New Glass Kicks Ass

Sorry if I offended any reader with this clearly butch, tough guy language, but there's a new development on the glass front that has me all worked up. In another year or so there will be a type of glass entering the market that will make buildings, from an insulation perspective, behave as if they don't have any windows. Ginormous energy and money savings await those who begin installing these windows on new buildings, or replacing their old windows.

These things could play a major part in a classic pincer maneuver on old energy use as renewables put pressure on coal plants from one side, while super-efficient materials dramatically reduce new buildings' energy requirements.

More on Net Zero Buildings

Here's some more on the plan to make buildings Net Zero by 2030. The alliance responsible for shepherding this plan is called the Commercial Buildings Initiative , a consortium of six heavy hitting organizations, including US Green Building Council (USGBC), the American Society of Heating and Refrigeration Engineers (ASHRAE) and as previously reported, the American Institute of Architects.

Net Zero in 22 years is a tall order. How do they intend to do this? Their plan is to reduce the buildings' energy use by 50 to 70 percent then provide the balance of their requirements from renewables like wind and solar.

A tall order indeed. Sign me up.

Power 2030

The American Institute of Architects intends carbon neutral buildings by 2030. Why not look at every building, the vast acreage and surface area this entails, as the opportunity to produce power (not just be "carbon neutral")? Every new building a Power Plant by 2030. Produce clean power in abundance at the point of consumption. Be carbon negative.

The goal of creating power is ambitious and captures the imagination, as compared to the more middling objective of neutralizing carbon emissions.

PowerSheet My Plug In

Gizmodo's report of the already-on-the-market, cost competitive, put-it-anywhere Nanosolar Powersheet pictured above conjures visions of hundreds of PowerSheet skinned cars soaking up a little sunshine during peak power so they can send some back to the building from their plugged in parking spots.

Pimp my building.
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Using Vision to Push Reality Around

Ponder this powerful vision of clean skies and home grown American energy: buildings that draw power from the wind and sun to power themselves and the cars that visit them . But that vision can be thwarted by the realities of how we cost things and how we allocate resources in our political system. Our laissez-faire market isn't as frictionless as we might want. Some of the things that thwart:

• Transmission. If a building's power is made and used in the same place there is little to no transmission cost. But transmission (high voltage lines, substations, and so on, maybe $1M per mile to install) is costed separately from power production. So building power doesn't get credit for this advantage.



• Power loss. More of the power generated on-site gets to the end user, it isn't lost in transmission. No credit here, either.



• Peak Shaving. If solar panels are deployed incrementally to handle peak power needs to avoid building new power plants, the avoided cost is much more than the otherwise too expensive solar panel.



• Oil subsidies. Oil is subsidized more generously than emerging renewable energy sources. The subsidies made sense given oil's national strategic significance during and after World War II . It now makes sense to transition to (that is, to subsidize) alternatives, given that they can now be used instead of oil, and offer significant advantages over oil. (With the building powered car electricity becomes an alternative to oil.)



• Start Up. Given new energy's national strategic signficance, and that it faces the traditional hurdles of the start up, it deserves national subsidization (just as oil and other undertakings did in previous situations).



• Reduced Health Care Costs. Improving air quality probably means less people visiting the doctor for asthma, allergies, lung and heart disease, and so on. So, we can expect, but probably can't price well, lower health care costs and higher productivity.

What is asked is a visionary leader (visionary like FDR or Ronald Reagan or Winston Churchill or John F. Kennedy) to gloss over these pesky realities, and draw us to this place. Why should such a grand vision not materialize because of a dozen or so worth less realities?

Cars and Buildings to Marry

Picture if you can cars running on the excess power produced by buildings. The dots that would frame this picture are beginning to pop up, and they're begging to be connected. One dot is Dynamic Architecture's wind powered skyscraper planned for Dubai.

Another is Ferreira Construction's 45,000 SF solar powered warehouse that might be the first U.S. net zero commercial building (net zero: producing more power than used). Pair these buildings with the Plug In Hybrid movement, put outlets in their parking spaces, and you start to get a picture of the marriage that might be made between cars and buildings.