Scotts Contracting - StLouis Renewable Energy

11.25.2010

Energy Use Is the Most Important Aspect of Green Building

Material Selection Hardly Matters

What is a sustainable level of land development?

Most articles on green construction, including those provided by GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, contain information on a wide range of topics, including material choices, indoor air quality, landscaping, and the VOC content of paint. This wide array of information can convey a false impression — namely, that the covered topics are equally important.

If you're building a new house, most of these topics turn out to be irrelevant. From an environmental perspective, the most important factor by far is energy use — not energy efficiency, but actual energy consumption. Consider the following information:

"The ongoing energy use of a building is probably the single greatest environmental impact of a building, so designing buildings for low energy use should be our number one priority." — "Establishing Priorities with Green Building, Environmental Building News, September 1, 1995.
"Although important, initial embodied energy is nearly always dwarfed by the energy consumed by a building over its lifetime. … Over the first 50 years, the initial embodied energy is less than 1/12th of the operating energy." —"Embodied Energy: As Important As Low Energy Design?" by Stephen Thwaites.
"As far as I can tell, focusing on construction materials in isolation — and to the exclusion of other impacts of owning and operating a home — is a mistake. … I combed through CORRIM's [Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials] life-cycle analyses to try to find the total difference, over 75 years, between carbon emissions for a steel-framed vs. a wood-framed home. And when you add together all life-cycle carbon emissions — for manufacturing and transporting the materials, building the home, maintaining, heating, cooling and lighting it for 75 years, and dismantling and disposing of it at the end — the difference between the two isn't much more than a rounding error. … When I look into CORRIM's numbers, it's pretty clear that the big carbon impacts from a home are from heating, cooling, and electric power consumption, which typically have little to do with the choice of framing materials. Far more important than framing are the energy-efficiency features of a house. Excellent insulation, passive heating and cooling, good daylighting, and so on can make a huge difference to long-term climate impacts — far more than the choice of a wood versus steel frame. And perhaps more important than any of these is the size of a house." — "Framing: The Debate" by Clark Williams-Derry.

According to climate scientists, the burning of fossil fuels is bringing our planet close to a dangerous tipping point. To equal the global average per-capita use of energy, Americans would need to reduce our energy use by 83%. But even such a drastic reduction in energy use would not achieve a sustainable result, since the world's level of energy use is clearly unsustainable.

"Sustainable" land development?
The word "sustainable" is bandied about far too casually these days. It's easy to understand the meaning of sustainable forestry. But anyone thinking about building a new house should ask, "What is sustainable land development?" Clearly, the sustainable level of global land development is zero acres per year — or perhaps even a negative number.

So here's my advice to anyone thinking of building a new green home:

The best approach is not to build. Since the number of people per household in the U.S. has been dropping for years, a strong argument can be made to support the proposition that the U.S. already has too many houses.
It's better to renovate an existing building than to build new.
It's better to live in a small house or apartment than a large one.
To lower energy use, strive to improve the airtightness and insulation levels in the building where you now live.

Of course, a perfectly reasonable argument can be made in favor of building a new house. But please don't call it sustainable.

—Martin Holladay is senior editor at GreenBuildingAdvisor.com

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Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.com
scotty@stlouisrenewableenergy.com

Thankful

Nov 22, 2010

Energy Savers Blog

This past weekend, my wife's family came to town to help us celebrate Thanksgiving a little early. It gave me a chance to reflect on the things for which I'm grateful, and there are lots of them.

I believe most of us give thanks for our families, our friends, and those things?whatever they may be?that make our life happier, more meaningful and worth living.

But while the mood's on me, I'd also give thanks for the engineers and researchers who have made energy efficiency a reality over the past few decades. Our nation uses vastly less energy than we expected we'd be using, back in the 1970s when the public first began to realize energy is a resource. Higher gas prices drove a handful of thoughtful, forward-looking and tech-savvy folks to think how we might do more with less. They succeeded, they continue to succeed, and we're all reaping the rewards of their hard work.

And what's the result? Rulings that require that appliance makers improve their energy efficiency over time. Energy Star® appliances, which use even less energy than that. Homes with better insulation and windows, cars with better batteries and lighter construction, offices and schools with smart controls and better weatherproofing.

There are people out there who are probably grateful for the weatherization programs sponsored by the Department of Energy, improving existing homes and keeping down the energy bills of the families who live in them.

It's possible you'll never meet one of these scientists, engineers, or technicians, but we all owe them a debt of thanks.

In this season of families, football and feasting, let's take a minute and say thanks for the many people who make our lives more comfortable and energy efficient. Now pass the cranberry sauce!

Drew Bittner is a former Presidential Management Intern (PMI) and the Web content manager for EERE's corporate Web pages.

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Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.com
scotty@stlouisrenewableenergy.com

Shocking News on Global Warming by China-Climate Conference-Cancun Meeting

China says climate compromise needed at Cancun

Nov 23, 2010

Associated Press Online

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN

Nov. 23, 2010 (AP Online delivered by Newstex) -- BEIJING -- Participants in next week's U.N. climate conference in Mexico need to agree on financing and technology transfer arrangements to help developing nations reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, China's climate envoy said Tuesday.

Xie Zhenhua said a deal would be key to winning the support of developing nations for a binding agreement on carbon emission reductions to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol due to expire in 2012, Xie Zhenhua told reporters in Beijing.

"What is particularly important is that we need to move toward a substantive outcome on financing and technology transfer, issues developing countries watch most closely, so that we can lay a rock solid foundation for reaching a legally binding outcome in South Africa next year," Xie said, referring to the host of next year's annual conference.

Under an arrangement reached at last year's conference in Copenhagen, rich nations had pledged to give developing countries $30 billion over three years to deal with mitigating and adapting to climate change, with an eventual goal of $100 billion by 2020.

Countries are also looking to agree on more elements of a complex plan to pay developing countries for protecting their forests, and on making it easier for poorer nations to obtain patented technologies from the industrialized world for clean energy and climate adaptation.

Those could be the conference's more attainable goals, with the U.S. and China, the world's two largest carbon emitters, still at loggerheads over key components of a new international climate treaty.

The U.S. wants China and other developing countries to commit to mandatory curbs and submit to international verification. Meanwhile, China says the U.S. and other wealthy countries should make bigger cuts in their emissions, reflecting their larger historical contribution to greenhouse gases.

Negotiators had targeted last year's climate summit in the Danish capital, attended by some 100 world leaders, for agreement on mandatory reductions in global warming gases. But the talks were unsuccessful, producing only the Copenhagen Accord, a nonbinding political agreement with pledges of voluntary reductions.

China and other emerging economies exempted from the Kyoto pact have sharply increased emissions in recent years, while rejecting calls to commit by treaty to restraints.

However, China has voluntarily committed to cut power consumed per unit of economic output -- a measure known as "energy intensity" -- by 20 percent from 2006 levels by the end of the year. While there has been no independent verification, Xie said that goal was within reach with the closure of thousands of heavily polluting factories.

In the longer term, China has set a target of reducing energy intensity by 40 percent to 45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels, while also increasing the share of energy produced by renewable sources to 15 percent and expanding forest cover.

Newstex ID: AP-0001-51019102

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Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.com
scotty@stlouisrenewableenergy.com

11.22.2010

Massive- Clean Energy Organizational Movement

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Bill McKibben - 350.org <organizers@350.org> wrote:

Dear Friends,

So often we write asking you to help. Today, we just want you to celebrate.

Check out these pictures--they are from this week's huge 350 EARTH project, what the newspapers are calling 'the first planet-scale group art show.'

Can't see the pictures below? Click here to view them in your web browser.

In Delta del Ebro, Spain, citizens created the face of a young girl who wants the Delta to survive the threat of climate change:

In the USA, citizens of New Mexico showed how the Santa Fe River bed could look if there was still water running through it:

In Mexico City, people gathered to create a symbol of a hurricane--with a 350 in the eye of the storm to represent safety from dangerous climate change:

So far we've seen amazing images from Santa Fe, Los Angeles, and Manhattan in the U.S., from Spain, from the Dominican Republic, from Mexico, from Canada. With much more to come--New Delhi, Egypt, Cancun, on and on and on.

These pictures demonstrate the risks of global warming, and the range of possible solutions. And of course they remind us that we live on a planet--a delicate planet with a fragile and vital atmosphere. After all, these images are coming from 430 miles above the atmosphere, thanks to the satellites provided by our friends at DigitalGlobe. And they're coming from the incredible hard work of volunteers all over the world.

The press is really beginning to pick up on the story. For example, this one article by the Agence France Press has been reposted onto some 2,420 news sites and blogs.

Oh, and Thom Yorke, the lead singer of Radiohead, is organizing a huge EARTH project for the weekend in Brighton, UK. More details on that event--and all the EARTH projects--on earth.350.org

We're not going to solve the climate crisis with art. We know that--we're deeply based in science and politics. But we're not going to solve the climate crisis without a movement. And art is one of the ways that movements express themselves, one of the things that reach human beings in powerful and deep ways. So by next week, when the UN climate conference in Cancun opens, we'll be focused on a new set of ideas and tactics, asking your help for all sorts of practical and political things.

But today--today just know you're part of the largest art project the world has ever seen.

Onwards,

Bill McKibben, for the whole 350.org Team

P.S. This just in: a shout out from the Facebook page of the Museum of Modern Art to its half-million fans. We'd greatly appreciate if you could spread the word about 350 EARTH on your social networks too--click here to share it on Facebook and click here to share it on Twitter.

You should join 350.org on Facebook by becoming a fan of our page at facebook.com/350org and follow us on twitter by visiting twitter.com/350

To join our list (maybe a friend forwarded you this e-mail) visit www.350.org/signup

350.org needs your help! To support our work, donate securely online at 350.org/donate

350.org is an international grassroots campaign that aims to mobilize a global climate movement united by a common call to action. By spreading an understanding of the science and a shared vision for a fair policy, we will ensure that the world creates bold and equitable solutions to the climate crisis. 350.org is an independent and not-for-profit project.

What is 350? 350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Scientists measure carbon dioxide in "parts per million" (ppm), so 350ppm is the number humanity needs to get below as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change. To get there, we need a different kind of PPM-a "people powered movement" that is made of people like you in every corner of the planet.