Nice find, gibson. Most of our media today is devoted to Senator Jim Bunning's objection to extending unemployment benefits to thousands of people throughout the country... what a toolbox that guy is.
Camera red light on: May we quote you on that Ms.Kemper?
Just a side note, but I routinely write letters to Congress, in fact they make it easy now via the internet. I bet an effective letter writing campaign to get this bill past, certainly would not hurt: http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/letterscongress.htm
Yes, you can quote me. "Senator Bunning is a toolbox." LOL.
Thanks for the link, I think the EfficiencyFirst link that I posted at the top of the thread has some info on contacting congress as well. Just an FYI.
Uh! I'm a nice dude, with some nice dreams
See these ice cubes, see these Ice Creams?
Eligible bachelor, million dollar boat
That's whiter than what's spilling down your throat
The Phantom, exterior like fish eggs
The interior like suicide wrist red
I can exercise you, this can be your Phys. Ed
Cheat on your man ma, that's how you get ahizzead
Killer wit the beat, I know killers in the street
Wit the steel that'll make you feel like Chinchilla in the heat
So don't try to run up on my ear talking all that raspy shit
Trying to ask me shit
When my niggaz fill ya vest they ain't gon pass me shit
You should think about it, take a second
Not a fact, you should take four B
And think before you fuck wit lil skateboard P
I'm going to be blunter than I probably should here, so please feel free to hurl the requisite rotten veggies, but I think the profession has lost for itself the highground on sustainability. It will be an uphill struggle to get it back. AIA and other national organizations failed to move quickly enough on the issue, to define a coherent, innovative and useful position - how our profession can contribute usefully to sustainability agendas.
Instead, all too many in the profession fell back onto gimmickry, discarding the science for the imagery of what a green future might look like: trees wrapped impossibly around buildings, structurally impossible stalklike towers in the Hudson, open spaces where we would generate energy through the heat emitted by people, greenroofs everywhere even when high albedo or nothing at all would have been better choices - just so long as the picture - the abstraction of the idea - was compelling.
Notions like lifecycle costing, cost-benefit analysis, breakeven scenarios, and, most importantly, reuse/recycle/reduce were displaced by a childlike technomania and a desperate reaching for big ideas that we just couldn't really grasp. Everything, for way too many people, came to be about the sexiest technology and sexiest form without the requisite attention to engineering or economics. Everything came to be about how the IDEA of sustainability could take on aesthetic form, irrespective of the actual sustainability. Renewables over actives and passives, contrived constructed wetlands over real water use/source reduction, etc, etc.
Instead, others - engineers, policy people, planners, scientists, and architects who no longer called themselves architects, for the most part - came up with all the big ideas for greening big cities. And architects were, as a practical matter and in large measure, relegated to the implementation role.
I'm not saying that aesthetics aren't important in sustainability.
Urbanist, there's a TED talk in which Bjarke Ingals talks about how sustainability has become something that seems like it has to hurt - like we have to feel guilty if we take a long hot shower, etc, and that he thinks the things that are "good" for us should also be able to be fun.
I can't recall exactly how that topic is related to the rest of his talk (it's an excellent talk, BTW), but I think that making sustainability fun - even sexy - IS a role we architects should have, along with the ability to make it invisible.
But you're absolutely right that we need to make it WORK first, and then make it be whatever the client wants it to be: fun, expressed, featured, invisible, in your face, whatever.
And I agree that the profession, via the AIA or not, has lost a LOT of ground on promoting sustainability as one of our areas of expertise, as well as an aspect of construction that is really non-negotiable going forward. My fervent hope is that when the trend of plopping a wind turbine and a green wall in every rendering is tired, we will still be using the actual knowledge and technologies developed during this time to make better buildings.
Urbanist cuts through the BS with his post. A lot of unproven ideas for "sustainability" have been tossed around. Many of them should be classified as techno-fantasy. Passive solutions aren't as sexy as the star trek stuff, but they should be the corner stone of sustainable design for many reasons.
Technology has reached the point of diminishing returns across the board and now has a negative impact.
Thanks. Now the confessional: I am now a sustainability specialist in urban planning and design preaching about systems, programs, policies and solutions over green glamour, but I'm pretty sure I was able to get started doing what I now do because of sexy renderings that simply didn't make any sense. So it cuts both ways... Fine, I'm a hypocrite ;-P.
I believe my point about what seduction by techno-fantasy has done to our professional in the green-building domain is an appropriate one, on the whole, but the fact is, that among architects and those who patronize us, the iconic techno-image is still what sells.
I don't know what we can (and need to) do to change this state of affairs.
greenwashing is not good but is a way to get people to accept the idea in the public at large so maybe it is not all bad. as long as it actually goes something tangible (like a green space people can enjoy)
when it doesn't i think it can be very bad.
I did a huge gymnasium for a school once here in japan that made me hate green architects for about 10 years. and probably taught the client and the students of the school that green architecture doesn't work.
the problem was, we got a significant part of our funding for construction through a grant by fed govt if we would use green tech. i was green freak back then (early 1990's) and still thought ed mazria was awesome, so i designed a passive building, with natural light, exterior insulation of the concrete structure for use of thermal mass, a kind of trombe wall dealy, passive shading, natural ventilation, etc. it was all 100% invisible.
so the govt said no funding. my boss hired a consultant who designed an active system, designed to blow outside air over a reservoir of rocks installed under the building, in the summer. in the winter the air was blown into the gymnasium.
outcome. high running costs to keep fans moving and the winter inside air temperature only rose by 2 degrees over outdoor temperature. ie, instead of 4degrees celcius inside it was 6 degrees celcius. students surely must wonder what the point is...because it obviously wasn't about making their gym work better.
disgusting. my boss thought so too, so he had them add a PVC array to light a lamp. and he put up a sign. we did get funding though. the govt thought active systems were real, while passive ones were not.
well, anyway, i hadn't thought about that project for some time but it totally jibes with urbanists view. i hope we will do better than that now the public is better informed, cuz i can't imagine doing much worse.
Darn, think we might be brothers from a different mother. I had two projects just like that after working on a project with Ed. First one was
a house for a wildcat petrol geologist. We designed a nice house with
a nice passive trombe wall and before we got into construction, he went to an evening meeting at the local library on solar energy, and well the snake oil salesman, former high school science teacher turned solar contractor convinced him to do it his way. My boss washed his hands of the project and I had already decided I was down the road. When I was back home I called up the owner and ask him if I could take a look at the finished project. He was glad to show me the final project. So I went for a look and see....and yup the solar solution just wasn't working except for the one I designed into his three bay garage. Where we used a suncather truss and cast
light onto a sand filled cmu wall with exterior insulation and 3/4" Stucco cause he was concerned about grass fires. He told even when he didn't have sunshine the garage was comfortable to work in even on the coldest of winter days.
Second one was a school gym. I think the partner thought he was Louis Kahns brother as the design was basicly one big box with for boxes in each corner. He thought it was a cool design and it did look grand on paper. That is until the Engineer started installing steel columns in every corner of the building which made for very awkward spaces. It had a hipped roof with FLW overhangs as it was in the desert....which were to let light in durning the winter months. All the CMU walls were filled with sand, but then the budget went to hell and there was no exterior insulation. I recall the partner saying oh, they can insulate it down the road....my thought was ya, like that is ever going to happen. I stopped by 10 years latter and yup no insulation.
well.. somewhere around this office there was a golf course in a supposedly sustainable new community focused on water that value-engineered out most of the stormwater management system....
it is sad, snook. somewhere someone is doing it right i am sure, but it takes right kind of client to wok...
what bothers me most about all green architecture though is that it usually stops with energy efficiency. as if economics was the only important or sellable issue. how to take that next step is a big question unanswered for what 40 years or more? social issues are too hard perhaps...
Obama was just talking about HOME STAR on the telee...
I think what needs to happen is first, you create the market for *the average consumer*: make greening your home a product... It doesn't need to be pretty... If you make it something that the average Joe can buy first, something that they can be in a market for, something they can *add on* to their existing homes... Then, there is a market for it... People will talk about it...
Then the *next level* becomes about *upgrading*: which is where people will want the next better, better design and better performance, better technology upgrade... The demand will drive a market for innovation and *design*... Once people want to buy something, they will look to the next big thing, like upgrading your TV, or getting a new piece of furniture or whatever...
It's funny, a guy I knew in architecture school lived out of a cargo truck. All through school, he and his wife and kid... He basically modified his van to adopt all kinds of sustainable upgrades... Pimping out in a green way his truck (it was sort of a van) with sustainable upgrades and things that made it more energy efficient as well as livable: transformed the van into basically an apartment... Solar panels, a composting toilet, etc. His rationale (apart from not having to rent a place) was from a design perspective, for one, he could do things outside the building code; composting toilets for example... There were things he could do that you couldn't do with the existing building code... Once he started up with this idea, he later discovered a whole community of people who were doing the same thing: there are a whole bunch of people pimping out their trucks into green machines basically... Plug in to the grid occassionally when the solar panels were not enough... Eventually he said, he was spending alot of his savings on it... lighting it with LEDs, photovoltaics etc... It wasn't yet cost effective (photovoltaics) but it became a thing where, just like your stereo some people will spend their savings on a new amp or a new set of speakers or whatever, he would want instead some neew piece of energy technology: it was the thing that this community of people living in trucks would save up for and *renovate* with... and you'd look to the next guy who did something new to the truck and want to do the next thing...
I think what could happen, with sustainable building renovations is: if you make the technology and energy performance into a kind of consumable commodity, something accessible to the average joe: and as more of it happens, it gets cheaper, with economies of scale as the market grows, photovoltaics for example become cheaper and cheaper... People will eventually be pulling them off the shelves and the technology continually improves to meet greater and greater consumer demand... The market becomes one that feeds energy savings and if consumers are actually making money off these investments, it becomes an object of desire, fuels demand... Say, natural lighting installations and renovations... Natural ventilation... wind turbines for the home... superinsulated walls and window systems, etc. Later, the *demand for design aesthetic* then kicks in when some inventive entrepreneur or architect begins branding green technology with a design aesthetic like an *ipod* of green tech, it will be huge...
But before you come out with the ipod, you need to first create a market for digital music...
I realize that we need to design for sustainability holistically, and it might seem as if *tacking on* the green on houses is counter to life cycle design etc... But the reality is, most people already live in houses... And markets are driven by consumers, this is the world we live in... So renovation is where it starts... Especially since: the most sustainable strategy is not to build new construction but instead to reuse existing building and renew it... But eventually, *new construction* will service that green technology demand: not unlike the way houses built after the automobile started having garages, or family rooms are now being designed for flatscreen television casework, or kitchens now typically need casework that accomodates a microwave... Eventually, if you are designing a brand new house, there is demand *up front* to make that space plug in to the latest wind turbine or light shelf, natural ventilation system, etc...
Because there's one way you can make *even the SUV driving mcmansionite* want something: show them something that they are missing, an object of desire, or a modernization, that they need to keep up with the Joneses... I mean, for somebody who is already in the market for a green home, that's one thing... Where the thing really takes off is if you make green a desirable thing, and not just a government subsidized incentive...
I think it needs to start from somewhere: you create incentives that create the market, but eventually the market needs to take hold and new industry and businesses need to sprout up and actually take on a life of their own...
If, for example, General Electric starts manufacturing natural ventilation systems for homes, or wind turbines for your homes, then you have something huge... And then competitors with better designs start popping up...
That's all good and what not brink... but it's not a big as issue as people make it out to be.
When I was referring to cultural preferences, I was referring to how people have preferences for certain kinds of products that have certain energy requirements in their own respective ways.
Like, one of the biggest energy consumers in the United States is the manufacture of elemental chlorine. The process of manufacturing chlorine cannot be further reduced in terms of energy consumption as the process has hit a maximum. The only way to make the industry more efficient is to change the supply chain and trade logistics.
Which isn't going to happen anytime soon because most chlorine plants were built in the 1970s, have a 40-60 year life and are still relatively under capacity.
The biggest consumers of chlorine are pharmaceuticals, water treatment, polyvinyl chloride, silicone-based products, pesticides, fluorocarbon production, polyurethane, titanium and household goods (in order from largest to smallest).
For instance, one of the most intensive uses of chlorine is in the production of solar panels! And medicine! And OSB! And insulation! And just about almost everything.
The production of one ton (metric) of chlorine consumes roughly 3200 kwh. That rivals iron and steel production and is much higher than the production of glass and concrete.
Based on December's output of 810,792 tonnes of chlorine, we can assume the annual output of chlorine is 9,729,504 tonnes annually.
That is ~31,134,412,800 kwh of power! In reality, that's only about 0.001% of total energy consumption. You'd have to generate about 50,000,000,000 kwh to get that amount of energy sans inefficiency.
In other terms of equivalency, that's 3.5 million homes!
The point of this really is that this is a base chemical used in numerous broad applications to generally produce cheap products. It's also used in products that have "preferential" qualities.
Like your socks bright white? Prefer the ease of vinyl siding? Too cheap to use plywood? Have a headache? Want cheaper food? Blah, blah blah... et cetera.
montagneux, agreed, but this still needs to be market driven...
design me a laundromat that is an object more desirable than my washing machine in my house and then we'll have something... in the same way that netflix is putting blockbusters out of business...
design a supply chain that is *both more energy efficient and can wipe the floor with the existing supply chain in a competitive marketplace*, and the consumers will drive demand for that...
montagneux... I think what I'm trying to say is: this is a game played where business and profit and market saviness has power to drive production... It's just the way things are... We live in a market economy... We need entrepreneurship to drive innovation and environmental sustainability... We need to work with market economics in order to fuel change...
Saw this a few weeks ago for the first time... Great movie...!! Rent it on netflix, or better yet *stream it*... Save sine supply chain :)
The interesting thing about this is how change in the food industry is actually making a real change towards organic production: the anti corporate hippies from the 70's who started the sustainable food movements, organic foods, etc. are now becoming commercialized and able to command in the market... Not just in the margins, but actually having some power rather than being powerless... Although there is some debate, one of the guys interviewed on this film, he was a hippie who is now selling to Walmart (which he formerly considered like an evil empire)... The interesting thing about it is... All of those organic startups are now partnering with big food corporations and the thing is taking off... If there is a demand, the Walmarts will demand it too... And then the movement actually has some horsepower... Change happens not necessarily by overthrowing the system, but it comes from a single joe blow consumer picking up the organic product off the shelf rather than the other product... It's consumer choice driven... These corporations like Walmart are not evil, they are just greedy... You sell them something where there is a demand and they start pumping your industry with money which fuels growth and more demand for that alternative product or industry...
"design me a laundromat that is an object more desirable than my washing machine in my house and then we'll have something" - bRink
Now there is a design challenge! Since Americans are pretty lazy coming up with something that will make people give up the convenience of washing in their own homes would be a major achievement.
Thanks for the thoughtful discussion, everyone. bRink I especially agree with a lot of what you said. I'm not sure what the status is on the legislation but it's nice to be able to have a conversation about it anyway. We'll stay tuned I guess!
HOME STAR: This is kind of a big deal
Nice find, gibson. Most of our media today is devoted to Senator Jim Bunning's objection to extending unemployment benefits to thousands of people throughout the country... what a toolbox that guy is.
Camera red light on: May we quote you on that Ms.Kemper?
Just a side note, but I routinely write letters to Congress, in fact they make it easy now via the internet. I bet an effective letter writing campaign to get this bill past, certainly would not hurt:
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/letterscongress.htm
Yes, you can quote me. "Senator Bunning is a toolbox." LOL.
Thanks for the link, I think the EfficiencyFirst link that I posted at the top of the thread has some info on contacting congress as well. Just an FYI.
Drop it like it's hot: Cash For Caulkers Rebates: Obama Announces $6 Billion For Homestar Program
Uh! I'm a nice dude, with some nice dreams
See these ice cubes, see these Ice Creams?
Eligible bachelor, million dollar boat
That's whiter than what's spilling down your throat
The Phantom, exterior like fish eggs
The interior like suicide wrist red
I can exercise you, this can be your Phys. Ed
Cheat on your man ma, that's how you get ahizzead
Killer wit the beat, I know killers in the street
Wit the steel that'll make you feel like Chinchilla in the heat
So don't try to run up on my ear talking all that raspy shit
Trying to ask me shit
When my niggaz fill ya vest they ain't gon pass me shit
You should think about it, take a second
Not a fact, you should take four B
And think before you fuck wit lil skateboard P
I'm going to be blunter than I probably should here, so please feel free to hurl the requisite rotten veggies, but I think the profession has lost for itself the highground on sustainability. It will be an uphill struggle to get it back. AIA and other national organizations failed to move quickly enough on the issue, to define a coherent, innovative and useful position - how our profession can contribute usefully to sustainability agendas.
Instead, all too many in the profession fell back onto gimmickry, discarding the science for the imagery of what a green future might look like: trees wrapped impossibly around buildings, structurally impossible stalklike towers in the Hudson, open spaces where we would generate energy through the heat emitted by people, greenroofs everywhere even when high albedo or nothing at all would have been better choices - just so long as the picture - the abstraction of the idea - was compelling.
Notions like lifecycle costing, cost-benefit analysis, breakeven scenarios, and, most importantly, reuse/recycle/reduce were displaced by a childlike technomania and a desperate reaching for big ideas that we just couldn't really grasp. Everything, for way too many people, came to be about the sexiest technology and sexiest form without the requisite attention to engineering or economics. Everything came to be about how the IDEA of sustainability could take on aesthetic form, irrespective of the actual sustainability. Renewables over actives and passives, contrived constructed wetlands over real water use/source reduction, etc, etc.
Instead, others - engineers, policy people, planners, scientists, and architects who no longer called themselves architects, for the most part - came up with all the big ideas for greening big cities. And architects were, as a practical matter and in large measure, relegated to the implementation role.
I'm not saying that aesthetics aren't important in sustainability.
.. but the real, practical big ideas needed to come first.. before the form.
Urbanist, there's a TED talk in which Bjarke Ingals talks about how sustainability has become something that seems like it has to hurt - like we have to feel guilty if we take a long hot shower, etc, and that he thinks the things that are "good" for us should also be able to be fun.
I can't recall exactly how that topic is related to the rest of his talk (it's an excellent talk, BTW), but I think that making sustainability fun - even sexy - IS a role we architects should have, along with the ability to make it invisible.
But you're absolutely right that we need to make it WORK first, and then make it be whatever the client wants it to be: fun, expressed, featured, invisible, in your face, whatever.
And I agree that the profession, via the AIA or not, has lost a LOT of ground on promoting sustainability as one of our areas of expertise, as well as an aspect of construction that is really non-negotiable going forward. My fervent hope is that when the trend of plopping a wind turbine and a green wall in every rendering is tired, we will still be using the actual knowledge and technologies developed during this time to make better buildings.
lb,
that ted talk was awesome. damn, i wish i was danish.
I'll jump on the sustainability wagon as soon as the US legalizes hemp.
Urbanist cuts through the BS with his post. A lot of unproven ideas for "sustainability" have been tossed around. Many of them should be classified as techno-fantasy. Passive solutions aren't as sexy as the star trek stuff, but they should be the corner stone of sustainable design for many reasons.
Technology has reached the point of diminishing returns across the board and now has a negative impact.
Welcome Urbanist. And thanks for that post, very well-spoken.
Now I need to go find that TED talk.
Thanks. Now the confessional: I am now a sustainability specialist in urban planning and design preaching about systems, programs, policies and solutions over green glamour, but I'm pretty sure I was able to get started doing what I now do because of sexy renderings that simply didn't make any sense. So it cuts both ways... Fine, I'm a hypocrite ;-P.
I believe my point about what seduction by techno-fantasy has done to our professional in the green-building domain is an appropriate one, on the whole, but the fact is, that among architects and those who patronize us, the iconic techno-image is still what sells.
I don't know what we can (and need to) do to change this state of affairs.
greenwashing is not good but is a way to get people to accept the idea in the public at large so maybe it is not all bad. as long as it actually goes something tangible (like a green space people can enjoy)
when it doesn't i think it can be very bad.
I did a huge gymnasium for a school once here in japan that made me hate green architects for about 10 years. and probably taught the client and the students of the school that green architecture doesn't work.
the problem was, we got a significant part of our funding for construction through a grant by fed govt if we would use green tech. i was green freak back then (early 1990's) and still thought ed mazria was awesome, so i designed a passive building, with natural light, exterior insulation of the concrete structure for use of thermal mass, a kind of trombe wall dealy, passive shading, natural ventilation, etc. it was all 100% invisible.
so the govt said no funding. my boss hired a consultant who designed an active system, designed to blow outside air over a reservoir of rocks installed under the building, in the summer. in the winter the air was blown into the gymnasium.
outcome. high running costs to keep fans moving and the winter inside air temperature only rose by 2 degrees over outdoor temperature. ie, instead of 4degrees celcius inside it was 6 degrees celcius. students surely must wonder what the point is...because it obviously wasn't about making their gym work better.
disgusting. my boss thought so too, so he had them add a PVC array to light a lamp. and he put up a sign. we did get funding though. the govt thought active systems were real, while passive ones were not.
well, anyway, i hadn't thought about that project for some time but it totally jibes with urbanists view. i hope we will do better than that now the public is better informed, cuz i can't imagine doing much worse.
JUMP,
Darn, think we might be brothers from a different mother. I had two projects just like that after working on a project with Ed. First one was
a house for a wildcat petrol geologist. We designed a nice house with
a nice passive trombe wall and before we got into construction, he went to an evening meeting at the local library on solar energy, and well the snake oil salesman, former high school science teacher turned solar contractor convinced him to do it his way. My boss washed his hands of the project and I had already decided I was down the road. When I was back home I called up the owner and ask him if I could take a look at the finished project. He was glad to show me the final project. So I went for a look and see....and yup the solar solution just wasn't working except for the one I designed into his three bay garage. Where we used a suncather truss and cast
light onto a sand filled cmu wall with exterior insulation and 3/4" Stucco cause he was concerned about grass fires. He told even when he didn't have sunshine the garage was comfortable to work in even on the coldest of winter days.
Second one was a school gym. I think the partner thought he was Louis Kahns brother as the design was basicly one big box with for boxes in each corner. He thought it was a cool design and it did look grand on paper. That is until the Engineer started installing steel columns in every corner of the building which made for very awkward spaces. It had a hipped roof with FLW overhangs as it was in the desert....which were to let light in durning the winter months. All the CMU walls were filled with sand, but then the budget went to hell and there was no exterior insulation. I recall the partner saying oh, they can insulate it down the road....my thought was ya, like that is ever going to happen. I stopped by 10 years latter and yup no insulation.
Oh, god...value engineering out the insulation...that's ridiculous.
Good story, jump, as are snook's. I mean they're crappy stories, but good to hear.
well.. somewhere around this office there was a golf course in a supposedly sustainable new community focused on water that value-engineered out most of the stormwater management system....
it is sad, snook. somewhere someone is doing it right i am sure, but it takes right kind of client to wok...
what bothers me most about all green architecture though is that it usually stops with energy efficiency. as if economics was the only important or sellable issue. how to take that next step is a big question unanswered for what 40 years or more? social issues are too hard perhaps...
Obama was just talking about HOME STAR on the telee...
I think what needs to happen is first, you create the market for *the average consumer*: make greening your home a product... It doesn't need to be pretty... If you make it something that the average Joe can buy first, something that they can be in a market for, something they can *add on* to their existing homes... Then, there is a market for it... People will talk about it...
Then the *next level* becomes about *upgrading*: which is where people will want the next better, better design and better performance, better technology upgrade... The demand will drive a market for innovation and *design*... Once people want to buy something, they will look to the next big thing, like upgrading your TV, or getting a new piece of furniture or whatever...
It's funny, a guy I knew in architecture school lived out of a cargo truck. All through school, he and his wife and kid... He basically modified his van to adopt all kinds of sustainable upgrades... Pimping out in a green way his truck (it was sort of a van) with sustainable upgrades and things that made it more energy efficient as well as livable: transformed the van into basically an apartment... Solar panels, a composting toilet, etc. His rationale (apart from not having to rent a place) was from a design perspective, for one, he could do things outside the building code; composting toilets for example... There were things he could do that you couldn't do with the existing building code... Once he started up with this idea, he later discovered a whole community of people who were doing the same thing: there are a whole bunch of people pimping out their trucks into green machines basically... Plug in to the grid occassionally when the solar panels were not enough... Eventually he said, he was spending alot of his savings on it... lighting it with LEDs, photovoltaics etc... It wasn't yet cost effective (photovoltaics) but it became a thing where, just like your stereo some people will spend their savings on a new amp or a new set of speakers or whatever, he would want instead some neew piece of energy technology: it was the thing that this community of people living in trucks would save up for and *renovate* with... and you'd look to the next guy who did something new to the truck and want to do the next thing...
I think what could happen, with sustainable building renovations is: if you make the technology and energy performance into a kind of consumable commodity, something accessible to the average joe: and as more of it happens, it gets cheaper, with economies of scale as the market grows, photovoltaics for example become cheaper and cheaper... People will eventually be pulling them off the shelves and the technology continually improves to meet greater and greater consumer demand... The market becomes one that feeds energy savings and if consumers are actually making money off these investments, it becomes an object of desire, fuels demand... Say, natural lighting installations and renovations... Natural ventilation... wind turbines for the home... superinsulated walls and window systems, etc. Later, the *demand for design aesthetic* then kicks in when some inventive entrepreneur or architect begins branding green technology with a design aesthetic like an *ipod* of green tech, it will be huge...
But before you come out with the ipod, you need to first create a market for digital music...
I realize that we need to design for sustainability holistically, and it might seem as if *tacking on* the green on houses is counter to life cycle design etc... But the reality is, most people already live in houses... And markets are driven by consumers, this is the world we live in... So renovation is where it starts... Especially since: the most sustainable strategy is not to build new construction but instead to reuse existing building and renew it... But eventually, *new construction* will service that green technology demand: not unlike the way houses built after the automobile started having garages, or family rooms are now being designed for flatscreen television casework, or kitchens now typically need casework that accomodates a microwave... Eventually, if you are designing a brand new house, there is demand *up front* to make that space plug in to the latest wind turbine or light shelf, natural ventilation system, etc...
Because there's one way you can make *even the SUV driving mcmansionite* want something: show them something that they are missing, an object of desire, or a modernization, that they need to keep up with the Joneses... I mean, for somebody who is already in the market for a green home, that's one thing... Where the thing really takes off is if you make green a desirable thing, and not just a government subsidized incentive...
I think it needs to start from somewhere: you create incentives that create the market, but eventually the market needs to take hold and new industry and businesses need to sprout up and actually take on a life of their own...
If, for example, General Electric starts manufacturing natural ventilation systems for homes, or wind turbines for your homes, then you have something huge... And then competitors with better designs start popping up...
That's all good and what not brink... but it's not a big as issue as people make it out to be.
When I was referring to cultural preferences, I was referring to how people have preferences for certain kinds of products that have certain energy requirements in their own respective ways.
Like, one of the biggest energy consumers in the United States is the manufacture of elemental chlorine. The process of manufacturing chlorine cannot be further reduced in terms of energy consumption as the process has hit a maximum. The only way to make the industry more efficient is to change the supply chain and trade logistics.
Which isn't going to happen anytime soon because most chlorine plants were built in the 1970s, have a 40-60 year life and are still relatively under capacity.
The biggest consumers of chlorine are pharmaceuticals, water treatment, polyvinyl chloride, silicone-based products, pesticides, fluorocarbon production, polyurethane, titanium and household goods (in order from largest to smallest).
For instance, one of the most intensive uses of chlorine is in the production of solar panels! And medicine! And OSB! And insulation! And just about almost everything.
The production of one ton (metric) of chlorine consumes roughly 3200 kwh. That rivals iron and steel production and is much higher than the production of glass and concrete.
Based on December's output of 810,792 tonnes of chlorine, we can assume the annual output of chlorine is 9,729,504 tonnes annually.
That is ~31,134,412,800 kwh of power! In reality, that's only about 0.001% of total energy consumption. You'd have to generate about 50,000,000,000 kwh to get that amount of energy sans inefficiency.
In other terms of equivalency, that's 3.5 million homes!
The point of this really is that this is a base chemical used in numerous broad applications to generally produce cheap products. It's also used in products that have "preferential" qualities.
Like your socks bright white? Prefer the ease of vinyl siding? Too cheap to use plywood? Have a headache? Want cheaper food? Blah, blah blah... et cetera.
montagneux, agreed, but this still needs to be market driven...
design me a laundromat that is an object more desirable than my washing machine in my house and then we'll have something... in the same way that netflix is putting blockbusters out of business...
design a supply chain that is *both more energy efficient and can wipe the floor with the existing supply chain in a competitive marketplace*, and the consumers will drive demand for that...
montagneux... I think what I'm trying to say is: this is a game played where business and profit and market saviness has power to drive production... It's just the way things are... We live in a market economy... We need entrepreneurship to drive innovation and environmental sustainability... We need to work with market economics in order to fuel change...
This is a bit off topic, but have you guys seen this movie:
http://www.foodincmovie.com/
Saw this a few weeks ago for the first time... Great movie...!! Rent it on netflix, or better yet *stream it*... Save sine supply chain :)
The interesting thing about this is how change in the food industry is actually making a real change towards organic production: the anti corporate hippies from the 70's who started the sustainable food movements, organic foods, etc. are now becoming commercialized and able to command in the market... Not just in the margins, but actually having some power rather than being powerless... Although there is some debate, one of the guys interviewed on this film, he was a hippie who is now selling to Walmart (which he formerly considered like an evil empire)... The interesting thing about it is... All of those organic startups are now partnering with big food corporations and the thing is taking off... If there is a demand, the Walmarts will demand it too... And then the movement actually has some horsepower... Change happens not necessarily by overthrowing the system, but it comes from a single joe blow consumer picking up the organic product off the shelf rather than the other product... It's consumer choice driven... These corporations like Walmart are not evil, they are just greedy... You sell them something where there is a demand and they start pumping your industry with money which fuels growth and more demand for that alternative product or industry...
"design me a laundromat that is an object more desirable than my washing machine in my house and then we'll have something" - bRink
Now there is a design challenge! Since Americans are pretty lazy coming up with something that will make people give up the convenience of washing in their own homes would be a major achievement.
Thanks for the thoughtful discussion, everyone. bRink I especially agree with a lot of what you said. I'm not sure what the status is on the legislation but it's nice to be able to have a conversation about it anyway. We'll stay tuned I guess!
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