The credit probably won't amount to big bucks, but it is worth learning about. For example, you would get back 10 percent of what you spend on sealing and insulation, up to $500. So spending $100 gets you back $10.
"People definitely want to get on it before the end of the year and have all their receipts in place," Kweller said. Find details about tax credits online at www.ase.org/taxcredits and www.energystar.gov/taxcre dits.
continue
Friday 9 November 2007
Make sure it is a Solar Hot Water system
Installing a solar hot water system is one of the most efficient and cost effectiveinitiatives a householder can undertake to make an existing home more sustainable.
The Australian Greenhouse Office is offering households a $1000 rebate to reduce thecost of a solar hot water system providing:
1. They are changing from an electric storage hot water system (which are the mostemissions intensive); and
2. Their combined family taxable income is less than $100,000 a year
The rebate applies to an existing principal place of residence and is available to bothhomeowners and renters.
The average savings in CO2 emissions per year as a result of switching to solar from anelectric storage hot water system is two to four tonnes.
The average savings in electricity costs is between $300 and $700 per year depending onthe climate and the number of people in the household.
The average solar hot water system lasts for 13 years (some even last for 20 years).There are approximately 70,000 new hot water systems sold each year but only a smallpercentage are solar.
Even though electric hot water systems have a lower upfront cost, the long term benefitsof a solar system will outweigh the initial outlay. A household may have to replace twoelectric systems over the life of one solar system and there are lower yearly electricitycosts with a solar system.
As well as the $1000 rebate from the Australian Greenhouse Office, there are furtherincentives to install a solar hot water system when an electric storage system is ready tobe replaced.
Nearly all solar systems on the market come with a certain number of Renewable EnergyCertificates (RECs). RECs are assigned by the Office of the Renewable Energy Regulatoras part of the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target. The certificates are tradable and canbe used to provide a discount on the up front cost of a solar hot water system.
The numbers of RECs that come with a solar hot water system depend on its size andwhere in Australia it is installed. Each solar system sold in Australia usually comes with20 to 40 RECS… that equates to an extra discount of $600 to $1200 on top of the $1000dollar rebate.
Because switching from an electric storage hot water system to a solar hot water systemis the simplest and most effective single measure to make a house more greenhousefriendly, most state and territory governments have their own incentives to encouragehouseholds to install a solar hot water system. In NSW, for example, switching to solarhot water attracts a rebate in the order of $600 to $800 depending on the type of systemchosen.
Why switch? - A real life example from Sydney…
Replacement of an existing electric storage hot water system:
Costs
• Retail cost of a new solar hot water system: 250 litre tank (suitable for a three tofour person household): $3928
• Installation cost: $1400
Total: $5328
Offset by Rebates and RECS
• Australian Greenhouse Office rebate: $1000
• NSW Government rebate: $600,
• Value of RECs attached to the system (bought back by the retailer in the form ofan upfront discount): $728
Net Cost: $ 3000
Electricity saved over the life of the system ($400 a year for 13 years): $5200
Net benefit to owner is $2200 over the lifetime of the system. Any future increases in the cost of electricity will only increase the benefits.
continue
The Australian Greenhouse Office is offering households a $1000 rebate to reduce thecost of a solar hot water system providing:
1. They are changing from an electric storage hot water system (which are the mostemissions intensive); and
2. Their combined family taxable income is less than $100,000 a year
The rebate applies to an existing principal place of residence and is available to bothhomeowners and renters.
The average savings in CO2 emissions per year as a result of switching to solar from anelectric storage hot water system is two to four tonnes.
The average savings in electricity costs is between $300 and $700 per year depending onthe climate and the number of people in the household.
The average solar hot water system lasts for 13 years (some even last for 20 years).There are approximately 70,000 new hot water systems sold each year but only a smallpercentage are solar.
Even though electric hot water systems have a lower upfront cost, the long term benefitsof a solar system will outweigh the initial outlay. A household may have to replace twoelectric systems over the life of one solar system and there are lower yearly electricitycosts with a solar system.
As well as the $1000 rebate from the Australian Greenhouse Office, there are furtherincentives to install a solar hot water system when an electric storage system is ready tobe replaced.
Nearly all solar systems on the market come with a certain number of Renewable EnergyCertificates (RECs). RECs are assigned by the Office of the Renewable Energy Regulatoras part of the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target. The certificates are tradable and canbe used to provide a discount on the up front cost of a solar hot water system.
The numbers of RECs that come with a solar hot water system depend on its size andwhere in Australia it is installed. Each solar system sold in Australia usually comes with20 to 40 RECS… that equates to an extra discount of $600 to $1200 on top of the $1000dollar rebate.
Because switching from an electric storage hot water system to a solar hot water systemis the simplest and most effective single measure to make a house more greenhousefriendly, most state and territory governments have their own incentives to encouragehouseholds to install a solar hot water system. In NSW, for example, switching to solarhot water attracts a rebate in the order of $600 to $800 depending on the type of systemchosen.
Why switch? - A real life example from Sydney…
Replacement of an existing electric storage hot water system:
Costs
• Retail cost of a new solar hot water system: 250 litre tank (suitable for a three tofour person household): $3928
• Installation cost: $1400
Total: $5328
Offset by Rebates and RECS
• Australian Greenhouse Office rebate: $1000
• NSW Government rebate: $600,
• Value of RECs attached to the system (bought back by the retailer in the form ofan upfront discount): $728
Net Cost: $ 3000
Electricity saved over the life of the system ($400 a year for 13 years): $5200
Net benefit to owner is $2200 over the lifetime of the system. Any future increases in the cost of electricity will only increase the benefits.
continue
Ratings Proliferate For 'Green' Builders
What makes a "green" home green? It depends on who is using the word. In the next several months, three nationwide certifications for environmentally friendly homes will be available to builders. But buyers may be confused by the array of standards.
This week, the U.S. Green Building Council -- a nonprofit that rates commercial buildings on things like energy use and indoor-air quality -- introduced similar rating systems for people's homes. Builders can score points for things like solar panels and energy-efficient appliances, and earn ratings such as silver, gold or platinum for environmental-friendliness.
The National Association of Homebuilders, a trade group whose members build about 80% of the country's new homes each year, say the Green Building Council's criteria for a "green" label are too impractical and costly. They are developing their own standards, which they say are flexible depending on the region and include easier-to-achieve certification in order to appeal to first-time buyers. A new draft will be available for public comment next month, and the standards should be finalized by February.
Yet another eco-friendly certification is available through the federal government's Energy Star program. Started in 1995, the program focuses on certifying homes that meet a standard on energy use. The current yardstick is at least 15% more efficient than homes built to the 2004 residential code. Homes that meet the standard usually have features such as extra insulation and energy-efficient appliances, and must be verified through independent home energy raters. States and local building associations, too, may have their own green building programs or guidelines.
The rush to focus on green homebuilding comes as the residential real-estate market continues to struggle. Builders are eager to jump on the green marketing bandwagon as a way to differentiate their products. New-home sales were a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 770,000 units in September, up 4.8% from the previous month but down 23% from a year earlier, according to data from the National Association of Homebuilders.
Some builders say many of today's consumers would rather pay extra for luxuries such as granite countertops than for "green" features. But they believe that demand will grow in the future for green homes as energy prices stay high. The building industry also wants to develop a voluntary green standard before the federal government -- increasingly focused on energy concerns -- takes matters into its own hands. Builders recently lobbied Congress against legislation that would allow the federal government to write some energy-efficient building codes for states.
EcoManor
Low VOC paint from AFM SafeCoat Paint and Stain adorns the wall of Laura Seydel's study in EcoManor.
Environmental advocates say coaxing people to make changes to their homes that trim energy consumption is important. The residential sector accounts for about 20% of the nation's greenhouse-gas emissions, according to government figures. Buying a green home, while more costly up front, can save money down the road with lower utility bills. There are also a number of state and federal tax credits for energy-efficient upgrades; the federal government offers a $300 tax credit for installation of energy-efficient air-conditioning and heating systems, for example. Some banks even offer a discount on mortgage closing costs for new homes that meet certain energy-saving requirements.
Some builders acknowledge the various "green" labels can be confusing for consumers. Mark Fischer, a builder with Grupe Co. in Rockland, Calif., built around 70 solar-paneled homes to meet the Green Building Council's standards, through the pilot program that has been testing out the ratings. He has found, however, that potential buyers don't really understand the features, or why they should pay more for them. "With all the different green certifications out there, it kind of gets lost," says Mr. Fischer, who has lowered his prices.
A few consumers, though, do seek out a "green" home to save money on utilities and help the environment. After a fallen oak tree destroyed his Atlanta home, Rutherford Seydel decided to rebuild his home to the specifications of the Green Building Council's rating system. A lawyer with an interest in the environment, Mr. Seydel earned a high rating for his home, a "gold," by putting in things like solar panels, a geothermal heating system, low-flush toilets and low-toxin paint. He says that the rating involved extra inspections, which caught air leaks around some doors and problems with the ducts that would have been missed by the contractor.
"That extra layer of eyes is well worth it," he says.
The cost of the Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design -- or LEED -- is between $500 and $2,000, depending on things like how big the house is and if there's a certifier in the area. Generally the builder pays and passes costs on to the home buyer. The cost of certification for the home builders' standards hasn't been determined yet, but the association says it is aiming for it to be lower so more builders will be involved.
Both the Green Building Council and the builders association have vied to emerge with the most widely accepted "green" label for homes. The Green Building Council says its LEED rating system is "the nationally accepted benchmark" for green building. Builders earn points in categories such as water efficiency, indoor air quality and the selection of eco-friendly materials. For example, a home would get four points for a rainwater-collection system and two points for high-efficiency appliances. To achieve the highest "platinum" rating, a home needs between 90 and 128 points.
The council's vice president for policy and public affairs, Michelle Moore, disputes the notion that the council's process is too costly or impractical for builders. She says it has rigorous verification standards, with a range of third-party experts who inspect homes and test materials to guard against so-called greenwash -- where any effort that is even nominally environmentally friendly gets painted with a "green" brush.
"In any marketplace, there's inevitably going to be people who do the minimum that they can and call themselves green," she says.
Builders, meanwhile, say their verification process, which will involve training certifiers through local builders associations, is just as rigorous. They point out their National Green Building Standard is being certified by the American National Standards Institute, a national standards-making body -- and representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency and members of the Green Building Council itself helped develop it.
EcoManor
A Crestron touch panel in the kitchen monitors the geothermal, water and electricity in the house as well as the lighting, security system, weather and sound system.
Apart from the verification process, there are other differences between the two systems. The Green Building Council program is the same for homes across the country, whereas the builders' standards can be flexible from region to region. For example, the builders are developing water-efficiency requirements that are tighter in the Southwest than in the Northeast.
When building or buying a "green" home, consumers should ask what types of improvements they are paying for and how much money they will save over time. Energy-saving advocates advise that if people want energy efficient appliances, they should focus first on refrigerators, because unlike a dishwasher or clothes washer, they run all the time. Air-conditioning units, too, tend to be big energy hogs, so paying for one that's more efficient is a good investment, they say.
Both the builders' certification and that of the Green Building Council penalize larger homes, since they use more resources. For example, the Green Building Council requires more points for four-bedroom homes bigger than 2,600 square feet in order to achieve a certain rating, while the draft builders' standard allows a home to be built to 4,000 square feet before requiring more points.
The higher ratings -- such as "platinum" and "emerald" -- have some similar requirements from both the Green Building Council and the builders, yet the council says theirs are designed for builders at the leading edge of green innovation. In terms of the lower ratings, builders have pushed for a more stripped-down entry-level standard for inexpensive homes: the "bronze" standard. Instead of putting in costly energy-efficient appliances, for example, builders can earn points by protecting existing trees on a lot or using salvaged materials. The group argues that some green elements are better than none at all.
By SARA SCHAEFER MUÑOZ
full article
This week, the U.S. Green Building Council -- a nonprofit that rates commercial buildings on things like energy use and indoor-air quality -- introduced similar rating systems for people's homes. Builders can score points for things like solar panels and energy-efficient appliances, and earn ratings such as silver, gold or platinum for environmental-friendliness.
The National Association of Homebuilders, a trade group whose members build about 80% of the country's new homes each year, say the Green Building Council's criteria for a "green" label are too impractical and costly. They are developing their own standards, which they say are flexible depending on the region and include easier-to-achieve certification in order to appeal to first-time buyers. A new draft will be available for public comment next month, and the standards should be finalized by February.
Yet another eco-friendly certification is available through the federal government's Energy Star program. Started in 1995, the program focuses on certifying homes that meet a standard on energy use. The current yardstick is at least 15% more efficient than homes built to the 2004 residential code. Homes that meet the standard usually have features such as extra insulation and energy-efficient appliances, and must be verified through independent home energy raters. States and local building associations, too, may have their own green building programs or guidelines.
The rush to focus on green homebuilding comes as the residential real-estate market continues to struggle. Builders are eager to jump on the green marketing bandwagon as a way to differentiate their products. New-home sales were a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 770,000 units in September, up 4.8% from the previous month but down 23% from a year earlier, according to data from the National Association of Homebuilders.
Some builders say many of today's consumers would rather pay extra for luxuries such as granite countertops than for "green" features. But they believe that demand will grow in the future for green homes as energy prices stay high. The building industry also wants to develop a voluntary green standard before the federal government -- increasingly focused on energy concerns -- takes matters into its own hands. Builders recently lobbied Congress against legislation that would allow the federal government to write some energy-efficient building codes for states.
EcoManor
Low VOC paint from AFM SafeCoat Paint and Stain adorns the wall of Laura Seydel's study in EcoManor.
Environmental advocates say coaxing people to make changes to their homes that trim energy consumption is important. The residential sector accounts for about 20% of the nation's greenhouse-gas emissions, according to government figures. Buying a green home, while more costly up front, can save money down the road with lower utility bills. There are also a number of state and federal tax credits for energy-efficient upgrades; the federal government offers a $300 tax credit for installation of energy-efficient air-conditioning and heating systems, for example. Some banks even offer a discount on mortgage closing costs for new homes that meet certain energy-saving requirements.
Some builders acknowledge the various "green" labels can be confusing for consumers. Mark Fischer, a builder with Grupe Co. in Rockland, Calif., built around 70 solar-paneled homes to meet the Green Building Council's standards, through the pilot program that has been testing out the ratings. He has found, however, that potential buyers don't really understand the features, or why they should pay more for them. "With all the different green certifications out there, it kind of gets lost," says Mr. Fischer, who has lowered his prices.
A few consumers, though, do seek out a "green" home to save money on utilities and help the environment. After a fallen oak tree destroyed his Atlanta home, Rutherford Seydel decided to rebuild his home to the specifications of the Green Building Council's rating system. A lawyer with an interest in the environment, Mr. Seydel earned a high rating for his home, a "gold," by putting in things like solar panels, a geothermal heating system, low-flush toilets and low-toxin paint. He says that the rating involved extra inspections, which caught air leaks around some doors and problems with the ducts that would have been missed by the contractor.
"That extra layer of eyes is well worth it," he says.
The cost of the Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design -- or LEED -- is between $500 and $2,000, depending on things like how big the house is and if there's a certifier in the area. Generally the builder pays and passes costs on to the home buyer. The cost of certification for the home builders' standards hasn't been determined yet, but the association says it is aiming for it to be lower so more builders will be involved.
Both the Green Building Council and the builders association have vied to emerge with the most widely accepted "green" label for homes. The Green Building Council says its LEED rating system is "the nationally accepted benchmark" for green building. Builders earn points in categories such as water efficiency, indoor air quality and the selection of eco-friendly materials. For example, a home would get four points for a rainwater-collection system and two points for high-efficiency appliances. To achieve the highest "platinum" rating, a home needs between 90 and 128 points.
The council's vice president for policy and public affairs, Michelle Moore, disputes the notion that the council's process is too costly or impractical for builders. She says it has rigorous verification standards, with a range of third-party experts who inspect homes and test materials to guard against so-called greenwash -- where any effort that is even nominally environmentally friendly gets painted with a "green" brush.
"In any marketplace, there's inevitably going to be people who do the minimum that they can and call themselves green," she says.
Builders, meanwhile, say their verification process, which will involve training certifiers through local builders associations, is just as rigorous. They point out their National Green Building Standard is being certified by the American National Standards Institute, a national standards-making body -- and representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency and members of the Green Building Council itself helped develop it.
EcoManor
A Crestron touch panel in the kitchen monitors the geothermal, water and electricity in the house as well as the lighting, security system, weather and sound system.
Apart from the verification process, there are other differences between the two systems. The Green Building Council program is the same for homes across the country, whereas the builders' standards can be flexible from region to region. For example, the builders are developing water-efficiency requirements that are tighter in the Southwest than in the Northeast.
When building or buying a "green" home, consumers should ask what types of improvements they are paying for and how much money they will save over time. Energy-saving advocates advise that if people want energy efficient appliances, they should focus first on refrigerators, because unlike a dishwasher or clothes washer, they run all the time. Air-conditioning units, too, tend to be big energy hogs, so paying for one that's more efficient is a good investment, they say.
Both the builders' certification and that of the Green Building Council penalize larger homes, since they use more resources. For example, the Green Building Council requires more points for four-bedroom homes bigger than 2,600 square feet in order to achieve a certain rating, while the draft builders' standard allows a home to be built to 4,000 square feet before requiring more points.
The higher ratings -- such as "platinum" and "emerald" -- have some similar requirements from both the Green Building Council and the builders, yet the council says theirs are designed for builders at the leading edge of green innovation. In terms of the lower ratings, builders have pushed for a more stripped-down entry-level standard for inexpensive homes: the "bronze" standard. Instead of putting in costly energy-efficient appliances, for example, builders can earn points by protecting existing trees on a lot or using salvaged materials. The group argues that some green elements are better than none at all.
By SARA SCHAEFER MUÑOZ
full article
Sunday 4 November 2007
Save money, planet with eco-appliances
Nowadays, we want our appliances to perform well and conserve resources. Here are a few things to consider when shopping for, and using, these new workhorses:
REFRIGERATORS: In most homes, the refrigerator is the single biggest energy sucker in the kitchen, if not the entire house.
The most efficiently designed fridges have a freezer on the bottom or top rather than on the side.
Forgoing conveniences such as through-the-door cold water and automatic ice dispensers can reduce energy usage by up to 55 percent and save you money on the purchase price as well.
Reduce the amount of power your fridge uses by positioning it away from heat sources, such as ovens or dishwashers.
DISHWASHERS: Most dishwashers' electricity goes to heat the water they use.
Optimize savings by running the dishwasher only when it's full.
Use the air-dry instead of the heat-dry feature.
Avoid the rinse-hold and pre-rinse options.
Choose a light or energy-saving wash cycle for dishes that are only slightly soiled.
CLOTHES WASHERS: On average, your dirty duds require a staggering 40 gallons of water per load.
Front loading units similar to those found in your neighborhood Laundromat are the biggest savers.
Look for a low Water Factor and low number of kilowatt hours of electricity.
Choose a model with a high Modified Energy Factor.
Always operate machines with full loads.
Wash clothes in cold water.
If your washer has a spin option, choose high speed or extended modes to reduce the amount of wetness in laundry, and, thus, drying time.
continue
REFRIGERATORS: In most homes, the refrigerator is the single biggest energy sucker in the kitchen, if not the entire house.
The most efficiently designed fridges have a freezer on the bottom or top rather than on the side.
Forgoing conveniences such as through-the-door cold water and automatic ice dispensers can reduce energy usage by up to 55 percent and save you money on the purchase price as well.
Reduce the amount of power your fridge uses by positioning it away from heat sources, such as ovens or dishwashers.
DISHWASHERS: Most dishwashers' electricity goes to heat the water they use.
Optimize savings by running the dishwasher only when it's full.
Use the air-dry instead of the heat-dry feature.
Avoid the rinse-hold and pre-rinse options.
Choose a light or energy-saving wash cycle for dishes that are only slightly soiled.
CLOTHES WASHERS: On average, your dirty duds require a staggering 40 gallons of water per load.
Front loading units similar to those found in your neighborhood Laundromat are the biggest savers.
Look for a low Water Factor and low number of kilowatt hours of electricity.
Choose a model with a high Modified Energy Factor.
Always operate machines with full loads.
Wash clothes in cold water.
If your washer has a spin option, choose high speed or extended modes to reduce the amount of wetness in laundry, and, thus, drying time.
continue
Turf roof is a main attraction
The hills rise like giant bubbles surfacing from an extraterrestrial pond: natural, yet somehow alien. Although they are dotted with native plants, the effect is anything but mundane.
Instead, they incite images of a revolutionary future - a place designed by intelligent creatures who have transcended the division between nature and culture. Welcome to the most natural part of San Francisco's new Academy of Sciences, its living roof.
Like zoos, nature museums have never really done it for me. Sure, I love to gape at the circling shark or the twisting rain forest vine as much as the next city bumpkin, but the clash between my appreciation for nature and this most unnatural of settings always undermines the experience.
Too often, the dull rectangular rooms outfitted with square tanks and filled with carefully staged fake nature serve only to emphasize how little we've learned from our astounding planet.
But Renzo Piano's architectural wonder breaks the square mold. The museum is scheduled to open next fall, although it's architecturally mostly complete now. A tour of the ultra-environmental museum one moonlit evening last week reminded me that natural landscapes and the design imagination need not live apart.
The building itself - with its spherical planetarium, domed rain forest, high-tech piazza with suspended glass roof and Plexiglas tunnels - is innovative enough to banish the stuffy taint associated with natural history. It's also arguably the greenest museum in the world, built to achieve a platinum rating from Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design's Green Building Rating System.
But the undulating green roof, planted with four native ground covers and five local wildflowers, will be a destination in itself. And in some ways, these hills of 1.7 million plants growing in 50,000 biodegradable coconut husk trays comprise the most inspiring element of the whole museum. The roof design has multiple functions.
Implemented by architectural landscapers SWA Group, in collaboration with green roof guru Paul Kephart of Rana Creek Living Architecture in Carmel Valley, the garden is structured around a network of rock in mesh cages, which allow drainage and offer support to the coconut husk trays. The steep inclines of the little hills draw cool air into the central courtyard. Heat-sensing skylights automatically open like clam shells to ventilate and provide natural sunlight to the coral reefs and rain forest within.
But the seven hillocks, which are said to echo the seven major hills of San Francisco, do more than simply express the curves and support the spaces of the interior; they give the museum a living experiment in native plant restoration amidst the alien greenery of Golden Gate Park.
Piano has suggested that the idea was to pick up a piece of the park and slide the museum under it, but it's much more than that. Since the plants were chosen to attract local butterflies, birds and insects, some of which are endangered, the roof offers a quietly utopian statement. Even as we grow and change, it seems to whisper, "We can do better."
Perhaps even more crucial than its role as native landscaping, it introduces the turf roof to San Franciscans as an architectural choice. Living roofs have been around for centuries in Europe, and some American pioneers incorporated them into early dwellings. And if you've ever gone for a walk across the greenery of Yerba Buena Gardens or Civic Center Plaza, you have experienced the joys of a green roof. But the Civic Center Plaza roof, like most of the city's large-scale turf roofs, is used to hide a subterranean parking lot. That's great. But that's not exactly the same as choosing and designing a green roof for the tops of buildings.
I grew up under a turf roof in a home my father designed, and so the idea of grass growing over your head has never seemed new to me. But the early turf technology (like early solar panels) didn't always deliver on the dream. My mother's strategically placed buckets around the dining room and family room offered a humble testimony to that fact. Huddled under our dripping grassy roof, we sometimes felt the way bunnies must feel in their burrows, waiting for the rain to stop.
In the past decade, however, green roofs have come of age. Although Gap Inc. brought large-scale green roofs to the Bay Area in 1997 with its 69,000-square-foot green headquarters in San Bruno, the concept hasn't taken off here as quickly as in many other places.
In Germany, it's already mainstream, with 7 percent of all new construction incorporating a green roof into the design. In England, large- and small-scale living roofs have spawned a movement of enthusiastic practitioners, researchers and designers, buoyed by government incentives. In Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley's love for green roofs led to the new roof energy code, which requires white (reflective) or green (vegetated) roofs, and has produced some 120 green roofs in the city center (including its city hall). The Mormon Church conference center in Salt Lake City features an 8-acre multilevel roof resembling mountain meadows, planted with 300 types of wildflowers.
In an era of carbon consciousness, it's only natural that green roofs should gain currency for a wide variety of reasons. By providing insulation, they lower energy bills. By absorbing rainwater, they reduce storm runoff - one of the primary ways nitrate and phosphorous pollution get into our groundwater.
Populated by plants, they clean the air, absorb urban noise and relax us with their natural beauty. In hot climates, they greatly reduce the heat island effect, in which cities amplify the heat of the sun and create hotter climates. Some research has shown that in hot cities like Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, green roofs could reduce inner-city temperatures by 10 degrees.
So what's stopping the greening of San Francisco's skyline? One deterrent is price - although turf roofs are supposed to last twice as long as traditional roofs, they are more expensive - an estimated 300 percent more. But factoring in the building's lower energy costs and reduced storm runoff infrastructure lowers the price substantially. And as turf roofs grow more popular, the price has dropped substantially.
Not every structure is built to carry the extra load of a soil roof (which gets substantially heavier when wet), but lightweight soils and plants have made turf roofs surprisingly adaptable to older homes.
Toyota's non-automotive division has come up with a turf mat of 2-inch-thick lawn tiles that might work for buildings that can't carry a traditional turf roof. According to Mark Palmer of San Francisco's Department of the Environment, the green roof is gaining in popularity. "We're seeing more and more residential applications for turf roofs in the building department," he said, adding that the Department of Building Inspection is working on a set of criteria for living roofs.
Because projects that cross a certain environmental threshold now can get into the priority permit pool, both homeowners and developers are eager to design with green building in mind. A green roof is one way to get green brownie points.
If you're interested in building or retrofitting with a green roof, where should you start? It's best to begin with a structural engineer who can calculate your home's strength. The next step might be to research turf systems that have been used on your type of roof.
I can't imagine that the academy won't inspire a local living-roof mania. And not a minute too soon. According to Palmer, the next 25 years of building have the potential to create a whole new world. "Eighty percent of our buildings will be new or renovated by 2035," he said. "So it's a tremendous opportunity to change our environment."
E-mail Carol Lloyd at surreal@sfgate.com.
continue
Instead, they incite images of a revolutionary future - a place designed by intelligent creatures who have transcended the division between nature and culture. Welcome to the most natural part of San Francisco's new Academy of Sciences, its living roof.
Like zoos, nature museums have never really done it for me. Sure, I love to gape at the circling shark or the twisting rain forest vine as much as the next city bumpkin, but the clash between my appreciation for nature and this most unnatural of settings always undermines the experience.
Too often, the dull rectangular rooms outfitted with square tanks and filled with carefully staged fake nature serve only to emphasize how little we've learned from our astounding planet.
But Renzo Piano's architectural wonder breaks the square mold. The museum is scheduled to open next fall, although it's architecturally mostly complete now. A tour of the ultra-environmental museum one moonlit evening last week reminded me that natural landscapes and the design imagination need not live apart.
The building itself - with its spherical planetarium, domed rain forest, high-tech piazza with suspended glass roof and Plexiglas tunnels - is innovative enough to banish the stuffy taint associated with natural history. It's also arguably the greenest museum in the world, built to achieve a platinum rating from Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design's Green Building Rating System.
But the undulating green roof, planted with four native ground covers and five local wildflowers, will be a destination in itself. And in some ways, these hills of 1.7 million plants growing in 50,000 biodegradable coconut husk trays comprise the most inspiring element of the whole museum. The roof design has multiple functions.
Implemented by architectural landscapers SWA Group, in collaboration with green roof guru Paul Kephart of Rana Creek Living Architecture in Carmel Valley, the garden is structured around a network of rock in mesh cages, which allow drainage and offer support to the coconut husk trays. The steep inclines of the little hills draw cool air into the central courtyard. Heat-sensing skylights automatically open like clam shells to ventilate and provide natural sunlight to the coral reefs and rain forest within.
But the seven hillocks, which are said to echo the seven major hills of San Francisco, do more than simply express the curves and support the spaces of the interior; they give the museum a living experiment in native plant restoration amidst the alien greenery of Golden Gate Park.
Piano has suggested that the idea was to pick up a piece of the park and slide the museum under it, but it's much more than that. Since the plants were chosen to attract local butterflies, birds and insects, some of which are endangered, the roof offers a quietly utopian statement. Even as we grow and change, it seems to whisper, "We can do better."
Perhaps even more crucial than its role as native landscaping, it introduces the turf roof to San Franciscans as an architectural choice. Living roofs have been around for centuries in Europe, and some American pioneers incorporated them into early dwellings. And if you've ever gone for a walk across the greenery of Yerba Buena Gardens or Civic Center Plaza, you have experienced the joys of a green roof. But the Civic Center Plaza roof, like most of the city's large-scale turf roofs, is used to hide a subterranean parking lot. That's great. But that's not exactly the same as choosing and designing a green roof for the tops of buildings.
I grew up under a turf roof in a home my father designed, and so the idea of grass growing over your head has never seemed new to me. But the early turf technology (like early solar panels) didn't always deliver on the dream. My mother's strategically placed buckets around the dining room and family room offered a humble testimony to that fact. Huddled under our dripping grassy roof, we sometimes felt the way bunnies must feel in their burrows, waiting for the rain to stop.
In the past decade, however, green roofs have come of age. Although Gap Inc. brought large-scale green roofs to the Bay Area in 1997 with its 69,000-square-foot green headquarters in San Bruno, the concept hasn't taken off here as quickly as in many other places.
In Germany, it's already mainstream, with 7 percent of all new construction incorporating a green roof into the design. In England, large- and small-scale living roofs have spawned a movement of enthusiastic practitioners, researchers and designers, buoyed by government incentives. In Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley's love for green roofs led to the new roof energy code, which requires white (reflective) or green (vegetated) roofs, and has produced some 120 green roofs in the city center (including its city hall). The Mormon Church conference center in Salt Lake City features an 8-acre multilevel roof resembling mountain meadows, planted with 300 types of wildflowers.
In an era of carbon consciousness, it's only natural that green roofs should gain currency for a wide variety of reasons. By providing insulation, they lower energy bills. By absorbing rainwater, they reduce storm runoff - one of the primary ways nitrate and phosphorous pollution get into our groundwater.
Populated by plants, they clean the air, absorb urban noise and relax us with their natural beauty. In hot climates, they greatly reduce the heat island effect, in which cities amplify the heat of the sun and create hotter climates. Some research has shown that in hot cities like Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, green roofs could reduce inner-city temperatures by 10 degrees.
So what's stopping the greening of San Francisco's skyline? One deterrent is price - although turf roofs are supposed to last twice as long as traditional roofs, they are more expensive - an estimated 300 percent more. But factoring in the building's lower energy costs and reduced storm runoff infrastructure lowers the price substantially. And as turf roofs grow more popular, the price has dropped substantially.
Not every structure is built to carry the extra load of a soil roof (which gets substantially heavier when wet), but lightweight soils and plants have made turf roofs surprisingly adaptable to older homes.
Toyota's non-automotive division has come up with a turf mat of 2-inch-thick lawn tiles that might work for buildings that can't carry a traditional turf roof. According to Mark Palmer of San Francisco's Department of the Environment, the green roof is gaining in popularity. "We're seeing more and more residential applications for turf roofs in the building department," he said, adding that the Department of Building Inspection is working on a set of criteria for living roofs.
Because projects that cross a certain environmental threshold now can get into the priority permit pool, both homeowners and developers are eager to design with green building in mind. A green roof is one way to get green brownie points.
If you're interested in building or retrofitting with a green roof, where should you start? It's best to begin with a structural engineer who can calculate your home's strength. The next step might be to research turf systems that have been used on your type of roof.
I can't imagine that the academy won't inspire a local living-roof mania. And not a minute too soon. According to Palmer, the next 25 years of building have the potential to create a whole new world. "Eighty percent of our buildings will be new or renovated by 2035," he said. "So it's a tremendous opportunity to change our environment."
E-mail Carol Lloyd at surreal@sfgate.com.
continue
Less is More: Energy Efficiency in Alaska
By Brian Yanity - Energy efficiency is being able to a given amount of work with less energy.
Energy efficiency is important because the total amount of energy currently consumed by humans worldwide averages 16 trillion watts. Over 90% of that energy comes from fossil fuels, and almost two-thirds of it is lost during its conversion into the forms used by humans. In a cold region like Alaska, no discussion of sustainable resources would be complete without mentioning energy efficiency.
The use of any energy sources should be accompanied by a simultaneous effort to improve energy efficiency and conservation. Being able to do more with less is always a goal for responsible energy planners because, as Benjamin Franklin once said, a penny saved is a penny earned. Or, if the proverbial bucket of water is leaking, one can either patch the leaks or find more (or cheaper) water. Increased energy efficiency will make Alaska more "economically competitive" in the mainstream sense of the term. Energy efficiency gains that do not compromise comfort, performance, or productivity can be made in transportation, heating, and electricity use. However, it is important to distinguish between energy efficiency on a physical level and ‘economic efficiency' as Wall Street defines it. Making human civilization more energy efficient requires a large-scale effort to refit and improve the modern world's buildings, industrial and commercial processes, lighting, heating, appliances and transportation systems.
Energy conservation is defined as the reduction of end-use energy demand by reducing the service demanded, or cutting back on energy use by "making sacrifices" to accomplish a given task. For example, conservation could include the use of natural daylight from the windows instead of electric lighting, a rural transportation choice between dog sleds and snow machines, or using a handsaw instead of a chainsaw to cut wood.
In energy conservation circles, negawatt power is a term coined supplying additional electrical energy to consumers without increased generation capacity through creation of a ‘market' for trading increased energy efficiencies. It works by utilizing consumption efficiency to increase available market supply rather than by increasing plant generation capacity. While not as glamorous as new energy sources, implementing conservation and efficiency measures to reduce a specified amount of energy used is usually cheaper than building an equivalent amount of new energy production capacity.
With a greater return on investment than most new energy sources, energy efficiency is often the simplest way to start solving serious energy problems. However, energy efficiency efforts alone cannot preclude the exhaustion of fossil fuels in the long run. The energy supply chain basically consists of three main components: primary energy conversion - energy carrier - useful energy form. Efficiency improvements can be made anywhere along this energy supply chain, although most energy users only have control at the end-use part of the chain.
Due to the cold, dark winters, Alaskans consume more energy per capita than any other state in the union. The US Department of Energy (DOE) estimated the total Alaskan per capita energy use in 2003 at 1175 million British Thermal Units (mBTU) per year. (One BTU unit represents the energy required to heat one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit.) It should be noted that North Slope oil production, which is very energy intensive, is included in this figure. By contrast, the state with the lowest annual per-capita energy consumption rate is Rhode Island (212 mBTU), followed by New York (222 mBTU). Another interesting comparison (also based on DOE statistics for 2003) is the total annual per-capita energy consumption of several other large nations: Japan (176 mBTU), Germany (173 mBTU), and China (35 mBTU). However, these numbers do not take into account each nation's per-capita pollution emissions or energy consumed per unit of gross domestic product (GDP).
A recent report by University of Alaska Anchorage's Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) entitled "Effects of Rising Utility Costs on Alaska Households" says that household utility bills in rural Alaska communities are about 50% greater today than they were in the year 2000, mostly due to fuel costs. According to DOE statistics, Alaska has the sixth-highest per-capita consumption of natural gas of the fifty states, though it also has the sixth-lowest per-capita residential electricity use. The relatively high cost of electricity, especially in rural areas, encourages conservation of it. The state with the highest per-capita electricity consumption is Wyoming (26,000 kWh/year), which gets cheap electricity from its abundant coal and uses a lot of all-electric heating and air-conditioning. California uses the least per-capita amount of electricity (6700 kWh/year). The US average is around 12,000 kWh/year. According to the California Energy Commission, since the mid-1970s, per-capita electricity use in the nation's most populous state has stayed relatively flat while per-capita electricity use grew by more than 50% for the nation as a whole.
Heating and Insulation of Buildings
Space heating uses about 40% of the total energy consumed in Alaska, and about 20% of energy consumed in the US as a whole. Together, heating and cooling represent 56% of the energy costs for an average US home. Overall, Alaskans have the greatest home heating needs in the country. According to a recent report by the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development, the statewide average price for a gallon of heating fuel rose from $3.48 and $3.99 in the one year period between 2005 and 2006, with lower-income households being most affected. The highest fuel prices, found in the most remote communities, are above $7 per gallon.
In Anchorage, the price of natural gas for home heating has increased 91% between 2000 and 2006 according the ISER report mentioned above. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index reports that Anchorage natural gas prices increased 19% during the year 2006. And these trends show no sign of slowing down, as Enstar Natural Gas Co. abruptly raised its residential rates by 30% in January 2007. Similarly, on May 1, 2007 Fairbanks Natural Gas raised its rates by 29%. Fairbanks gas prices have increased 248% since 2002. In the majority of the Alaska Railbelt, natural gas is the predominant fuel for space heating, most water heaters, and many ovens.
An effective way to begin saving energy is to conduct a home energy audit to find the parts of the home that use (or waste) the most energy. Perhaps the easiest conservation measure is turning down the thermostat a few degrees. An alternative would be to use a programmable "setback" thermostat that turns on the heating system only when needed. A home's heating system should be checked and cleaned annually to ensure efficient performance. Furnace filters should be replaced regularly, and heat vents should be kept clear of clutter and debris.
Insulation keeps buildings warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. It is an essential part of almost every building we inhabit. Adding insulation is usually the easiest way to improve heating efficiency in existing buildings, although heating system upgrades and retrofits are often necessary as well. Even a few hundred dollars spent on proper insulation and sealing air leaks can cut heating costs by up to 30%. According to the DOE, every dollar spent on home weatherization and energy efficiency has a $2.40 return on investment. Every year at least $13 billion of wasted heat energy escapes through the cracks and air leaks of US residential buildings.
For homes, the recommended minimum insulation (either fiberglass or spray-foam) rating is R10 in basements and floors, R12 in walls, and R38 in ceilings and attics. Insulating basements is often essential because concrete doesn't have much insulation value. Weather-stripping around doors is also important, and storm windows should be installed before the cold half of the year. Highly efficient double- or triple-paned windows filled with low-conductivity gas reduce heat flow by 50% or more. Caulking windows and leaky ducts is also part of the building philosophy of "build tight, insulate right," which could also be interpreted as "seal the air leaks first, then insulate." But a building acts as a system, and indoor air quality in a tight building must be preserved by letting it "breathe" with enough ventilation.
Efficiency retrofits of old buildings are important because most buildings have an expected lifetime of 50 to 100 years. During the building boom that accompanied the oil pipeline rush of the 1970s and early 1980s, many Alaska buildings were not designed or constructed properly for a subarctic climate. Such structures were designed merely to minimize construction costs, not energy costs over the building's lifetime. In response, the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC) introduced voluntary building energy efficiency standards in 1991 to cut home energy use by 50% in AHFC-financed homes. A valuable library of Alaska-related energy efficiency literature can be found at AHFC's Resource Information Center: www.ahfc.state.ak.us/energy/ric.cfm.
Today a northern design course is required for Alaska architects. Studying the construction technology of other cold regions around the world should prove useful in developing new, more energy-efficient building codes for Alaska. The Cold Climate Housing Research Center (www.cchrc.org) was established in 2000 by the Alaska State Homebuilding Association, a nonprofit trade group. The new CCHRC building was opened in 2006 on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus and features the latest in energy-efficient building technology.
These state-level energy efficiency programs are a good start, but more Alaska research is needed. Nationally, a ‘green building' rating system known as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard has been developed by the US Green Building Council (www.usgbc.org). The LEED system addresses five major aspects of building design: sustainable building sites, water consumption, energy use and emissions, materials and resource use, and indoor environmental quality. The first LEED-certified building constructed in Alaska was the National Weather Service's Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, which opened in 2003.
Zero Net-Energy Homes
A zero net-energy house, which is a type of a zero-energy building (ZEB), is one that produces all of the energy it uses onsite, using renewable sources. Such structures have a super-insulated, passive solar design; extremely efficient lighting and ventilation systems; state-of-the-art home appliances; and usually incorporate solar thermal and photovoltaic panels. Overall, a single-family-sized ZEB uses about one-sixth the energy of a typical single-family home. The manufacture of prefabricated zero net-energy homes has already started in Europe, though on a small scale. A step up from zero net-energy designs are "energy-plus" buildings, which by themselves produce more energy than they use. This may be difficult in Alaska, but such a home is technically feasible in northern climates. As described in Richard Seifert's A Solar Design Manual for Alaska (www.alaskasun.org), one of the first zero net-energy demonstration homes was built in 1974 on the campus of the Technical University of Denmark (above, photo by Richard Seifert), and the similar Saskatchewan Conservation House was constructed in Saskatoon three years later. Although these experiments proved that zero net-energy buildings can be constructed in those northern locations, it remains to be seen whether such a feat is within reach for Alaska. Most of the state has a longer cold season than either Saskatchewan or Denmark.
continue
Energy efficiency is important because the total amount of energy currently consumed by humans worldwide averages 16 trillion watts. Over 90% of that energy comes from fossil fuels, and almost two-thirds of it is lost during its conversion into the forms used by humans. In a cold region like Alaska, no discussion of sustainable resources would be complete without mentioning energy efficiency.
The use of any energy sources should be accompanied by a simultaneous effort to improve energy efficiency and conservation. Being able to do more with less is always a goal for responsible energy planners because, as Benjamin Franklin once said, a penny saved is a penny earned. Or, if the proverbial bucket of water is leaking, one can either patch the leaks or find more (or cheaper) water. Increased energy efficiency will make Alaska more "economically competitive" in the mainstream sense of the term. Energy efficiency gains that do not compromise comfort, performance, or productivity can be made in transportation, heating, and electricity use. However, it is important to distinguish between energy efficiency on a physical level and ‘economic efficiency' as Wall Street defines it. Making human civilization more energy efficient requires a large-scale effort to refit and improve the modern world's buildings, industrial and commercial processes, lighting, heating, appliances and transportation systems.
Energy conservation is defined as the reduction of end-use energy demand by reducing the service demanded, or cutting back on energy use by "making sacrifices" to accomplish a given task. For example, conservation could include the use of natural daylight from the windows instead of electric lighting, a rural transportation choice between dog sleds and snow machines, or using a handsaw instead of a chainsaw to cut wood.
In energy conservation circles, negawatt power is a term coined supplying additional electrical energy to consumers without increased generation capacity through creation of a ‘market' for trading increased energy efficiencies. It works by utilizing consumption efficiency to increase available market supply rather than by increasing plant generation capacity. While not as glamorous as new energy sources, implementing conservation and efficiency measures to reduce a specified amount of energy used is usually cheaper than building an equivalent amount of new energy production capacity.
With a greater return on investment than most new energy sources, energy efficiency is often the simplest way to start solving serious energy problems. However, energy efficiency efforts alone cannot preclude the exhaustion of fossil fuels in the long run. The energy supply chain basically consists of three main components: primary energy conversion - energy carrier - useful energy form. Efficiency improvements can be made anywhere along this energy supply chain, although most energy users only have control at the end-use part of the chain.
Due to the cold, dark winters, Alaskans consume more energy per capita than any other state in the union. The US Department of Energy (DOE) estimated the total Alaskan per capita energy use in 2003 at 1175 million British Thermal Units (mBTU) per year. (One BTU unit represents the energy required to heat one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit.) It should be noted that North Slope oil production, which is very energy intensive, is included in this figure. By contrast, the state with the lowest annual per-capita energy consumption rate is Rhode Island (212 mBTU), followed by New York (222 mBTU). Another interesting comparison (also based on DOE statistics for 2003) is the total annual per-capita energy consumption of several other large nations: Japan (176 mBTU), Germany (173 mBTU), and China (35 mBTU). However, these numbers do not take into account each nation's per-capita pollution emissions or energy consumed per unit of gross domestic product (GDP).
A recent report by University of Alaska Anchorage's Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) entitled "Effects of Rising Utility Costs on Alaska Households" says that household utility bills in rural Alaska communities are about 50% greater today than they were in the year 2000, mostly due to fuel costs. According to DOE statistics, Alaska has the sixth-highest per-capita consumption of natural gas of the fifty states, though it also has the sixth-lowest per-capita residential electricity use. The relatively high cost of electricity, especially in rural areas, encourages conservation of it. The state with the highest per-capita electricity consumption is Wyoming (26,000 kWh/year), which gets cheap electricity from its abundant coal and uses a lot of all-electric heating and air-conditioning. California uses the least per-capita amount of electricity (6700 kWh/year). The US average is around 12,000 kWh/year. According to the California Energy Commission, since the mid-1970s, per-capita electricity use in the nation's most populous state has stayed relatively flat while per-capita electricity use grew by more than 50% for the nation as a whole.
Heating and Insulation of Buildings
Space heating uses about 40% of the total energy consumed in Alaska, and about 20% of energy consumed in the US as a whole. Together, heating and cooling represent 56% of the energy costs for an average US home. Overall, Alaskans have the greatest home heating needs in the country. According to a recent report by the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development, the statewide average price for a gallon of heating fuel rose from $3.48 and $3.99 in the one year period between 2005 and 2006, with lower-income households being most affected. The highest fuel prices, found in the most remote communities, are above $7 per gallon.
In Anchorage, the price of natural gas for home heating has increased 91% between 2000 and 2006 according the ISER report mentioned above. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index reports that Anchorage natural gas prices increased 19% during the year 2006. And these trends show no sign of slowing down, as Enstar Natural Gas Co. abruptly raised its residential rates by 30% in January 2007. Similarly, on May 1, 2007 Fairbanks Natural Gas raised its rates by 29%. Fairbanks gas prices have increased 248% since 2002. In the majority of the Alaska Railbelt, natural gas is the predominant fuel for space heating, most water heaters, and many ovens.
An effective way to begin saving energy is to conduct a home energy audit to find the parts of the home that use (or waste) the most energy. Perhaps the easiest conservation measure is turning down the thermostat a few degrees. An alternative would be to use a programmable "setback" thermostat that turns on the heating system only when needed. A home's heating system should be checked and cleaned annually to ensure efficient performance. Furnace filters should be replaced regularly, and heat vents should be kept clear of clutter and debris.
Insulation keeps buildings warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. It is an essential part of almost every building we inhabit. Adding insulation is usually the easiest way to improve heating efficiency in existing buildings, although heating system upgrades and retrofits are often necessary as well. Even a few hundred dollars spent on proper insulation and sealing air leaks can cut heating costs by up to 30%. According to the DOE, every dollar spent on home weatherization and energy efficiency has a $2.40 return on investment. Every year at least $13 billion of wasted heat energy escapes through the cracks and air leaks of US residential buildings.
For homes, the recommended minimum insulation (either fiberglass or spray-foam) rating is R10 in basements and floors, R12 in walls, and R38 in ceilings and attics. Insulating basements is often essential because concrete doesn't have much insulation value. Weather-stripping around doors is also important, and storm windows should be installed before the cold half of the year. Highly efficient double- or triple-paned windows filled with low-conductivity gas reduce heat flow by 50% or more. Caulking windows and leaky ducts is also part of the building philosophy of "build tight, insulate right," which could also be interpreted as "seal the air leaks first, then insulate." But a building acts as a system, and indoor air quality in a tight building must be preserved by letting it "breathe" with enough ventilation.
Efficiency retrofits of old buildings are important because most buildings have an expected lifetime of 50 to 100 years. During the building boom that accompanied the oil pipeline rush of the 1970s and early 1980s, many Alaska buildings were not designed or constructed properly for a subarctic climate. Such structures were designed merely to minimize construction costs, not energy costs over the building's lifetime. In response, the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC) introduced voluntary building energy efficiency standards in 1991 to cut home energy use by 50% in AHFC-financed homes. A valuable library of Alaska-related energy efficiency literature can be found at AHFC's Resource Information Center: www.ahfc.state.ak.us/energy/ric.cfm.
Today a northern design course is required for Alaska architects. Studying the construction technology of other cold regions around the world should prove useful in developing new, more energy-efficient building codes for Alaska. The Cold Climate Housing Research Center (www.cchrc.org) was established in 2000 by the Alaska State Homebuilding Association, a nonprofit trade group. The new CCHRC building was opened in 2006 on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus and features the latest in energy-efficient building technology.
These state-level energy efficiency programs are a good start, but more Alaska research is needed. Nationally, a ‘green building' rating system known as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard has been developed by the US Green Building Council (www.usgbc.org). The LEED system addresses five major aspects of building design: sustainable building sites, water consumption, energy use and emissions, materials and resource use, and indoor environmental quality. The first LEED-certified building constructed in Alaska was the National Weather Service's Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, which opened in 2003.
Zero Net-Energy Homes
A zero net-energy house, which is a type of a zero-energy building (ZEB), is one that produces all of the energy it uses onsite, using renewable sources. Such structures have a super-insulated, passive solar design; extremely efficient lighting and ventilation systems; state-of-the-art home appliances; and usually incorporate solar thermal and photovoltaic panels. Overall, a single-family-sized ZEB uses about one-sixth the energy of a typical single-family home. The manufacture of prefabricated zero net-energy homes has already started in Europe, though on a small scale. A step up from zero net-energy designs are "energy-plus" buildings, which by themselves produce more energy than they use. This may be difficult in Alaska, but such a home is technically feasible in northern climates. As described in Richard Seifert's A Solar Design Manual for Alaska (www.alaskasun.org), one of the first zero net-energy demonstration homes was built in 1974 on the campus of the Technical University of Denmark (above, photo by Richard Seifert), and the similar Saskatchewan Conservation House was constructed in Saskatoon three years later. Although these experiments proved that zero net-energy buildings can be constructed in those northern locations, it remains to be seen whether such a feat is within reach for Alaska. Most of the state has a longer cold season than either Saskatchewan or Denmark.
continue
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