December 2008 Archives

The wonderful Passivhaus design gets a write-up in the New York Times:

The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000 outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle. Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants’ bodies.

And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to build than conventional houses.

“The myth before was that to be warm you had to have heating. Our goal is to create a warm house without energy demand,” said Wolfgang Hasper, an engineer at the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt. “This is not about wearing thick pullovers, turning the thermostat down and putting up with drafts. It’s about being comfortable with less energy input, and we do this by recycling heating.”

Interesting post from the Gristmill on various strategies for financing high-efficiency retrofits of buildings with a long-term payback that might otherwise discourage short-term tenants. Manitoba Hydro is highlighted for its success in making 8,100 loans for energy conservation programs in 2007.

The lesson of Sacramento and Manitoba lies in that how payments are collected — on the bill, on the property tax, or on a separate bill (which is what these programs do) — matters less than how the loans are marketed. Because of humans’ innate aversion to making complicated choices, among the most important ingredients of success in Manitoba and Sacramento is the deep and thoroughgoing involvement of those places’ contractors — the people that building owners already trust to help them improve their properties. In both places, contractors are the most important sales force and intermediary for the utility lending programs. Plus, these programs are efficient, well staffed and well organized. In Sacramento, once a contractor and building owner have submitted a loan application, the utility approves or declines within 24 hours. Manitoba is almost as fast, and it has a colossal network of engaged tradespeople: 1,100 contractors and 200 retailers are enrolled in its program. Manitoba has essentially deputized its building tradespeople as loan officers and conservation evangelists … It’s a whole-systems approach that provides financing as one part of the package.

I read an article in the Toronto Star a while ago: “Mercury in fish brings warning”. The article advises pregnant and nursing mothers against eating fish high in mercury, and it sparked something in me which I have been thinking about ever since I read Having Faith, by Sandra Steingraber, an ecologist who became pregnant with her first child at age 38. Over the course of her pregnancy, she undertook an exhaustive study of embryonic and fetal development, and the dangers posed to this development by environmental pollutants. After her baby, Faith, was born she spoke powerfully at the UN about the dangers of breast milk contamination. From this combination of personal experience and extensive research has sprung her book, Having Faith.

Sandra is a poetic writer, and her passages describing the biology of pregnancy can be achingly beautiful. The structure of the placenta growing into the walls of the uterus is compared to that of a maple grove: “by the third month of pregnancy, the treetops of an entire forest press up against the deepest layers of the womb … it’s canopy of placental branches … pump[ing] much of what it needs out of the percolating raindrops of maternal blood.” (31) Organogenesis, the differentiation of cells into body parts “sometimes … seems like a magic show. At other times it’s like origami, the formation of elegant structures from the folding of flat sheets. It also involves cellular wanderings worthy of Odysseus.” (14) That this fantastical and delicate growth process - the formation of organs, fingers, toes, eyes, the growth of the brain — is described in such elegant language, serves to make the main thrust of the book all the more potent. Sandra makes the cogent argument, backed up by a history of regulatory neglect (which has been countered by inspirational courageous action), that we are not doing enough to protect ourselves and our young ones from the potential ravages of environmental toxins. Toxins that have only passing, transient effects on fully grown adults can interfere with critical processes in fetal development by interrupting a delicate origami fold, or by tripping up an Odyssean nerve cell migrating through the young brain. Timing can be more critical than dose.

One issue her book addresses in detail is the danger posed to fetal brain development by exposure to methylmercury. Most mercury is released into the environment by the burning of coal in coal-fired power plants. From there, it makes it way into waterways, where tiny bacteria attach a carbon atom to mercury to make methylmercury. This methylmercury, released back into the water, attaches itself to tiny algae and plankton, which are then strained from the water by filter-feeders, in turn gobbled up by fish, and so on, up the food chain, in the usual process of biomagnification, to us.

Sadly, the passage of methylmercury is not blocked by the placental barrier. Sandra notes that “in the case of methylmercury the placenta functions more like a magnifying glass than a barrier.” (34) It is for this reason that many public health organisations advise against the consumption of certain kinds of fish during pregnancy, especially the larger carnivores like shark, swordfish, and tuna. The good news is that avoiding fish can lower mercury levels in the body, as mercury only persists in human tissues for a few months. On the other hand, as Sandra points out,

an approach to fetal health that relies on nutritional sacrifices by the mother is still unsound. Cutting back on fish is not like cutting back on cigarettes and beer. Fish is good food … the same succulent filet that carries fatty acids essential for brain growth also carry an injurious brain poison. (129)

Mercury concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise, year over year, as new coal-powered generating plants are brought on line. Some would argue that taking action against climate change would harm the economies of the world by requiring the implementation of expensive measures to reduce emissions. It is becoming ever more clear that climate change is but one sign of many urging us to change our ways. This isn’t economics, we’re talking survival. We need to find ways to produce energy that do not pollute our environment and endanger the lives of our children. This world is all we have, and we are wholly dependent on its ecological health in ways so profound that they are almost beyond comprehension.

Fortunately, there are encouraging signs of change. Some jurisdictions are starting to take action against mercury contamination and against persistent organic pollutants. California has recently announced a commitment to a 25% reduction in greenhouse gases. The “Precautionary Principle” is starting to take hold in some parts of the world. We need to continue to support such efforts and encourage our politicians to focus their efforts on cleaning up the planet. In closing, I would like to quote Sandra, who at the end of her book writes

May the world’s feast be made safe for women and children.
May mother’s milk run clean again.
May denial give way to courageous action.
May I always have faith. (283)

Very encouraging. Steven Chu, the next Secretary of Energy in the US, on energy efficiency in the New Yorker:

“the manufacturers had to assign the job to the engineers, instead of to the lobbyists.” … the size of the average American refrigerator has increased by more than ten per cent, while the price, in inflation-adjusted dollars, has been cut in half. Meanwhile, energy use has dropped by two-thirds.

The transition to more efficient fridges, Chu pointed out, has saved the equivalent of all the energy generated in the United States by wind turbines and solar cells. “I cannot impress upon you how important energy efficiency is,” he said.

Great post from Andrew Revkin in the New York Times Dot Earth blog today in which he argues for a major boost in R&D spending on green technology:

I’m not quite sure I’ve heard any leader yet describe the sustained, aggressive “energy quest” that’d be required to lead the world toward a future with non-polluting energy choices sufficient to empower more or less 9 billion people — and how that quest would have to extend from the living room to the boardroom, from the laboratory to the classroom, to be transformational …

Will the push for a green economy include a boost for those priming the innovation pump?

In this fascinating and moving speech¹ William McDonough, the author of “Cradle to Cradle”, condemns our “de facto plan” in which we measure

prosperity by how much of your natural capital you can cut down, dig up, bury, burn or otherwise destroy, … productivity by how few people are working, progress by your number of smokestacks,

and offers us this new design assignment:

How do we love all the children of all species for all time?

He challenges us to reach for a triple top line of environment, equity and economy, and to reinvent our industrial systems with “Cradle to Cradle” design in which waste from one process becomes food for another and in which the production and use of toxic chemicals is anathema.

William McDonough has been hailed as a visionary, and in 1996 was the recipient of the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development. As is often the case, it may be that the man behind the ideas is not entirely who he seems to be. I don’t think this should detract from the power of the ideas²; it may diminish the power of the messenger.

1. There is also a shorter 20 minute version of the same speech available from TED Talks. ↩
2. The ‘hit’ article on William McDonough mentions GreenBlue, a non-profit organization founded by McDonough that has put together a Sustainable Packaging Coalition; and also SMaRT for Sustainable Materials Rating Technology, a comprehensive green technology standard that has been picked up by, for example, the USGBC for LEED credits. ↩

I know this is old news in some ways and bordering on cliché, but it's good to be reminded of how amazingly simple and elegant a green building can be, and of the power of human ingenuity (NFB link via Kottke).

These five videos show Amory Lovins, founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, giving a lecture series on Advanced Energy Efficiency as the MAP/Ming Visiting Professor at Stanford University in 2007. The lectures are delivered in typical Amory style, peppered with numeric detail, filled with inspiring examples of green design, and bursting with information. I highly recommend watching all five if you have time. Higher quality versions are also available on iTunes.