Special Report: 1.8.2009

Posted by TED Magazine on Thursday, January 08, 2009

John the Baptist, in a Suit

By Joe Salimando

Ed Mazria makes me think about John the Baptist. Years ago, I heard him (Ed) talk about greener construction, especially from an emissions, greenhouse-gas-emissions point-of-view. I’d heard little about it (then) from others.

Shortly thereafter, the green movement showed up.

(Note: I have not personally heard the voice of John the Baptist. I’m not one of the Knights Templar; I don’t worship that guy’s severed head!)

Mazria is a name you should know; he’s the driver behind the Architecture 2030 program.

At EcoBuild (which was held in December in D.C.), a Mazria presentation was shoe-horned into a 20-minute slot at the beginning of a meeting of the HBPCCC (the High Performance Building Congressional Caucus Coalition).

(With that name, it’s clear these Congressional-lobbyist types are NOT into marketing. To further prove that, the audience assembled to hear Mazria was tiny.)

From what I remember of the earlier Mazria the presentation, it was one that kept you awake (during the event and in thinking about it in days that followed). This past December, he showed the coastlines of various cities and overlayed on them—with the next slide in each case—to illustrate what would happen after a three-foot (one meter) rise in sea levels.

(Among other things, this reinforced my plan to retire to a location in the mountains.)

Now, here is another point about John the Baptist: You know what happened to him, don’t you?

(Final note: You can almost hear Mazria’s speech, which the EcoBuild folks filmed. Problems: (a) It sounds like he’s talking from the bottom of a deep well—even at max volume!; and (b) you’ll see him, but not his slides.)

Green & You (and Me)

Is green a lot of hype? Maybe. Architecture 2030 seems designed to scare people into being more green (and more energy-efficient). It uses the threat of global warming to push. Your feelings about that might fit into one of these broadly drawn categories:

• If you “believe” in global warming (or have the scientific background to understand arguments on both sides), you no doubt have a “yes, of course” reaction. For you, Mazria and Al Gore are two sides of the same coin.
• If you believe global warming does NOT exist (like Sen. James M. Imhofe of Oklahoma, a Republican), you might listen politely to Mazria and his ilk, and then walk outside and start screaming. (By the way: Imhofe was re-elected in November, and the vote wasn’t even close.)
• Perhaps you are like me: You don’t have the science background and/or time to analyze pro-global warming arguments against the ridicule coming from Imhofe and others. BUT: You might think getting smarter, greener buildings would be worthwhile. Therefore, if someone uses the bogeyman of global warming to frighten people into doing the right thing, it might be OK with you.

Were humans and their institutions/organizations logical, we wouldn’t ever discuss energy-efficient buildings. Why would anyone build a structure that wastes energy? Why would you have inefficient lighting? Why would buildings exist that have 11 air exchanges each hour instead of two?

While we’re at it: Why wouldn’t occupancy sensors, daylight sensors, and personal office lighting/heating/cooling controls be standard equipment?

Here’s the thing: Humans aren’t logical. If there indeed is life on other planets, homo sapiens are undoubtedly famous (around the universe, or the eight dimensions, or whatever) for this unique trait.

Of course, the aliens could have obtained this information without abducting a bunch of humans, which could have saved them a lot of energy (assuming energy is what they use to flit around the galaxy). They could have just watched re-runs of the original Star Trek.

Mazria Goes Against Type

What I liked about Mazria’s speech (and the plan detailed on the Arch2030 website) is that it goes against type. Last week, this column railed about architects and their biases (as reflected in the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program) in favor of new construction and against fixing existing buildings.

Well, Mazria is an architect. His plan is about RENOVATION (not new construction). Read it!

Now, for some political baloney and hedges:

a. I don’t know enough about the politics of the stimulus plan, the Obama administration, Mazria’s ability to convince people, etc., to know if any of this will happen.

b. If you are an American, you ought to be concerned about the economic stimulus on many levels. What about the size (they’re talking about $1 trillion-plus, for heaven’s sake)? And: What about the effect of expanding the federal debt on future generations? Don’t leave this out: What if it fails, and they follow up in 2010-2011 with still more (say, $1.5 trillion)?

c. Politicians succumb to temptation, as everyone knows. With a stimulus, it’s tempting to put money in consumer pockets. This “Let’s return to 2005!” move could create a very bad economic outcome.

d. An additional fear about the stimulus (and magical stuff the Federal Reserve is doing) is that expanding the federal government’s role in the global economy will result in more jobs there (in China and elsewhere in Asia) and more work here for illegal aliens.

Let’s put all that aside and focus on what diverting hundreds of billions of stimulus dollars to Mazria’s plan, or something like it, would do: Retrofit our existing building stock to be a lot more energy-efficient!

Would that be good for the country? You betcha!

Would the benefits last longer than a few months or years? Yes.

Would cutting energy waste be good for the planet, if global warming exists? Yep.

Would hiring American companies to do the renovation and retrofit work create jobs here, for American citizens? Well, it sure seems possible.

Would this part of the stimulus plan be better for the electrical industry than devoting all of the money to building more roads? I think so.

Creating Fewer Crummy Buildings

What has upset some people (and pleased others) are efforts by governments (city, county, state, federal) to write requirements for new “green” buildings into law.

For one thing, the USGBC’s efforts (LEED and otherwise) were aimed at creating really smart, energy-efficient building designs, not regulations. On the residential end, the National Association of Home Builders did include in its effort a piece aimed at green residential construction rules (see www.nahbgreen.org).

(Why did NAHB do that? See Special Report columns here and here. Short answer: NAHB saw that 100-plus municipalities were using USGBC’s LEED residential program to create regulations anyway. So why not write model regs for cities to adopt?)

On the commercial buildings end of things, things were recently disrupted. An effort led by ASHRAE to create Standard 189 came a cropper. You can read about the effort here, and the a cropper part here. Reports since that bust-up indicate the thing is going to come together and happen, sooner or later.

(If ASHRAE sounds familiar, note that the lighting standards that keep being slipped into state and federal laws come through ASHRAE, too.)

Can We Handle a Blessing?

As a person who (perhaps irrationally) thinks himself a logical being, the idea of tackling energy waste in existing buildings seems the smart No. 1 priority.

Yes, yes, yes, I know: If that happens, things will be GREAT for the electrical industry. So you can accuse me of being biased.

But the key to me is not from where my checks occasionally originate, but mathematics. Here’s what I think I know:

There were recently 4.4 million commercial buildings, as counted by the CBECS 2003 survey of the Energy Information Administration (unit, Dept. of Energy).

There are on the order of 128 million dwelling units (single-family houses and units in more-than-one-family houses, condominiums, and apartment buildings).

Every year, we add maybe 2% to the total commercial floor space in existence. And perhaps we’ll add 2.5 million new dwelling units to the total over the next three years.

Most existing buildings waste energy. The aforementioned CBECS survey found that of the 2.5 million existing buildings built before 1980, only 444,000 of them had undergone a significant lighting retrofit. That’s just a sample!

So here’s the thing: Mathematics tells me this is important in any case:

Does global warming exist? Then we should do this!

Is global warming a farce, as Sen. Imhofe would tell you? We should still do this. It’s plain dumb to use more energy to light, heat, and cool buildings than we have to.

Are you, like me, unsure about global warming? Then you’re going to say: BLEEP global warming; let’s do what we can do, for heaven’s sake, about being more efficient.

Let’s leave new construction out of it for a minute. My question is: Can the industry handle a huge inflow of incoming orders that might result from a successful stimulus-driven boost for efficiency retrofits?

	Joe Salimando of EFJ Enterprises is a consultant, web content provider, and wordsmith based in Oakton, Va. To contact him, call 703-255-1428. See also The EleBlog.
Personal Disclaimer: The appearance of the ambling pachyderm is indicative of the writer’s obsession with elephants, not his political leanings.
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