Zerofootprint: building re-skinning competition

Zerofootprint is launching an international prize to be awarded to the best designs for re-skinning five buildings in Ontario to make them far more energy efficient. The goal is to dramatically reduce the energy required to heat and cool buildings, which are responsible for roughly 40% of our carbon dioxide emissions.

It is clear ... that any solution to climate change will by definition have to be a solution to the built space in our cities. Rebuilding is not an option and traditional retrofitting is inadequate, and invasive. There is however another option--re-skinning. Usually necessary because a thermal barrier needs to be created to gain any significant energy efficiency, re-skinning has many other advantages such as: It can be used to hide a cheap retrofit; It is potentially non-invasive; It can make a ho-hum building into a handsome green role model; It can be used to engineer an energy reduction of as much as 70%; Re-skinning can be smart — solar, thermal, media, vegetation etc.

To jump-start this process Zerofootprint has announced an international award, The Z-Prize, among architects, engineers, and designers--"The Zerofootprint Skin Renewal Award"--to be launched on May 11, 2009 at the Discovery '09 Conference in Toronto. The goal will be to develop a smart, reproducible, aesthetically pleasing, cost-effective, energy-efficient solution for the re-skinning of buildings. Zerofootprint has assembled a distinguished group of architects, designers and engineers to guide the competition/award.

Protecting our life-support system

As a follow-up to my earlier observations on the decline of the world's oceans I highly recommend this wonderful talk by Sylvia Earle -- full of lush videography testifying to the power, beauty and diversity of our oceans -- as she receives the 2009 TED prize, and calls on us to

ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, hope spots large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet.

Sylvia Earle points out that only a fraction of 1% of the oceans are protected from degradation, that 90% of the biomass of large fish has been removed in the last century, that half of the coral reefs are threatened, that we are still killing a truly endangered species, the blue-fin tuna, and that carbon dioxide is acidifying the ocean and threatening the long-term survival of many fundamental species. The world's oceans soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, produce most of our oxygen, and provide abundant food. Sylvia Earle calls the oceans our "life-support system", and it doesn't take much imagination to see why. Dr. Earle wraps up her talk by emphasizing what is still in our oceans and very much worth saving. She calls for the creation of marine reserves to nourish, protect, and enhance the biodiversity, resilience and richness of the oceans. There is still hope. There is still time; but, there is precious little of it:

For the children of today, for tomorrow's child, as never again, now is the time.

The power of one thousand suns

Since high-efficiency photovoltaic cells tend to be expensive, one way to reduce the cost of solar panels is to concentrate sunlight from a large area onto a very small cell. A new development from a company in Toronto called Morgan Solar greatly simplifies the concentrating components to drive down the cost of concentrated solar power (their goal is to move below $1 per watt by 2011). Morgan Solar's design can focus the power of 1000 suns onto a high-efficiency solar cell about the size of a baby's thumbnail. From the Technology Review:

Nicolas Morgan holds up a square piece of clear, molded acrylic about a centimeter thick and shines a penlight directly at its flat surface. A green beam enters the acrylic and bends toward the center of the square. Morgan repeats the process at different points on the surface, and each time, the beam darts toward the center.

The acrylic component--called a Light-Guide Solar Optic (LSO)--is a new type of solar concentrator that could significantly lower the cost of generating electricity from the sun. Unlike existing designs, there's no need for mirrors, complex optics, or chemicals to trap and manipulate the light. "It's pure geometric optics," says Morgan, director of business development at Toronto-based Morgan Solar.

(Via Gristmill.)

Overfishing means dolphins, sharks starving

I am increasingly alarmed by the precipitous decline of the health of the world's oceans. I recently finished Taras Grescoe's "Bottomfeeder: How to eat ethically in a world of vanishing seafood", in which Taras warns us that oceans are in danger of becoming dead zones populated only "by jellyfish, bacteria, and slime". Today the Toronto Star reports that the top predators in the ocean are starving because the prey fish they rely on for food are overfished.

In Canada, scientists said Atlantic cod in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are becoming skinny because they are having more trouble finding reliable sources of small prey like capelin. In Maryland's Chesapeake Bay, striped bass are turning up emaciated because of shrinking supplies of herring and anchovies.

Whales too are having a difficult time finding prey, which researchers say might be affecting their ability and decision to mate. For many endangered whale species, diminished food sources could mean their populations will have trouble recovering.

Seabirds are being particularly hard hit as they choose not to mate because they can't guarantee food sources, Stiles said, citing the example of puffins in Norway where there was a 64 per cent drop in the number of birds having chicks in one year.

The problem is that as stocks of larger species are depleted, fishermen work their way down the marine food chain and fish smaller prey. Biologists warn that there might be little left in the world's oceans as fishermen fish out the seas.

What kind of world do we want to live in? If that world includes healthy oceans, abundant with fish, we should consider establishing marine reserves free from fishing. Taras Grescoe points to New Zealand as a hopeful example, where the establishment of marine reserves has restored biodiversity, boosted populations of fish, and won converts among the fishermen who now benefit from a stable catch.

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.

Cooling the planet with white roofs

An article in the Guardian points out that simply making roofs and paving more reflective could have a dramatic impact on climate change:

Computer simulations of Los Angeles show that resurfacing about two-thirds of roads and rooftops with reflective surfaces, as well as planting more trees, could cool the city by 2-3C. That would reduce LA smog as much as a total ban on cars and lorries, and cooler roofs could also save a fortune in electricity bills. On hot days in North America, up to 40% of all electricity can be consumed by air-conditioners, and each degree a city such as LA warms is reckoned to see the air-con turned up enough to need another 500MW - the output of a decent sized nuclear power station. Akbari estimates that widespread use of cooler rooftops could slash $1bn from electricity bills in the US alone.

And what about glare?

No problem, Akbari says: reflective materials need not be white. Lighter colours such as grey are good too. And there are other ways to increase the albedo of materials. Pigments that bounce back infrared light can raise the reflectivity of dark surfaces by 40% without any obvious change in colour. They are not as effective as white, which bounces back visible wavelengths of light too, but they are much better than conventional materials.

The Public Works Research Institute in Japan has experimented with paints with such pigments applied to conventional asphalt surfaces. They made a road that reflects 86% of infrared light, which helps keep the surface cool, yet reflects just 23% of visible light, to keep down glare.

For more information, see the discussion of cool roofs as geoengineering on Gristmill.

(Via Jetson Green.)

Draughty Victorian transformed into ecohome

The Guardian has an article on the transformation of old homes in the UK into well-insulated energy-sipping 'ecohomes' as part of the "Old Home Superhome" program:

Looking around it's hard to find clues. There are few obvious clues that Penney Poyzer and Gil Schalom live in one of the most radical homes in the UK. In the kitchen is a recently plastered wall; on the floor an organic veg box; and upstairs a dual-flush loo. Otherwise it's hard to find evidence that the couple have taken the sort of eco-nightmare draughty Victorian house lived in by millions of people in the UK and turned it into an almost totally carbon-free home, with a gas bill of £20 a year.

The Live Building at Queen’s University

Queen's University has an amazing website which tracks, in real time, the performance of its Live Building which houses its Faculty of Applied Science. The building was designed as a teaching tool for students to learn about building, construction, and design strategies for making better and more sustainable buildings. The website contains overviews of the various strategies employed to make the building more environmentally friendly and comfortable for its occupants. Among other things, occupancy sensors and daylighting are used to reduce lighting energy requirements, an enthalpy wheel exchanges heat and humidity between the incoming and outgoing airstreams to reduce the energy required to heat/cool and humidify/dehumidify the building, a gorgeous three-story biowall acts as a natural air filtration and humidification system, and a detailed life-cycle analysis based on Athena™ was used to determine whether cast-in-place concrete or structural steel with a composite deck would have a lower environmental impact (the concrete won out). Details of the building's structural design and electrical systems are also discussed on the website, along with data from a full suite of monitoring tools and sensors which track room-by-room lighting levels, temperature, humidity, electrical power consumption, and even the temperature in different layers of the building envelope (which allows for tracking of the performance of insulating layers).

India climate solutions

An inspiring story about young people in India working toward climate change solutions is highlighted in a column by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times:

“Why did this tour happen?” asked Ringwald. “Why this mad, insane plan to travel across India in a caravan of solar electric cars and jatropha trucks with solar music, art, dance and a potent message for climate solutions? Well ... the world needs crazy ideas to change things, because the conventional way of thinking is not working anymore.”

Solar thermal goes big

A massive solar thermal installation, slated to produce over 1 GW of energy, has been announced. From Wired.com:

The largest series of solar installations in history, more than 1,300 megawatts, is planned for the desert outside Los Angeles, according to a new deal between the utility Southern California Edison and solar power plant maker, BrightSource.

The momentous deal will deliver more electricity than even the largest nuclear plant, spread out among seven facilities, the first of which will start up in 2013. When fully operational, the companies say the facility will provide enough electricity to power 845,000 homes -- more than exist in San Francisco -- though estimates like that are notoriously squirrely. The technology isn't the familiar photovoltaics -- the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity -- but solar thermal power, which concentrates the sun's rays to create steam in a boiler and spin a turbine.

Solar thermal power generation seems to be very competitive on the 'city-scale', as it avoids the (currently) high cost of producing photovoltaic panels. The technology is described in the official press release:

The system uses thousands of small mirrors called heliostats to reflect sunlight onto a boiler atop a tower to produce high temperature steam. The steam is then piped to a conventional turbine which generates electricity. In order to conserve precious desert water, the LPT 550 system uses air-cooling to convert the steam back into water. The water is then returned to the boiler in an environmentally-friendly closed cycle. This fully integrated energy system is designed to offer the highest operating efficiencies and lowest capital costs in the industry.

Rising acidity threatens oceans

If global warming (or air pollution) isn't sufficient reason for us to change the way we use and generate energy, then maybe this article in the New York Times on the acidification of the oceans by the absorption of carbon dioxide should make us sit up and take notice.

The oceans have long buffered the effects of climate change by absorbing a substantial portion of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. But this benefit has a catch: as the gas dissolves, it makes seawater more acidic. Now an international panel of marine scientists says this acidity is accelerating so fast it threatens the survival of coral reefs, shellfish and the marine food web generally.

Ontario government drops hints on green energy stimulus

An article published in the Globe and Mail on February 5 suggests that the Ontario government may be about to make some important announcements on support for renewable energy:

The government is poised to introduce ambitious legislation that will profoundly shake up the province's electricity system by giving more scope for renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar and biomass generation. Environmentalists and others who are familiar with the discussions at the Ministry of Energy are excited that the Green Energy Act will make Ontario a world leader in encouraging alternatives to conventional fossil-fuel power generation. Some even believe that there will be such a rush of green energy on to the power grid that the government might have second thoughts about building new nuclear plants.

I'm hopeful that the act will also give a major push to energy efficiency efforts, although this is only mentioned in passing:

Targets would also be set for conservation and demand management. It is expected that more than 15 current acts -- dealing with municipalities and energy agencies -- would have to be amended to accommodate the push for green energy.

Passive house taking hold in US

The Passive House concept, invented in Germany, is starting to take root in the US. Passive houses are super-insulated to the point where they don't need a furnace and can be heated with a toaster. Despite their air-tight construction, they continuously move fresh air into the house through heat-recovery ventilators, which take heat from stale air on the way out of the house and use it to heat up incoming fresh outdoor air.

From OregonLive:

We wrap up in wool sweaters to keep warm in winter. Why not extend the same courtesy to our drafty, energy-gobbling homes?

The "super-insulated" house got its start in Canada in 1977. The Germans followed up in 1991 with an improved version by eliminating the furnace altogether. They called it a "passive house," which quickly caught on in their chilly climate.

This revolutionary concept has only recently spread to the United States, where it is gaining devoted followers among green building enthusiasts.

"The irony is that we knew about this (Canadian) house in the 1980s," says Mike O'Brien, residential green building specialist for the city of Portland. "Everybody at the time thought it was overkill. But now our energy bills have caught up with us and we're ready to hear about it."

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 grows

Good news on wind power growth:

[W]ind was the largest component of Europe's growth in electric generating capacity, the US became the world's top wind energy producer, and China doubled its installed capacity in just a year -- for the fourth year running.

On the down side, econonomic troubles are creeping into wind power production:

Like most energy projects, wind power facilities are capital intensive, and capital is hard to come by in the US these days, so the report is accompanied by hopes that the US stimulus package will include provisions to expand wind energy even further, which should limit the job losses in manufacturing and prevent them from spreading downstream to construction and maintenance. The AWEA's CEO, Denise Bode, stated, "The hope is that provisions such as those included in the House stimulus bill to restore the effectiveness of the tax incentives for renewable energy will quickly become law and provide the capital needed to continue to build projects."

Zero waste

Moving toward zero waste:

Put simply, zero waste means keeping the majority of our materials in closed loops: Food scraps are composted back into fertile soil; paper back into fiber, and so on. Eventually the whole concept of waste would disappear and we would continuously recycle our resources in never-ending loops.

Last week, members of [the] Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) toured Eco-Cycle, one of the largest non-profit recycling outfits in the United States.

All those who subscribe to Eco-Cycle receive three bins for their waste: one for compost, another for recyclables, and a third for "whatever's left".

Eco-cycle intends to eliminate the "whatever's left" category over time by working with designers to adjust their choices in packaging and product materials. In the long run, consumers would be left with two waste streams: one for composting and another for recycling.

Eco-cycle isn't alone in its transition toward zero waste. Toronto now recovers over 42 percent of its waste and is aiming for 70 percent by 2010. Germany recycles 60 percent of its municipal waste.

The smart garage

The Rocky Mountain Institute is promoting the Smart Garage concept, which aims to kill two birds with one stone by powering our transportation infrastructure, while simultaneously reducing the variability of renewable power generation. The Smart Garage concept is the intelligent interconnection of plug-in hybrid vehicles with the electrical grid. An intelligent grid would charge the batteries in your car in cheap off-peak periods of electricity use (like the middle of the night), and sell power back to the grid during peak periods (like the middle of a hot summer's day while your car sits in a parking lot). This would lower the cost of charging your vehicle (and maybe even make you some money), and provide a vast, distributed storage network for electricity. This storage network of potentially millions of car batteries could soak up power from renewable power generators during periods of low demand/high generation, which could then be sold back to the grid during periods of peak demand/low power generation.

From the RMI weblog:

Given the utility is experiencing a peak load period, it asks my house if it can use the spare power in the car's battery and send that electricity elsewhere in the grid. What's more, it will pay me for that power. Since I like being paid, I have already programmed the system to accept such requests.

So, while I am snacking in the kitchen, I am actually being paid for the unused power remaining in my car battery, and yet have complete confidence there will be more than enough power left in the vehicle to get me to where I need to go.

Green home renovation

Kate & Rob, friends of mine here in Ottawa, are undertaking a renovation of an older home in a central Ottawa neighbourhood. They have a real passion for green building which they are bringing to bear on an environmentally friendly upgrade to their house. You can follow the fascinating story of their renovation on their weblog, where they consider, among many things, the ins and outs of good window design, environmentally-friendly 'heatlok' insulation, drain water heat recovery, geothermal heating, tile selection, and 'freecycling'. Here's how it all began:

We were not looking for a house just yet but when the for sale sign was spotted on a favourite street the idea was planted on a Friday afternoon. After a mosquito/rain infested overnight camping trip, Erin was invited to join us at a Sunday showing without a realtor in hand. We explored a house that not only had character but authentic elements of an original home -- smoke stained walls, grimy kitchen and all. While the idea that it "needed a little work" was clear, the house had so much potential with its unique layout (with 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms) and incredible location ...

Standing under a tree in the rain, the phone rang 20 minutes later and the house was ours.

Sustainable agriculture and foie gras

At the Taste3 2008 conference, hosted by TED talks, the chef Dan Barber tells a wonderful story about sustainable agriculture and foie gras. It is a story of a Spanish farmer and producer of foie gras, who is in love with his geese and does not force feed them but instead allows them to gorge in the fall on the fruit of his olive and fig groves, in order to produce what Dan Barber says is the best foie gras in the world¹.

From Dan's closing remarks:

We need now to adopt a new conception of agriculture. One in which we stop treating the planet as if it were some kind of a business in liquidation. And stop degrading resources under the guise of cheap food. We can start by looking to farmers like Eduardo, farmers that rely on nature for solutions, for answers; rather than imposing solutions on nature [they are] "listening to nature's operating instructions". The great thing for people that care about food and cooking is that the most ecological choice for food is also the most ethical choice for food. And it's also, almost always, and I haven't found an example otherwise, the most delicious choice. That's serendipitous.

1. In 2007 Eduardo Sousa was awarded the Coup de Coeur for the best foie gras by the Paris International Food Salon.↩

Change doesn’t always come easily

I just came across this quote from Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince on the Gristmill weblog which I think is worth chewing on:

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out ... than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who could profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arriving partly from fear of their adversaries ... and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had an actual experience of it.