Three Letters to Obama

The Obama administration has recently received three letters or petitions regarding energy policy.  As with any policy position they are shaped by the world views of the men and women who authored them.

Dr. James Hansen is head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a leading global climate change researcher.  It is not surprising that his proposal revolves around a tax policy aimed at decarbonizing the American economy and reducing greenhouse gases.

Edward Mazria is an architect and creator of the 2030 Challenge, a voluntary pledge that all new buildings and major building renovation be constructed to a carbon-neutral (using no fossil fuel GHG emitting energy to operate) standard by 2030. Mazria’s proposal is centered on achieving building energy efficiency goals rewarded with lower mortgage rates in the case of residential construction and by accelerated depreciation in the case of commercial construction.  If enacted, it claims to both create millions of jobs and reduce carbon emissions.

Richard Heinberg is senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and the author of The Party’s Over – Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies,  Powerdown – Options and Actions for a Post – Carbon World, and the Oil Depletion Protocol.   Heinberg and the other authors of Post Carbon Institute’s “Real New Deal” marry the imperatives of climate change and the peaking and ultimate depletion of our fossil fuel resources into a comprehensive plan to transition the U.S. to a new energy economy.

All three proposals are valid and merit serious review, but only the Post Carbon Institute’s proposal offers a comprehensive view of the challenges we must face.  As such, the Hansen and Mazria proposals are important subsets of what needs to be a much larger solution.

THE HANSEN PROPOSAL
Hansen sent an open letter to Barack and Michelle Obama.  Here are some relevant excerpts from the letter:

A rising carbon price is essential to “decarbonize” the economy, i.e., to move the nation toward the era beyond fossil fuels. The most effective way to achieve this is a carbon tax (on oil, gas, and coal) at the well-head or port of entry.  The tax will then appropriately affect all products and activities that use fossil fuels.

The public will support the tax if it is returned to them, equal shares on a per capita basis (half shares for children up to a maximum of two child-shares per family), deposited monthly in bank accounts.  No large bureaucracy is needed.  A person reducing his carbon footprint more than average makes money.   A person with large cars and a big house will pay a tax much higher than the dividend.  Not one cent goes to Washington.  No lobbyists will be supported.  Unlike cap-and-trade, no millionaires would be made at the expense of the public.

A carbon tax is honest, clear and effective.  It will increase energy prices, but low and middle income people, especially, will find ways to reduce carbon emissions so as to come out ahead.  The rate of infrastructure replacement, thus economic activity, can be modulated by how fast the carbon tax rate increases.  Effects will permeate society.  Food requiring lots of carbon emissions to produce and transport will become more expensive and vice versa, encouraging support of nearby farms as opposed to imports from half way around the world.

THE 2030 CHALLENGE STIMULUS PLAN
A Two-Year, Nine-Million-Job Investment Proposal

“The road to energy independence, economic recovery and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions runs through the Building Sector.” – Edward Mazria

The 2030 Challenge Stimulus plan is a two year investment commitment to create 9 million jobs overall and 4-million jobs in the construction sector.  It is a jobs growth and carbon reduction plan rolled into one.  In the residential sector it trades low interest rate loans off against investments to increase building energy efficiency.  For an existing home, the interest rate provided would be a function of renovating that home to some level below the existing energy code requirements in exchange for a lower mortgage rate.

Mortgage Interest Rate (subject to market conditions)  2030 Challenge Energy Reduction

4.0%    30% below code
3.5%    50% below code
2.5%    75% below code
2.0%    Carbon neutral

For example, a homeowner with a    current $272,300    mortgage with equity of $12,000, would have a mortgage balance of $260,300. At an interest rate of 6%, the current monthly mortgage payment would be $1633. If this homeowner wants to qualify for the 2.5% interest rate, they will need to renovate their home to use 75% less energy than that required by code, immediately creating jobs and putting construction teams back to work.

The cost of renovation would be approximately $51,250, which includes a solar system, which would qualify for a $7000 tax credit. The cost of the renovation, minus the tax credit, would be added to the mortgage balance, so that the new mortgage is now $304,550.    However, because of the significantly lower 2.5%    interest rate, the new mortgage payment is just $1203, a savings of $430 per month. With the additional monthly savings on energy bills of approximately $145, this homeowner would save a total of $575 per month.

Because building construction historically represents about 10% of GDP, Mazria thinks that the private building sector may be the key to reviving the U.S. economy.  He proposes that $96-billion be invested annually for the next two years in mortgage interest rate buy-downs and accelerated depreciation for commercial buildings.  As a result, Mazria claims that with a participation of only 5.8% of homes and 3.1% of commercial buildings the program would generate 9-million jobs and $1-trillion in private sector spending, and pay for itself in the form of increased tax revenue.

In addition to the economic claims, Mazria calculates that over the five year period, the proposal would reduce CO2 emissions by 504 million metric tons and energy consumption by 6.47 Quadrillion Btu.

Even at a participation of only 5.8% (over 4-million) of homes, Mazria’s proposal may have a scaling problem, as the country finds itself lacking the architectural, engineering, and code verification talent to transform that many homes in the proposed time-frame.  Conceptually however, this is a beautifully conceived plan and deserves serious attention.

POST CARBON INSTITUTE
The Real New Deal
Energy Scarcity and the Path to Energy, Economic, and  Environmental Recovery

“The energy transition cannot be accomplished in four years or eight…  What can and must be accomplished in a single administration is the essential change of direction.”

The Post Carbon Institute [PCI] argues that the current economic crisis provides the opportunity and potentially the political will to make a significant down payment on the transition to a renewable energy economy that would otherwise be inconceivable.  In fact if we don’t act now, the current crisis may just merge with “peak oil” and the effects of climate change to create a decades long global state of emergency.

PCI outlines a comprehensive program comprising five different solution sets.

1. A massive and immediate shift to renewable energy (Hansen’s proposal fits here)
2. The electrification of our transportation system
3. The transformation to a “smart” electrical grid
4. The de-carbonization and localization of our food production and delivery system
5. The retrofit of our building stock for energy efficiency and distributed power generation. (Mazria’s proposal fits here)

Since the cost of such a transition spread over 20 years would be in the order of $4.5-trillion the authors admit that given the current financial meltdown, private capital will not be forthcoming and deficit spending by the government along with significant policy changes will be required to launch the transition.  To direct policy, the authors recommend creating “an Energy Transition Office, tied to no existing agency, specifically tasked with tracking and managing the transition and with helping existing agencies work together toward the common goal”.

The authors do not underestimate the enormous and unprecedented scope of their proposal.  Aside from avoiding or mitigating the devastating impacts of peak oil and climate change the potential  benefits are enormous and would include:

• eliminating the need to police oil exporting areas of the world, saving billions of dollars a year in military expenditures

• saving billions per year by creating a food system that substantially reduces obesity, cancer, and asthma

• helping to create and foster skilled, self-reliant and resilient communities

Although the plan as presented merely serves to outline the possible solutions and the scope of the problems we face, what sets it apart is it all-embracing view of the resource depletion and environmental  perils we must resolve to survive.

Thoughts About a New Energy Economy
Calls for the transition to a new energy economy typically come from three main quarters.  All three are valid, but only one sees the forest for trees.

The national security quarter recognizes that we depend too much on imports from countries and regions that are either unstable and/or hostile to our national interests.  This argument for action plays well with the right, but does not recognize the environmental threat of global warming or greater economic peril of peak oil.  Although it forms the basis of an argument for an energy transition, it can equally be used to justify a more robust military policy.

The climate change quarter is currently dominant in the minds of the public and with policy makers.  It sees great peril and human suffering in the coming decades but doesn’t recognize that the peak oil is imminent and will soon take center stage.  The economic devastation of peak oil will likely be additive to the current debt crisis and put global warming on the back burner.  Ironically, the advent of peak oil will greatly reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the effects of global warming but the decline in oil supply alone will not be sufficient to drive atmospheric CO2 levels back to 350 PPM.

Peak oil is lesser known.  There is a peak oil caucus in congress, but there is little political will to take action in a county where nearly half the population believes in the battle cry of “drill baby drill”.  Unlike the effects of global warming which will be slow and indirect in coming, the effects of peak oil will be as sudden as the collapse of the World Trade Center and Lehman Brothers.  More shock and awe than a slow rising of the tides.  It will touch every corner of our economy with a combination of price shocks and shortages.  It will leave us with one chance and one chance only to transform our energy infrastructure to solar, wind, and geothermal using what remains of our rapidly depleting fossil fuel resources.

As I look to the future, I see three possible courses of action:

Option one is that we recognize the problem of resource depletion and take action well in advance of  the anticipated world wide peak in oil production.  Since peaking is imminent and the transition will take approximately two decades, unfortunately the ship has already sailed on option one. Looking back we will someday wish we had paid much more attention to Jimmy Carter.

With the election of Obama, option two is already in play, and we have begin to take some action based on fears of climate change and for reasons of national security.  However, our current actions are no where near sufficient to avoid extreme hardship.  The ship of state is on a collision course with the iceberg and we have only just given the order to reduce speed.  Our collision with destiny is now unavoidable and the question now is whether there will be a sufficient number of life boats.  In addition, just as we need it the most, we lack sufficient capital to make the transition in the face of the global financial meltdown.  This is not just another severe business cycle, this is the beginning of the  realignment of the the post WWII global financial system and the end of American economic dominance.  It is likely that peak oil will become evident just as the dollar loses its status as the world’s reserve currency and as a nation we may then be unable to fund the energy transition with either public or private funds.  Essentially bankrupt and losing our grip on global influence and power the country may lurch to the right in a desperate attempt to reclaim global dominance.

Option three is to maintain a posture of “drill baby drill denial” in spite of reality.  At this point the country may resort to engaging in “resource wars” to claim the world’s remaining oil reserves and to protect the American “way of life”.   This would be a policy doomed to failure and assured of increasing human misery.  It would also be a policy that will put us at risk of missing our only window to transition away from fossil fuels.  Call this the Mad Max policy.

My hope is that we’ll stick with option two and muddle through to a new and sustainable energy economy.  It promises to be extremely painful and disruptive decade or two of transition, but in the end we will find ourselves in a much healthier relationship with our environment and possibly with each other.

: : : : : : : : : : :

The Obama Energy Plan and our Homes

How will Obama’s energy polices affect our homes?  We won’t really know until his proposals are debated and enacted by congress, but we can get a sense of what might happen from his campaign’s position statements.  From his campaign website’s fact sheet his stated position on building energy efficiency is as follows:

“Obama…will establish a goal of making all new buildings carbon neutral, or produce zero emissions, by 2030.  [He] will also establish a national goal of improving new building efficiency by 50 percent and existing building efficiency by 25 percent over the next decade to help us meet the 2030 goal.”

This is straight from the playbook of Ed Mazra’s Architecture 2030 Challenge.  As evidenced by the following quote from the 2030 website, the 2030 Challenge is predicated on climate change and the reduction of green house gas emissions associated with the Building Sector.

“Rapidly accelerating climate change (global warming), which is caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is now fueling dangerous regional and global environmental events. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration illustrates that buildings are responsible for almost half (48%) of all GHG emissions annually. Seventy-six percent of all electricity generated by US power plants goes to supply the Building Sector. Therefore, immediate action in the Building Sector is essential if we are to avoid hazardous climate change.”

I have two issues with the 2030 Challenge.

One is that the 48% responsibility for GHG emissions attributed to buildings is overstated.  The emissions assigned to the building sector are primarily the indirect result of drawing on electrical power generated from coal and natural gas fired power plants, so the question becomes whether to focus our resources on the building “demand” side, or the power plant “supply” side, or some combination of both.  In that broader context, we may find that it is much easier to deal with a few hundred power plants than to transform 150 million residential and commerical buildings.  From a public policy perspective, both the demand and supply side should be considered as a synergistic whole.

My second issue is more fundamental.  Architecture 2030 asks and answers the wrong question.  The question that Architecture 2030 asks is what actions should we take to mitigate the effect of the building sector on climate change.  However, the greater question is what actions should we take to render the building sector sustainable.  Once sustainability is on the table then we have to consider carrying capacity and carrying capacity overshoot at which point climate change is just another canary in the coal mine.

Carrying capacity is all about the ecological limits (capacity) of our planet’s resources and sinks.  By considering GHG emissions as the primary driver for building energy improvements, policy makers are overlooking the much more immediate and serious resource issues of peak oil and gas.  Since both of these peak events will be evident as early as 2010, all buildings should be built or retrofitted to a net zero energy and carbon standard NOW, not 22 years from now.

However, I digress.  Since it will take the actual emergency of these peaking events to mobilize the political will to enact a national zero energy standard, the question is what can we expect when Obama takes office next year.

The first likely step will be to start the process of improving building efficiency by 50% through our building codes.  A significant improvement is already in the works for the residential sector with the IECC 2009. However, at this time, the 30% improvement authored by the Energy Efficient Codes Coalition, will only be a voluntary appendix to the next release of the code.  In addition, once the new code is released, it has to be reviewed and adopted by hundreds of city, county, and state authorities.  In the process, these authorities often dumb down new energy code provisions in response to local politics.  We can also expect a major push back from a decimated housing sector deeply concerned about adding any new code mandated building costs.

My best guess is that under Obama, the voluntary 30% improvement provision authored by Energy Efficient Codes Coalition will be supported by Obama’s Grant Program for Early Adopters policy proposal.  This proposal creates a competitive grant program for states and localities that “take the first steps in implementing new building codes that prioritize energy efficiency, and provides a federal match for those states with leading-edge public benefits funds that support energy efficiency retrofits of existing buildings.”

The grant proposal creates a policy that respects local politics and helps to support those areas of country that have the political will to move forward with improving building energy efficiency.

: : : : : : : : : : :

The Residential Wind Turbine Zoning Dilemma

I live in the geographical middle of Colorado at about 9,000 feet elevation.  It is a location that is rich in solar and wind energy, and since the wind blows strongest during the winter months, a hybrid wind and solar PV system made the most economic sense for a home energy system.  What I didn’t realize is that one of the biggest obstacles to small residential wind turbine systems is the lack of zoning regulations.  So when I contacted the local county planning and building departments to discuss my plans, I quickly found out that they just didn’t know how to handle a request for wind turbine.  There was nothing written in their zoning ordinances to deal with a wind turbine.

Zoning ordinances are based on legal principle of “police power”, which is the power of counties, townships, and cities to regulate in order to promote the health, morals, safety, and general welfare of the community.   The problem is that there are nearly 40,000 counties, townships, and cities in the U.S. and all of them at some time will have to decide how to regulate wind turbines.

The first obstacle will be height.  In nearly every residential zone in America, structures are limited to 35 ft in height.  This 35 foot height limitation is based on firefighting limitations from the early 1900’s, but has now taken on a life of it’s own and governs the scale of residential development.   Since wind turbines need to be at least 20 feet above surrounding building and trees, a 35 foot height limitation is a non-starter.  Where I live in the Colorado Rockies,  most residential users would need 65 to 85 foot towers just to get sufficiently above the aspen and ponderosa pine tree canopies.

If a 35 foot height limitation is imposed for wind turbines, a larger tower would require a “special use” or “conditional use” permit.  This typically requires a public hearing process that can potentially cost homeowners thousands of dollars in legal fees and may take several months.   A simple variance process would leave the homeowner wanting to install a wind turbine at the mercy of his neighbors.  Any one of which could veto the project without reasonable cause.

Zoning ordinances are subject to local politics, and the politics of regulating wind turbines within residential zones is all about their perceived impact on property values.  That perception is based on attitudes about a wind turbines visual and acoustic impact combined with the cost of electricity.  At 12¢/kWh, a wind turbine might be considered an eyesore.  At 50¢/kWh it suddenly becomes an object of beauty, quietly drawing free energy from a gentle breeze.  As utility rates continue to increase, wind turbines will transition in perception from potential property value degraders to property value enhancers and the right to access air flows will trump ascetics.

However, for the time being, the politics of zoning will keep wind turbines out of higher density suburban developments and probably limit their use to lot size densities of one acre or more.

Back home in the middle of Colorado, I’ve been working with the county on formulating a workable ordinance for wind turbines that treads the eye of the political needle.  A copy of the draft is attached here.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

: : : : : : : : : : :

The End of a 200 Year Resource Binge

“For 200 years, the material wealth of the world has improved because of increased access to ancient stores of energy. We are mining the Devonian Era, the Pennsylvanian, the Permian, the Jurassic…hundreds of millions of years of stored energy [released] within a span of two centuries or so…. And the whole concept of ‘economics’ rests on that upward…trend….cheap oil made it all look easy. ”
Byron King, The Daily Reckoning, April 2008

Consuming hundreds of millions of years of stored energy in a 200 year binge of economic and population growth has allowed us to give little or no thought to what might be sustainable. It has given us the illusion of easy progress and fed a cheap pursuit of happiness.

Neo-classical economics turns a blind eye to the accounting of our planet’s fossil fuel energy assets, tacitly assuming that their supply is infinite. As a result, the developed world operates with massive off-book ecological deficits and maintains it’s economic growth by importing carrying capacity from the third world. Planet earth is about to call in that debt.

China, Brazil, and India have joined the party just as the festivities have started to unwind and we collectively begin to stagger into a future defined by the geological limits of fossil fuel and mineral depletion. Demand for coal, oil, natural gas, water, food, steel, copper, uranium are no longer being driven by the U.S. They are being driven by these newcomers to the party, and the economics of supply and demand are being felt in the pocket books of America. This is not going to be a short term economic cycle. The combination of emerging market demand and the world wide peak production of fossil fuel and mineral resources will continue to drive up the price and availability of energy and food.

The suburban dwellers of America should be asking themselves some very difficult questions:

If you knew gas would cost $10/gallon within five years:

• what kind of car would you buy today?
• would you wait for plug-in hybrids to arrive on the market in 2010?
• would you move closer to work?
• will you carpool, ride an electric bike, get a scooter?
• would you move closer to public transportation?
• would you find telecommute employment?

If you knew the price of natural gas and electricity would triple in five years:

• would you cancel the kitchen remodel and spend the money on energy upgrades?
• would you downsize to a smaller home?
• would you move to multi-unit, shared-wall housing?
• would you move to a different climate?
• would you buy a solar hot water heater instead of granite counter tops?

The “free resource” party is winding down and time is not on our side. As homeowners, what will we do? What will be sustainable? How will we dwell in a post peak world without abundant and cheap natural resources?

: : : : : : : : : : :

Natural Gas Shortages and the coming CHILL in America’s Living Rooms

Conventional, easy-to-get natural gas in the U.S. has already peaked and natural gas from all sources will peak in North America around 2010 and globally between 2030 and 2035.
Dr. Michael Smith, Energy Files Ltd., 2004“

The North American outlook for natural gas production is not good. Mexican production has been in decline since 1999. U.S. production has been in a plateau for some time. All the big finds have been tapped and are in decline. Currently, we are bringing new wells online at a maddening pace just to keep our domestic production flat. And the new wells are declining at rates as high as 80% in the first year. The size of the new finds is also diminishing. Over the past decade, the amount of gas found per foot drilled has declined by 50%.
Dale Allen Pfeiffer, The Natural Gas Cliff, October 2005

Since natural gas is used to heat over 60% of the homes in America and in about 70% of new homes, its important to know how it gets to our homes and how fragile natural gas is as a source of both direct heating energy and as an indirect source of electrical generation for cooling.

Natural gas consists mostly of methane. Conventional natural gas is found in underground formations of porous rock, and conventional, easy sources of NG in the U.S. peaked in 1973. To keep up with demand, we are now frantically drilling and keeping our supply heads above water with a combination of shale gas, tight gas(from non-porous rock formations), deep gas (from wells over 15,000 feet in depth), sub-sea gas, and coalbed methane gas. These “unconventional” sources all require more risk and capital for extraction. Nearly 20% of U.S. demand is filled with imports from Canada through our existing pipeline system and to a much lessor extent via imports of liquid natural gas (LNG) from Trinidad and Tobago.

Natural gas gets to our homes through a complex system of pipes or “lines”. Gathering lines connect drill rig production areas to natural gas processing or refining plants which separate out natural gas liquids, water, carbon dioxide, sulfur, and inert gases such as helium which would reduce the energy value of the gas. The refined gas is then piped into a 280-thousand mile North American transmission network. This network consists of 20 to 42-inch diameter pipes with compressor “boost stations” located about 75-miles apart to maintain sufficient working pressure.

Local distribution companies tap into to this network, providing a storage buffer, and metering the gas through a system of more than one million miles of mains and smaller trunk lines that bring gas to our homes.

Much of the soil in the Great Plains is little more than a sponge into which we must pour hydrocarbon-based [natural gas] fertilizers in order to produce crops.
Dale Allen Pfeiffer, Eating Fossil Fuels, 2004

Looming Natural Gas Shortages

No one knows how and exactly when shortages will occur, but shortages are inevitable, even in the context of exploiting new arctic natural gas sources and the building of a massive LNG (liquid natural gas) infrastructure. Both of these sources will take years to develop and to have an impact and will require billions of dollars in capital expenditures. LNG is our best hope of avoiding severe shortages, but dependence on LNG will thrust us into the international gas market, forcing us to compete for Middle Eastern and Russia gas with Europe and the emerging economies of India and China, at prices two to three times what we pay today. By the time arctic gas and imported LNG become available in meaningful quantities, we will have already begun a steady and irreversible decline in our current North American sources of production.

A few years ago people looked at L.N.G. as a solution to North America’s gas needs. But
today we see that there is less L.N.G. around than people expected, and there is more
competition for that L.N.G. from markets that are willing to pay more than the United States.
Nikos Tsafos, analyst with PFC Energy, 2008

At first higher prices will cause demand destruction in the industrial sector and manufacturers will convert to other energy sources like coal or move production to locations in the world where natural gas is still plentiful. Eventually, because modern agriculture is heavily dependent on fertilizer, and natural gas in the primary fertilizer feedstock, we may be faced with the dilemma of either heating our homes or putting food on the table.

Just as we will be forced to find new ways to configure and power a personal transportation system, we will have to find new ways (or revert to old ways) to moderate the internal environments of our homes. The equivalent of 500 HP forced air furnaces lumbering away in the basements of our poorly constructed and insulated homes will no longer be sustainable in a world of rapidly depleting fossil fuel supplies. In many ways the inertia of transforming over 100 million existing homes will be more difficult than transforming our transportation system and onus and urgency for change will fall on the homeowner.

There are about 2,000 drilling rigs in the U.S.  That’s one rig for every 150,000 people, an
increasingly dicey formula. Last winter we Americans collectively consumed more than 2 trillion cubic-feet of natural gas each month, one-fourth of it from the Rockies. Due to accelerating decline rates in older fields, we now need to replace with new drilling one-third of the gas we used the year before. Charlie calls this the “depletion treadmill,” and he is chained to it. If guys like Charlie stopped working for a year, you’d have to turn a few things off, big things like, say, New York and Ohio. – Peak Oil Review 8/25/08

: : : : : : : : : : :

The LEED Narrative – Going Beyond

I received an email this morning from Scot Horst , who chairs the LEED Steering Committee. He describes the behind the scenes narrative that has been going on since work began on LEED 2009.

Person A: “Global warming doesn’t give us much time.”
Person B: “But we can’t address much of anything, let alone global warming, if we’re only dealing with a small fraction of the entire built environment. We need to get everyone involved.”

Person A: “Yes, but why get them involved in a system that doesn’t take them far enough to save us from ourselves? We need our buildings to be restorative.”
Person B: “LEED can’t save us from ourselves. LEED, as a tool, can engage the market in transformation. That transformation is about people. It is not about LEED credits.”

Person A: “You’re missing the point. We have to be tougher. We have to go beyond.”
Person B: “No, you’re missing the point. We have to find ways to engage a market that has never thought about these issues before.”

Persons A and B: “Let’s find a way to do both.

”This is an engaging and very important narrative and perhaps the most important point for me is that LEED is a “tool” that helps to raise consciousness and “engage the market in transformation.” My personal view is that we must “go beyond” and that much of what we currently do in the green building movement, however well intentioned, is nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. The global warming mentioned in Horst’s narrative has provided the catalyst for both LEED and Architecture 2030, but focusing solely on warming misses the point. Warming is a symptom and not a cause. It has prompted us to take some action, but not to “go beyond”. As a premise for action it has been useful, but is easily attacked on it’s “scientific validity”. It is one of the canaries in the coal mine, but there has been is very little discussion of the coal mine. We need to expand the narrative and take a broader view.

Taking a page out of ecological economics, once you picture the built environment as a mere subset of our closed ecosystem, then your conceptual framework regarding sustainable building is forever changed. It means you have to accept that there are limits, and that we are not going to be able to grow forever. It implies the built environment must have some optimal size and level of consumption relative to the larger ecosystem. It means you cannot grow beyond that optimum without threatening man’s survival within that ecosystem. Out of this stream of thought flows a list of very troubling questions?

• How do we stop growing?

• What are the limits? What is optimal?

• Does climate change tell us they have already been exceeded?

• Do we face a kind of built environment armageddon when fossil fuel production peaks and begins to decline?

• Is a zero energy standard imperative now?

• What do we do? How do we do it?

Our very survival depends on how and when these questions are answered. LEED does not provide the answers, but it does help us to prepare.

: : : : : : : : : : :

Phase Change Materials – The Future of Natural Indoor Climate Control

There are two ways to store heat and even out the diurnal or daily temperature swings in buildings. One is with massive material’s like stone, brick, and concrete the other is with phase change materials or PCM’s.

A material is said to “change phase” when energy is either added or removed to cause it to change from a liquid state to a solid state or from liquid state to a gaseous state. For example, it takes a considerable amount of energy to transform ice into water and in the process the temperature remains at 32° F. This energy storage capacity within the phase change is called “latent heat” and when harnessed allows for the storage of heat energy in a fraction of the volume required by materials like stone or concrete.

For building applications, you want this phase change to occur at or near the desired room temperature, so custom wax formulations are usually the material of chose. As the cost of energy has increased, interest in PCM technology has also increased.

In 2005, Oak Ridge National Laboratory teamed with Advanced Fiber Technology and BASF, demonstrated that a 2×6 wall insulated with cellulose insulation seeded with 22% PCM reduced the surface heat flow rate by 40%.

PCM seeded insulation is not yet commercially available, however BASF has developed a drywall product called SmartBoard™ that is available in the EU that incorporates microscopic polymer spheres filled with wax. Applying this 15-mm (0.59 inch) thick drywall product is the equivalent of adding a 9-cm (3.54 inches) thick layer of concrete. SmartBoard™ is supplied with a choice of two “switching” or PCM melt temperatures, 23°C(73.4°F) and 26°C(78.8°F) designed to accommodate both heating dominated and cooling dominated climates.

SmartBoard™ has been successfully tested in each major EU climate zone and was used by last year’s winner of the DOE’s Solar Decathlon.

2007 Solar Decathlon – 1st Place Entry by the University of Technology, Darmstad

In addition to SmartBoard, BASF PCM materials have been incorporated into several other building products in the EU:

• Aerated Concrete by H+H Celcon, Germany
• Gypsum Building Blocks by Saint Gobain Rigips, Switzerland
• Gypsum Plaster by Saint Gobain Maxit, Germany
• Radiant (active) Cooling Ceiling Tiles by MWH BARCOL Air, Switzerland and Ilkazel, Germany

: : : : : : : : : : :

State of the Union 2010

“[The President] shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
The United States Constitution, Article II, Section 3

Members of Congress, madame Speaker, distinguished guests, my fellow Americans…as many who have come before me, I stand before you this evening to fulfill a constitutional obligation. The first State of the Union address was delivered in straight forward manner to a newly formed congress by George Washington on January 8th, 1790. However, some two century’s latter, this time honored tradition has in devolved into political theatre with standing ovations predictably limited to one side of the aisle and political points cynically won from guests planted in the gallery. The American people deserve better, so this evening I will depart from my prepared remarks and tell the people of America and of the world what they need to hear rather than what they either want or expect to hear. Many will not like what I have to say, but this union and the world stand at a cross roads and there is no better forum than this to address this critical moment in history.

When George Washington delivered the first address in 1790 the population of the world stood at approximately 1 billion and the population of our new fledgling country was less than 4 million. Our nation’s borders had yet to reach the Pacific and many parts of the earth, including our great western states were still unexplored. Mankind’s footprint on this world was still relatively small. At the beginning of our nation’s life, it was just and reasonable to limit the focus of this address to our new and fragile union. However, today we cannot understand the state of our union without first putting it in both its historical context and in the context of the state of our planet. To do otherwise, would be to put us in grave danger.

In contrast to the time of Washington’s address, the population of the earth today exceeds 6.6 billion and our country’s population stands at nearly 304 million. As a result of that growth, mankind’s footprint on this world has in many ways begun to exceed the limits of the earth’s carrying capacity. We see the effects of these limits manifested in record high natural gas and heating oil prices, $200/barrel oil, $10/gallon gasoline, climate change, a persistent and prolonged state of financial crisis, the ongoing military conflicts in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, and in the continuing food shortages and riots in both our country and around the world. But these issues, as serious and troubling as them may seem, are merely symptoms, not the root cause of the problems we face today.

When America’s space program provided us with the first photos of our planet from the perspective of space, we were awed not only by the beauty of our planet, but by it’s lonely isolation. One small planet providing an island oasis for humanity in an infinite universe. We can easily grasp the limitations of an island, but we have naively thought of the earth as an infinite source of life nurturing resources. The truth however, is that every planet like every island has a limited supply of natural resources and our planet is no different. As the world’s population and economy has grown, our natural resources have been systematically exhausted to the point were we can no longer depend on their increasing supply to fuel our economic growth and standards of living. Our undeniable reality is that we will have to accept and adjust to the limits imposed by the closed system we call Earth.

The challenge these natural limits will impose on our nation and the world will exceed any that we have faced either as a nation or as a community of nations. Our state of the world is that we have outgrown and exceeded the capacity of the earth to sustain the current level of population at current levels of consumption. Every other problem we face today is but a symptom of this one undeniable fact. Our choice is simple, we can either chase after symptoms and descend into a death spiral of conflict over dwindling resources, or we can use what remains of the earth’s resources to create a sustainable world for thousands of future generations. As a community of nations, we will have one chance and one chance only to accomplish this transition and the time is now. This is our moment to fail or succeed. If we fail to use what remains of our fossil fuel and other resources to successfully make this transition, the consequences will be dire and the world will return to a pre-industrial existence capable of sustaining only a fraction of the world’s existing population. Time is not on our side and we have only two, perhaps three decades to complete the task. It is incumbent upon this union, and the people of this nation to lead the world in this transition.

Our union began with a simple declaration penned by Thomas Jefferson.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

Historically, as we pursued these simple Rights, we have much we can hold with pride and much we must hold with shame. As a country we have been both a shinning beacon of hope, opportunity, freedom, and prosperity; and we have also practiced slavery, committed genocide against our native populations, and covertly and overtly meddled in the affairs of other sovereign nations. We have won wars justly fought in the name of freedom and lost wars with murkier political and moral aims. Today we are no longer the the republic our founding fathers envisioned. We have become the most powerful nation in the history of the world….a virtual empire with over 800 foreign military posts and bases and a military budget exceeding the next 46 countries combined. If you add all of the money spent to maintain and support our worldwide empire by the DOD, the CIA, the Treasury, the FBI the State Department, Homeland Security, the Veterans Administration, and the interest we pay on past military expenditures, it amounts to well over $1-trillion per year and growing. This figure does even include the “supplemental” funds being spent on our current middle east conflicts. These expenditures are not sustainable, and the slow creeping growth of this overreaching empire has turned us into the world’s largest debtor nation and moved us far from the founding principles and ideals of our nation.

The economic success we experienced for the better part of the last century has given us the highest standard of consumption in the world, but by many measures, not the highest quality of life. For many of us, our pursuit of happiness has become a frantic, costly, and unsatisfying pursuit of the trivial and meaningless. In just a few decades we have managed to transform the strongest, most dynamic manufacturing economy in the world into a economy completely dependent on consumerism and debt. In a country with a negative savings rate, record high credit card debt, and declining home values, our consumer led economy is long past sustainable.

Yet it is from this point in our history that we must face our greatest challenge. If we continue to look at symptoms, our situation to many will seem hopeless and out of desperation and fear we will be tempted to blame others for our problems. Demagogues have and will call for pre-emptive military action against those that control what remains of the world’s rapidly depleting natural resources. But there can be no peace in the context of scarcity and no pursuit of happiness without peace. The root cause of our problems will not and cannot be solved by military action.

No other resource defines our current state than the world’s declining reserves of oil. Beginning with the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania in 1865, our country rapidly became the world’s first oil economy and this cheap and abundant energy resource would be the fuel and engine of growth that enabled us to become the world’s greatest economic power. However, U.S. production of oil peaked in 1971 and the petroleum power center quickly moved to middle east. Today it is painfully evident that oil production has peaked world wide and at current rates of consumption and depletion only half of what the world uses today will be available in just two decades. We will face similar “peaks” and painful declines in the production of coal, natural gas, and even uranium in the not so distant future.

Transitioning to a post fossil fuel world will not be easy. It will require sacrifice, high levels of cooperation, leadership, and the personal effort of every citizen of both this nation and of our community of nations. The last time our nation and much of the world was called upon to truly join together for a common cause was during WWII. That generation met it’s challenge and now it is our turn. The stakes have never been higher and the future of humanity literally hangs in the balance.

There will be some that say that “the market” will naturally adjust to the decline in fossil fuel resources and that all we have to do is stand back and trust in the magic of free markets. There is an element of truth is that view and one could point to recent growth in the renewable energy segment as proof of the validity of that position. However, like it or not, government is an integral part of the “market” and decades worth of federal and state laws, tax codes, and zoning and building regulations have been erected in direct or indirect support of our fossil fuel dependent economy. These laws, codes, and regulations will have to be rapidly deconstructed and rewritten to support a new sustainable, steady state economy fueled by renewable energy sources.

I have referenced population size several times in this address, and now I must return to this difficult and sensitive topic. The topics of human life and family size in this country have always been sacred, however as a nation and as a community of nations, we must face the very real limits of our planet to sustain life. The earth has a limited carrying capacity and can only support a reasonable standard of living for a given population size, and this capacity has already been exceeded. The world’s population can now only grow at the expense of our collective living standards and at the risk of increased and severe suffering. The only rational and humane course of action, is to limit and then reverse population growth in both the U.S. and the world.

The political, economic, and technical challenges we are facing are unprecedented and nothing we have faced in the past has prepared us for this moment. For the first time in human history we cannot meet these challenges and expect to succeed merely as individuals, or political parties, or as religious groups, or as nation states or as blocks of nations. To meet this challenge at this time, the entire world of nations must all join together in order to succeed or risk the catastrophic collapse of civilization.

Over the coming days I will be outlining a broad range of programs to meet this challenge. There will be no time for the usual political posturing or distractions, or for the interference of vested interests. Reason and events tell us that we all share the same vested interest and that our very survival is at stake. The american people will expect Congress to act boldly and decisively. The world will be watching.

First, to free up the required capital and additional engineering and R&D talent required to make the transition, I am proposing that we begin to aggressively reduce the expenditures of our military empire. A reduction in our current defense budget by 50% would still leave us spending as much as the next 5 countries combined. We can no longer afford to have our military robbing us of the nation’s industrial capital and technical talent. We must and will create a new manufacturing economy in America based on renewable energy and other sustainable technologies.

This new economy will be powered by electricity derived from solar and wind for our peak power demands, and most importantly by geothermal energy for our base load demand. In order to meet the challenge of making the transition to a post fossil fuel economy, I am proposing a government funded and fast tracked “Manhattan Project” to replace all of our coal fired power plants with geothermal energy by the year 2030.

Since we can only meet our future energy needs by addressing both the demand and supply sides of the equation, we must aggressively revise our tax codes to provide both credits and write-offs for a much broader array of energy conservation technologies and products. For example, we currently provide no incentives for solar hot water heating and rather than leading the world, as we must and should, the U.S. ranks behind both Solvenia and Albania in the the application of this technology.

The challenge of transforming our food supply may be one of our greatest. Food in U.S. travels an average of 1,500 miles from farm to table and we are dangerously dependent on oil and natural gas which supply the feedstocks for the pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers on which our centralized and mechanized industrial food system depends. As evidenced by our growing food crisis, this system is rapidly becoming unsustainable and to help bridge the transition to a more localized food delivery system we will reinstitute the “victory garden” program of WWII and create millions of citizen farmers to secure our nations food supply.

Our residential, commercial, and industrial buildings consume 73% of our electricity and 20% of our natural gas. Easy and cheap energy has made building designer’s environmentally complacent and for the last 100 years we have relied on brute force heating and cooling solutions to prop up building designs totally inadequate for their environment. That practice must end and I am proposing that all new buildings in this country be designed to a zero energy standard and that tax incentives be put in place to help convert our existing building stock into some semblance of energy efficiency.

The pattern of our homes, cities, and transportation systems was created in a time of cheap and abundant fossil fuels. As oil and natural gas become increasingly scarce we will have to reshape our patterns and style of living. The new plug-in hybrids that are just appearing on the market will help to replace our use of liquid fuels for driving, but this new technology will soon cause us to exceed our electrical generation capacity. Our one car, one person pattern of commuting from isolated suburbs to work and shopping centers will have to be transformed. As a start, I am proposing that all knowledge workers be allowed the right to telecommute and to write off the the use of their home offices on their individual tax returns. We must also divert much of our unproductive defense budget and aggressively invest in light rail transportation systems and in our national rail system. In addition, our residential zoning laws will have to eased so that our pattern of suburban sprawl can naturally evolve new centers and nodes of commerce within walking and bicycling distance of our population.

However difficult, we must begin to face the limited carrying capacity of earth with regard to population. As a beginning, I am proposing that our tax codes be revised to support and reflect a stable and sustainable population, and that the tax credit for dependents be limited to one child. Out of fairness this new policy will not be retroactive nor apply to adopted children.

Lastly, we must change the way we keep score. One of the reasons we are in this mess is that classical economics assumes that natural resources like oil are infinite and makes no accounting of their depletion nor of the negative environmental effects of their use. We can no longer count the clean up of a super fund site as having the same positive impact to our gross national product as the building of a 747. To make matters worse, for decades our government has cooked the books to make things look considerably better than they appear. If we were held to the same accounting standards as our fortune 500 companies our annual deficits would actually be about ten times what is normally reported and we would have had to declare bankruptcy long ago. If we are to successfully transition to a sustainable way of life in the next 20 years then we must be able to accurately and reliably measure our progress and to that end I am proposing that we upgrade our national accounting practices to comply with a more realistic and accurate ecological economics standard.

The next two decades will be extremely disruptive and difficult and it is unlikely that any of us will emerge without great hardship and sacrifice. If there was ever a time for courage, for hard work, for faith, for strength of character, now is that time. I am counting on the people of this nation, on the people of the world, and on our community of nations to meet these challenges for the benefit of our children and grandchildren and for a thousand generations to come.

Thank you all and may God bless our nation and this planet.

This “address” is obviously a fiction and although much of what I say is factual even today, I doubt that any politician would have the courage the be this honest until things were well beyond the point of no return.

The market has begun to respond and it is not by accident that plug-in hybrids will begin to appear just as the general public is becoming aware of “peak oil”. The basic story line will run its course and we may just muddle through and make the transition in time to prevent a significant die-off of the world’s population. My guess is that it will be a messy transition with much political posturing, great suffering, and considerable military mischief.

Whether or not we do manage to muddle through, in the end, the world will no longer resemble the one we know today.

: : : : : : : : : : :

How our Homes became the Equivalent of a Hummer

“In 1946, when the American post war housing boom started, the average house was 1100 square feet and housed 5 people. Fifty years latter, in 1996 the average house would grow to 2200 square feet and house 2.6 people and by 2007, fueled by easy credit, the average American home would would become the equivalent of a Hummer, “weighing in” at super-sized 2,400 square feet.”

In 1934, during the depths of the Depression, Congress passed the National Housing Act to strengthen a deeply troubled housing market. This act created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) which was amended in 1938 to create the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) – an entity designed to help mortgage lenders gain access to capital for mortgage loans. An important element of this legislation was to make mortgage funds available to more Americans by protecting lenders from the risk of default. In its earliest days, Fannie Mae nationalized the mortgage industry by creating the first mechanism in America for selling individual mortgages (backed the U.S. government) into a secondary market.

When the FHA and Fannie Mae were created, the housing industry was flat on its back:

• Two million construction workers had lost their jobs.
• Housing finance was a fragmented, inefficient and illiquid. Mortgage rates varied considerably from region to region. In some economically distressed regions there were simply no funds available.
• Terms were very difficult to meet for homebuyers seeking mortgages.
• Lending institutions would issue a mortgage, collect payments, and file the mortgage away until the principal was paid off. A lack of available, consistently priced capital put a hard ceiling on the number of new mortgages that could be issued.
• Mortgage loan terms were limited to 50 percent of the property’s market value. Borrower’s were faced with a 50% down payment and a repayment schedule spread over three to five years and ending with a large balloon payment.
• America was primarily a nation of renters. Only four in 10 households owned homes.
• Homes were NOT considered as investments and refi’s and equity withdrawals were extremely rare.

In the 1940’s after WWII, the FHA and the GI Bill helped finance millions of homes for returning veterans and their families. This post war period would mark the peak of American economic dominance. We were still the world’s major oil producer AND exporter and due to the devastation of the European manufacturing base, we dominated the world in virtually every industrial and manufacturing sector.

Fueled by cheap and abundant fossil fuel energy, this period would also mark the beginning of an American landscape built around the automobile and the “American (suburban) Dream”. These were “heady” times and the freedom of movement afforded by the automobile combined with affordable housing for millions of returning GI’s would prove seductive. We would build cars and homes as if the gasoline, natural gas, fuel oil, and electricity that made driving and comfortable home dwelling possible would be cheap and abundant forever. The big lumbering gas guzzling V8’s of the forties and fifties would be driven home to the energy guzzling, thinly insulated, drafty homes of a new suburbia. The cars would last about 5 five years. The homes however would last an average of 75 years.

In 1946, when the American post war housing boom started, the average house was 1100 square feet and housed 5 people. Fifty years latter, in 1996 the average house would grow to 2200 square feet and house 2.6 people and by 2007, fueled by easy credit, the average American home would would become the equivalent of a Hummer, “weighing in” at super-sized 2,400 square feet. The peaking of U.S. oil production in 1971, the formation of OPEC in 1973 and the associated energy crisis’ of the 1970’s would force much needed improvements in our building codes. However, today’s homes are still grossly under-insulated and 1/3 of their energy losses are still the result of air leaks through poorly constructed exterior walls! Our home energy standards are possibly worse than our car and truck CAFE standards (federal mileage requirements). Look underneath the hood of our homes and you’ll 500 HP, super charged forced air furnaces lumbering away in our basements and holding the cold at bay with the brute force of natural gas and oil. We are still behaving as if cheap energy sources are forever.

Adding to the problem is the current culture of “homes as investments” and average ownership cycles of only 5 years. We are a culture with a myopic time horizon where granite countertops, super-sized floorplans, and home-equity financed SUV’s trump energy efficiency and solar hot water systems. This “housing bubble” culture may soon be going the way of the dinosaur with the fall of the sub-prime loan market, the collapse of Wall Street’s sleazy and toxic secondary market for home mortgages, and the first serious decline in home values since the great depression. However, the final death blow will come with the peaking of fossil fuel production, fuel shortages, blackouts, and the obvious and urgent need to transform our housing stock into some semblance of energy efficiency.

: : : : : : : : : : :

“One Last Chance” for a Sustainable Future?

“It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology.
This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems.On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only.”
Sir Frederic Hoyle, British Astronomer, 1964

Hoyle’s “necessary physical prerequisites” are not yet gone, but the extraction of our most critical non-renewable energy resources will soon reach a geological milestone, and production will peak and then decline. This will set a two to three decade clock on our last and only chance to achieve a sustainable society.

• The consensus is that the production of oil has already peaked (2006) or will peak shortly and that serious shortages will occur by about 2010
• Natural gas production in N. America will peak between 2010 and 2015
• Uranium extraction will peak in 2025 and shortages are possible as early as 2013 when we can no longer depend on the recycling of Russian nuclear warheads to meet demand.
• Coal will peak around 2025 at about 30% above the present production

“…we don’t have to run out of oil to start having severe problems with industrial civilization and its dependent systems. We only have to slip over the all-time production peak and begin a slide down the arc of steady depletion.”
Howard Kunster ,The Long Emergency, 2005

We are left with the choice of only two future paths of development. The “business as usual” path will lead us to tragically overshoot the earth’s carrying capacity, resulting in economic collapse, and a dramatic reduction in the earth’s population as we return to a pre-industrial revolution standard of living. The second path represents Hoyle’s “last and only chance” to wisely use our remaining fossil fuel resources to build a sustainable and renewable energy foundation for a new steady-state world economy. An economy and society with a stable population that falls within the limits of our planet’s carrying capacity. I fear that the greater probability lies with the first path, but know we have both the knowledge and means to forge the second

On the supply side, the second path requires that we rapidly replace our current extractive, non-renewable energy model with renewable sources like geothermal, solar, wind, and wave power. It will be a future dominated by electrical power as liquid fuels become increasingly scarce. However, it will not be enough to reach a stable, sustainable future without major changes to the demand side of the energy equation,

As we enter this period of sustained crisis and begin the journey down the path of ecological stability, it will quickly become evident that the only reasonable standard for building design will be a standard of net zero energy consumption. Because we lack information, initially this will be part science and part intuition based on passive heating and cooling lessons from the past. Eventually we will come to know the embodied energy of every building material and component and make many decisions based on the EROIE (energy return on investment of the energy embodied) of building products like insulation, low-e glazing, PV panels, and wind turbines. Houses will become smaller and change shape as energy trumps fashion and becomes the primary design factor. A whole new industry will emerge to help homeowners convert over 100-million thinly insulated, poorly constructed homes into some semblance of energy efficiency. Pattern’s of development and zoning laws will change as the age of the automobile comes to a close. Populations will shift and migrate as the end of cheap air-conditioning makes living in many parts of the country less desirable. Home landscaping will change from ornamental to edible, and gray water irrigation will become commonplace as the energy costs to move and purify water change our attitudes about this precious natural resource. Local materials will dominate construction and the age of imported Italian granite countertops will come to an end

The longer policy makers wait to take action the lower the probability of success. When shortages become evident we may still fall into denial. Demagogues and special interests will deny the limits of geology and blame OPEC, Islam, environmentalists, or speculators. If allowed, they will cloud the issue and cost us precious time.

Our “last chance” will be a battle. It will not be an easy time.

: : : : : : : : : : :