From crisis to hope

I spent last week (June 11, 12) at the Canadian Green Building Council's (CaGBC's) second annual summit, Every Building Can Be Green. It was a fantastic conference with expert speakers from a range of disciplines talking about everything from sustainable community development to building performance simulation. I'd like to briefly summarize on this site, over the next week or so, what I saw as the highlights among the sessions I attended.

The conference opened on Wednesday morning with a sobering keynote from Thomas Homer-Dixon, a well known scholar at the University of Waterloo whose research is focussed on how societies adapt to rapid and complex changes in technology, in economics, and in our environment. Homer-Dixon's keynote started with an overview of the many challenges posed by rapid climate change. In summary, the latest evidence shows that we are in very deep trouble. Unprecedented changes in our climate will rapidly accelerate in the coming years; positive feedbacks which amplify climate change are outweighing negative feedbacks that might dampen it (Arctic sea ice is disappearing 30-50 years faster than even the worst-case climate models have predicted); heat waves and drought will place enormous pressure on global food supplies; and the nonlinearity of the climate system means that the climate could rapidly swing to a new, less hospitable, equilibrium from which it may not be able to return. Recent research suggests that carbon dioxide can stay in the atmosphere for a very long time, and that slowing and stopping climate change requires us to get to zero carbon emissions as quickly as possible. Homer-Dixon summed up the first two thirds of his talk with a cartoon reading simply "We're fucked". It was meant as a joke, and like a lot of good jokes, it was probably funny because it had the ring of truth.

After this depressing beginning, Thomas Homer-Dixon started to slowly bring us back up. He expressed the hope that this crisis will create opportunities for the deep changes in behaviour, in institutions, and in our cultures that are needed. He pointed to coping strategies, such as efficiency, conservation, large-scale development of renewable energy, carbon-capture and sequestration, nuclear energy and, in the longer term, geo-engineering, and atmospheric carbon capture. Although I might quibble with the need for more nuclear energy, what I found particularly interesting in this last phase of his talk was Homer-Dixon's emphasis on the need for new economic models which are not based on relentless, rapacious growth. He pointed out that economic growth has been a useful tool in reducing friction between rich and poor, and that a new economic model will require us to develop a more equitable planet. He further argued that we need to design our technological and social institutions with greater resiliency by loosening couplings, increasing redundancy and diversity, decentralizing, and maximizing flexibility. By moving more to the local, but not too much.

There was a part of me that felt discouraged and disheartened after listening to Thomas Homer-Dixon's talk, but what I came away feeling was the "fierce urgency of now". His address crystallized the urgency of what we are doing, of the absolute need for us to stop overloading the world and to start regenerating it. Every building must be green.

Fifth Town

I was in Prince Edward County--a beautiful island just off the shore of the eastern end of Lake Ontario--over Easter weekend and I caught wind of an artisan cheese company based in a LEED platinum building. That piqued two interests of mine--cheese and sustainability--and I decided to make a side trip to check it out. I'm not a big fan of write-ups of green buildings that read like a laundry list of features (solar panels, wind power, ...) because I think it's the system as a whole, encompassing the building's relationships with the local landscape and community that is most important. It is in the building of these relationships that Fifth Town excels. Fifth Town has designed their operations and facilities to be sustainable from the ground up. Their cheese is aged in underground 'caves' which can be kept at a cool temperature of 7-10 ºC without the aid of mechanical cooling. A cave 'look-in' can be seen in the foreground of the above picture, where passers-by can gaze longingly at shelves full of beautiful rounds of goat cheese. The cheese is made from goat's milk delivered fresh from a network of local family farms within 100 miles of the factory. In order to supply milk to Fifth Town the farms must be [Local Food Plus][] certified, meaning that the farms must be operated under an environmental farm management program, and their goats must be given non-genetically modified feed and treated humanely. The constructed bio-wetlands are nourished by the waste from the cheese-making process, and digest the light whey left over after the milk has been made into cheese and ricotta. To top it off, Fifth Town goes out of its way to educate visitors on their green features, with a number of detailed signs and a lovely 'self guided tour' printed on FSC certified recycled paper. The [Fifth Town artisan cheese company][fifth town] just received LEED platinum certification in March. Fifth Town has a friendly retail shop for visitors, and I must have sampled a dozen varieties of cheese before leaving with a few favourites to take home to family and friends. Their aged cheese was amazing and the bagel chèvre was soft, creamy and delicious. [Fifth town]: http://www.fifthtown.ca/ "Fifth Town Artisan Cheese" [Local Food Plus]: http://www.localfoodplus.ca/ "Local Food Plus"

Too big to exist?

Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the IMF, on the current financial crisis:

I have yet to hear a single responsible official in any industrial country state what is obvious to most technocrats who are not currently officials: anything too big to fail is too big to exist. 

If the bankers were just stupid, as suggested by David Brooks, then regulatory fixes might make some sense.  But we know that bankers are smart, so it is their organizations that became stupid.  What is the economic and political power structure that made it possible for such stupid organizations to become so large relative to the economy?  Answer this and you address what we need to do going forward.

Paul Hawken, author of "The Ecology of Commerce", on the environmental crisis:

Either way, the sheer size of the largest corporations tends to grant them the political and economic power to externalize costs that should properly be absorbed by the company and therefore be factored into the price it sets for its product. [p. 95]

Have we created organizations whose size, vast reach, and political clout have outstripped our ability to regulate them? William McDonough has said that "regulations are signals of design failure". How do we design our society--our neighbourhoods and cities, our small and large businesses, our financial system--so that sustainable design is at its core and not something which needs to be enforced?

Empire State Building to use 40% less energy

In a move designed to spur energy efficiency efforts world-wide, it was announced this week that the Empire State Building will undergo an extensive retrofit designed to save 38% of its annual energy consumption. The aggressive retrofit was planned in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Institute, Johnson Controls, Jones Lang LaSalle, and the Clinton Climate Initiative, and targets several key areas.

Load Reduction

1. Radiative barriers: more than six-thousand insulated reflective barriers will be installed behind radiator units on the perimeter of the building to prevent excess heat loss through the exterior wall.

2. Building windows: a suspended coated film, and a gas fill will be added to the over six thousand existing double paned windows to improve the thermal resistance to R-6 from R-2.

3. Tenant daylighting, lighting, plug loads: lighting power density will be reduced through the use of daylighting and task lighting, the installation of dimmable ballasts and photosensors in perimeter rooms, and plug load occupancy sensors for personal workstations will shut down equipment when it is not in use.

More Efficient Delivery

1. Chiller plant retrofit: load reduction will allow for the existing chillers to be upgraded and retrofit for higher efficiency performance.

2. Variable-air-volume air handling units: two floor-mounted units will replace four ceiling-mounted units per floor. Variable-air-volume units will allow for demand control ventilation, and floor-mounting will allow the HVAC system to be designed for a lower pressure drop, requiring less energy to run.

High Quality Controls

1. Demand control ventilation: CO₂ sensors will control the level of outside air introduced to the building. This will give better control over indoor air quality and prevent the wasteful addition of outdoor air when spaces are unoccupied.

2. Direct digital controls: the existing controls, and building energy management system will be upgraded, and will include temperature sensors, and electrical service monitoring.

3. Independent metering: tenants will have online access to their energy consumption along with sustainability tips. They will also be able to compare their performance to that of other tenants in the building.

The project is estimated to save $4.4 million annually, with a total incremental cost of $13.2 million over and above the cost of already planned upgrades. The building will be more comfortable to work in, with better insulated windows, improved indoor air quality, and well designed lighting. In order to bring tenants on board, 40% of whom will be turning over in the next four years, the Empire State Building has designed a space for the 42nd floor to market improvements to prospective tenants. They have also designed a 'green build' for tenants which will save $0.70-0.90 per square foot in operating costs annually for an additional first cost of $6 per square foot.

One of the key goals of the retrofit is to provide an example for the rest of the world to follow. To this end, a number of details and documents are available online, including decision making, rating and design tools and a "Lessons learned" document. Key among the lessons learned are:

1. An integrated design process including engineers, property managers, energy models, efficiency experts, architects and building management is necessary to achieve deep cuts in energy consumption. Tenant involvement is also essential, as many of the measures rely on their direct involvement.

2. It is very important for the retrofit to be aligned with planned replacements and upgrades of major building components for the project to be cost effective. If major upgrades are not planned, then retro-commissioning the building to optimize existing systems can save 5-15% of the energy used.

3. Unless the price of carbon increases dramatically (on the order of 8% per year), it will not be profitable to make the steepest cuts to energy consumption. The Empire State Building project leaves almost 50% of the carbon dioxide reduction potential on the table.

4. An easily repeated and streamlined process which allows for rapid categorization of buildings, and iteration between financial and energy modeling is needed.

Ontario's proposed Green Energy Act

The Ontario government has just delivered a significant proposal for green energy legislation. The goals of the proposed Green Energy Act are to spur rapid growth in clean, renewable sources of energy, encourage widespread energy conservation, and create thousands of new ‘green’ jobs. The act will encourage the development of renewable energy projects by setting province-wide standards for approval (NIMBYism will not be welcomed here), and by subsidizing renewable energy generation with a feed-in tariff. A new smart grid will be designed to support renewable energy, demand management, and the widespread use of electric cars. I was particularly encouraged to see that tightening energy efficiency standards will be included in Ontario’s building code, and that energy efficiency standards will be set for new appliances. The government will also introduce industrial sector energy efficiency programs and demand management plans. A key long-term goal is to reduce peak demand by 20% (6300 MW) by 2025.

From The Star:

Ontario's Green Energy Act will create 50,000 new jobs in construction, trucking and engineering while laying the groundwork for developing projects more quickly, Energy Minister George Smitherman said today. Architects, contractors and installers will see more opportunities as they're asked to retrofit buildings for energy efficiency, Smitherman added. The legislation will also require inspectors to perform energy audits on all homes at the time of sale, seeks to cut red tape so projects can move ahead more quickly, and promises to issue permits within six months. It will also maintain the Energy Star standards for appliances and use time-of-day pricing and smart meters in homes to help people lower their electricity usage and bills. The plan includes provincewide standards on where new wind turbines and solar farms can be located, taking that power away from municipalities. McGuinty has warned activists and municipalities he won't tolerate any objections to new wind turbines or solar panel farms that aren't based on safety or environmental concerns.

Ontario wind resource atlas

I've been playing around with [RETScreen][], a renewable energy and energy efficiency analysis tool developed by [NRCan][], and discovered this very cool [Ontario wind atlas][]. The atlas is an online, interactive, detailed map of Ontario overlayed with wind power availability based on the wind speed at up to 100 m above the ground (to be matched to the height of the hub of a given wind turbine). The map can show roads (how good is the access to the location?), parks and reserves, populated areas, important bird areas, existing power lines, etc., to help planners decide where (and where not) to put wind turbines. It's easy to see that the best places for both wind power and accessibility are along the shores of the Great Lakes. Off-shore wind farms would also have excellent wind resources, but may be more expensive to install. The shores of Hudson and James Bay in northern Ontario also have excellent wind power, but are far removed from the larger population centres and would require high-powered, long-distance transmission lines. [Ontario wind atlas]: http://www.ontariowindatlas.ca/ "Ontario wind atlas" [RETScreen]: http://www.retscreen.net "RETScreen Home Page" [NRCan]: http://www.nrcan.gc.ca "Natural Resources Canada"

Wind power could meet global energy demand five times over

I was struck by the following statements in a GristMill article the other day:

Archer and Jacobson, perhaps the world's leading experts on wind potential, estimate that wind energy at 80 meters in commercially developable sites alone could supply five times the world's current energy demand ...

Is it power variability that worries experts? Jacobson and Archer have documented that connection via long distance transmission can reduce that variability.

Both of these statements run against the grain of what I understood to be the common sense notions (myths?) about the fallibility of wind power. Intrigued, I decided to look in more detail at what Archer and Jacobson had done to arrive at these conclusions.

The first of the two articles cited, an "Evaluation of global wind power"¹, contains a detailed estimate of wind power availability from over 8000 measurement stations all over the world. Among these stations Archer and Jacobson found that 13% had an annual average wind speed greater than 6.9 m/s at a height of 80 m, meaning that these sites have a wind power class of 3 or greater² as preferred for low-cost wind power generation. Areas of great wind power potential are found all over the world, and tend to be clustered along the coastlines of the continents. Interestingly, many of the most promising sites (of wind power class 7) are found on the east and west coasts, and in the Great Lakes region of Canada.

To calculate the global wind power availability Archer and Jacobson assume that global wind distribution is well mapped by the 8000+ measurement stations in their study, and hence that 13% of the earth's land area of 130 million square kilometres would have a wind power class of 3 or greater. They further assume that this land area could be covered by wind turbines at a density of 6 per square kilometre, with each turbine generating 720 kW of power (on average, as calculated from the wind speed data). Based on these numbers, they find that the global economically available wind power is approximately 72 TW (or 54 000 Mtoe³ per year). To put this in context, the global demand for electrical power in 2001 was in the range of 1.6-1.8 TW (14 - 15 x 10¹² kWh per year) and the global demand for energy for all purposes for the year 2001 was 7-10 000 Mtoe. Cheap, readily available wind power alone could thus meet 40 times the 2001 global electricity use, and over five times the total energy use for all purposes.

Meeting global energy needs from wind power alone would require the installation of 20 million wind turbines over 16 million square kilometres (2.5% of the earth's land area), generating 15 TW of electrical power. To put this in context, the total installed wind capacity for the world was 94 GW in 2007 ⁴, and it has been increasing by ~20 GW/year. In order to meet the global energy demand by the year 2050 through wind alone, approximately 370 GW or roughly 500 000 new wind turbines would need to be installed every year for the next forty years. It's time to get moving, but then we already knew that, didn't we.

One of the commonly expressed concerns with wind power is that the variability of wind makes it unreliable as a primary source of electrical power. In a 2007 article⁵, Archer and Jacobson examine one possible method for reducing the variability in the power generated: the interconnection of networks of wind farms over a large area. Because some wind turbines can be turning on one farm, even while they might not be on another some distance away, a network of wind farms is able to average out the peaks and troughs and deliver some level of stable power. By examining a network of 19 wind farms in the American mid-west, over an area spanning 850 km, Archer and Jacobson found that the interconnected wind farms could deliver guaranteed power of 222 kW/turbine at the same level of performance as a coal-powered generating station⁶. This means that as much as one-third of the total available wind power in the network could be used to supply reliable baseload electrical power, while the remaining, intermittent, two-thirds of the power could be used to, for example, charge batteries or generate hydrogen gas.

Taken together, these two articles strongly suggest that wind power alone could meet global electricity and energy needs, with room to spare. And that is reason for hope.

1. Cristina L. Archer and Mark Z. Jacobson, J. Geophys. Res. 110, D12110 (2005).↩
2. Wind power classes are linearly related to the power density of the wind at different wind speeds. See the AWEA Wind Energy FAQ for more information.↩
3. Mtoe: Millon tonnes of oil equivalent.↩
4. From the Wikipedia entry on Wind Power.↩
5. Cristina L. Archer and Mark Z. Jacobson, J. Appl. Meteor. and Clim. 46, 1701 (2007).↩
6. Interestingly, Archer and Jacobson also find that interconnecting the wind farms can allow for a reduction in the size of long-distance transmission lines carrying the electricity from the network to a city. Because some farms will have low wind speeds at any given point in time, the total capacity of the lines can be reduced without losing energy. This reduction would allow for the cheaper construction of long-distance transmission lines, thus making wind power even more economical.↩

Having faith

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)

Hope

This is a piece I wrote for my old web site a few years back. It's still relevant to my outlook today, and I'll be expanding on this hopeful theme of focusing on solutions to environmental crises in future entries to come, so I thought it would make a good launching point for this blog.

—

This entry is about hope; a celebration of human creativity. We need hope. Human society faces many challenges. People are outstripping the ability of the earth to replenish itself and are dumping tonnes of toxic materials into the land, air and water. The rapid release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is causing global warming¹ and acidifying the oceans².

There are many who argue that the gap between the problems that humanity faces and the solutions to these problems is too great, that it is beyond our ingenuity. The research I have done on sustainability tells a different story. All over the world, people are (re)learning how to build homes and buildings that are environmentally sustainable and energy neutral. Many of these techniques draw on ancient knowledge that has been neglected in recent decades: the use of straw-bale, cob (mud and straw), adobe, etc. as building materials; the application of simple structural design principles to encourage the passive cooling and heating of buildings; the resurrection of the wind mill to harvest energy from the air. Many of these techniques draw on new technologies: solar cells which generate electricity from sunlight; water circulation for heating and cooling and for providing a large 'thermal mass'; highly-efficient windows to trap the heat that sunlight can pour into a building; geothermal heating and cooling.

We do, of course, use energy beyond that used to support a comfortable living environment. Recent advances in many sustainable energy technologies promise to satisfy much of this demand through the delivery of energy from the sun, wind, waves, tides, and vegetation. Fusion remains a distinct, if seemingly ever-distant, possibility. It is my belief that the solution to many of our problems lies both in the pursuit of new scientific or technological modalities and in the implementation of existing technologies to save vast amounts of wasted energy, and provide sources of energy that do not overburden the earth. We need only divert a fraction of the money and resources poured into oil extraction, nuclear fission (which arguably carries too many environmental and geo-political dangers to be viable in the long term) and war-mongering toward sustainable energy modalities to realize a revolution in our global energy economy.

That so many solutions lie within our grasp gives me hope that people can start to turn this mess around. It won't be easy, but it is possible.

1. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: www.ipcc.ch. ↩
2. Ken Caldeira and Micheal E. Wickett, "Oceanography: Anthropogenic carbon and oceanic pH", Nature 425, 365 (23 September 2003). ↩