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DoE Guide for How Builders can improve Energy Efficiency

Building America and the Builders Challenge, the DOEs Guide to Improving Energy Efficiency

According to Stacy Hunt, an energy and environmental building consultant who includes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as clients, codes for energy efficiency are getting more stringent, and demand for high performance homes from consumers are rising. Builders must find ways to both meet and market these improvements, well beyond what they do today. The Builders Challenge and the Building America Program help provide resources, such as technical support, to meet these new goals and marketing tools to help sell consumers on the importance of these energy efficiency improvements.

In 2008, the first year of their launch, the Builder’s Challenge program qualified 1200 homes and have already developed packages that achieve residential energy performances 30 – 40 % above code. The ultimate goals of the program are more ambitious than that, though - by 2020, the DOE wants to make it possible for every American to own a cost-effective net-zero energy home (PDF 852 KB), with zero energy commercial buildings following by 2025. According to the DOE “A net-zero energy building is a residential or commercial building with greatly reduced needs for energy through efficiency gains (60% to 70% less than conventional practice), with the balance of energy needs supplied by renewable technologies.” Other goals include:

  • Produce homes on a community scale that use on average 40% to 100% less source energy
  • Improve indoor air quality and comfort
  • Help home builders reduce construction time and waste
  • Implement innovative energy- and material-saving technologies
  • Improve builder profitability
  • Provide new product opportunities to manufacturers and suppliers
  • Dramatically increase the energy efficiency of existing homes.

Best practices and case studies (PDF) to date are broken down by region and available for builders and developers at no charge. The benefits to builders are numerous and include lower material and labor costs during construction and less construction waste. Homeowners get the real benefits, though, in the form of lower utility bills, better indoor air quality, energy-efficient mortgages and higher resale prices.

The website has some great links for homeowners that want to improve the energy efficiency in existing homes, including:

  • DSIRE - Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy—A comprehensive source of information on state, local, utility, and selected federal incentives that promote renewable energy.
  • Do It Yourself Network—An on-air, online network that provides in-depth project instructions, easy to understand demonstrations and product tips for home and hobby enthusiasts.
  • DOE’s Efficient Windows Collaborative—Provides unbiased information on the benefits of energy-efficient windows, descriptions of how they work, and recommendations for their selection and use.
  • ENERGY STAR®—ENERGY STAR, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, offers product-specific information on high performance appliances and lighting for the home. You can also view information about home improvement, new homes, and tax credits for energy efficiency.
  • Home Energy Briefs—Offered by the Rocky Mountain Institute, these nine guides describe what the average homeowner can do to save energy.
  • Insulation Fact Sheet and Tool—This fact sheet, provided by the DOE, covers a variety of information regarding insulation. You can also access an online tool, the ZIP-Code Insulation Program, to help determine the amount of insulation appropriate for your house based on your location.
  • National Energy Affordability and Accessibility Project—The Residential Energy Efficiency Database helps consumers find energy efficiency programs a utility or state offers to help save energy and money.
  • Simply Insulate—Helpful information about insulation and links to information about incentives in your area. This Web site was created and is maintained by North American Insulation Manufacturers Association.

They have information for apartment dwellers, too. It includes ways to reduce heating and cooling costs and conserve energy.

According to the DOE, “Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions account for more than 80 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.” In 2007, the total U.S. emissions were up 1.3% from the previous year, to 6,022 million metric tons (MMT). (As a side note, 2579.9 MMT were from petroleum and 2162.4 were from coal) Of those emissions, 1,249.5 MMT came from residential energy use. Energy efficiency in the residential sector is the low hanging fruit in the fight against catastrophic climate change. Ultimately, we must address energy sources, but between incentives for efficiency in the stimulus package and best practices provided for builders, there is no reason we can’t see an immediate reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions even before we take the needed steps of developing an energy system that uses 100% renewable resources.

Source: Sustainblog

Claw back those bonuses

On CNN Fareed Zakaria interviewed 2 Nobel Laureates and another experts on the Economy. The latter, Jeffrey Sachs, who 25 years ago became world famous for telling countries how to get out of economic crises, made the following observation, as reported by No Quarter:

People don’t have health care. They can’t take care of their children. We’ve got hunger in this country.

So, there’s a hidden face, because we don’t really talk about these things that affect tens of millions of people, and the numbers are now rising dramatically.

So, I think we want to be civilized about this. What Joe has said about the egregious transfers to the wealthy has greatly exacerbated this. And the nerve of John Thain and others to take bonuses after they’ve broken the world economy, that’s literally scandal.

We’ve got to go back and claw back those bonuses, because that’s tens of billions of dollars that went on taxpayer bucks — or from shareholders, in fact, because it wasn’t real income. It was taken straight out of the bottom line. And that’s a shame for our society when people are desperately trying to make ends meet right now.

Previously, a commentator had noted to the effect, "Tough, those are legal contracts." While the rich had an administration that so trashed the Constitution and still own a Congress that demonstrate so little regard for law, it is interesting that they still put such trust in legal contracts.

Australia’s Black Saturday

The extreme fire in Australia attributed to Global Boiling.

via Wonk Room by Guest on 3/1/09

Our guest blogger is Erica Newman, research associate at the College of Natural Resources and Center for Fire Research and Outreach at the University of California, Berkeley.

Firetruck fleeing the bushfire.Even in Australia, where people have learned to live with large wildfires, February’s “Black Saturday” fires in Victoria blew away all expectations. Of the hundreds that died, those who stayed had no time to prepare, and many who fled were overtaken by the fast-spreading flames and died in their cars. Multiple days of above 100-degree Fahrenheit temperatures, extremely low relative humidity and 100 mile per hour winds resulted in an unstoppable spread of the flames, 100-200 foot flame lengths, and fire intensity unlike anything ever before recorded anywhere on the planet.

Wildfire expert Max Moritz, a professor at the College of Natural Resources and Center for Fire Research and Outreach at the University of California, Berkeley, explains these extreme conditions raise new questions:

Although we won’t know many of the details until an assessment of the recent Australian fires is completed, the weather conditions and rates of fire spread we’re hearing about are extreme. It highlights a special case for both agencies and homeowners, and we have a lot to learn from each other about what does and does not work under weather conditions that are this bad.

So what caused this colossal inferno? In pointing to arson as the cause of these fires, we miss the overall significance of the fire dynamics that gave rise to this event. While arson is a lamentable and criminal source of ignition, with relative humidity and fuel moisture at below four percent, a lit cigarette or a spark thrown off by a moving vehicle could have caused similar wildland fires. Where there are people, there are always sources of ignition — what fire scientists call the “human-ignition component.” The larger issue at stake here is what gave rise to such extreme fire weather.

Australian fire scientists say that this area of Victoria has experienced between five and 30 years of drought (depending on if you are counting by successive years or overall water balances), the worst in perhaps 1000 years. Some, perhaps rightly, blame global climate change for what is known as the “Big Dry.” Diminishing rainfall, increased temperatures, and increased atmospheric instability all lead to higher fire danger.

An open question for scientists is whether or not with global climate change, we are experiencing “novel ecosystems” with entirely new combinations of environmental conditions. Is Australia really experiencing a “drought,” which is less-than-normal rainfall, or is there a new normal? Should Australia listen to its firefighters and be preparing for a permanently drier future with much more intense fire dynamics?

Australia has a history of successful fire management. Because of the inevitability of fire in Australia’s fire-evolved ecosystems, people have learned to expect and prepare for fires in a highly efficient, centralized manner. The “Prepare, Stay and Defend, or Leave Early” policies have long protected the lives of both citizens and firefighters, and reduced damage to homes and other buildings.

In a paper out this week in Environmental Research Letters, four Australian scientists and three scientists from California including Moritz, examine the policies and recommendations that both countries have in place for dealing with wildland fire on the urban interface.

In the “prepare, stay and defend” approach, property-owners are educated in fire suppression, such as putting out spot-fires, having buckets of water on hand, filling house gutters with water, creating a “defensible space,” and so on. People who chose to stay with their homes are also encouraged to keep protective Nomex clothing and firefighting implements on hand. Those who follow the “leave early” strategy do so when fire is reported for their area to give the wildfire a wide berth.

The unusual combination of extreme fire weather and the sudden onset of fire created conditions in which neither strategy worked. Leaving early works only if there is time to send out a warning. Those who would “prepare, stay, and defend” would have been reducing fuel loads in their yards well before this event, but it is unclear whether landscape-scale fuel treatments or even lowering fuel loads in the immediate vicinity of structures lowers fire hazard in wind-driven events, such as this one.

It will be up to Australian fire scientists and policy analysts to decide if their fire strategies need review. It the face of so primal a force as fire and on this scale, fighting the fires themselves is impossible, but perhaps one solution–fighting global climate change–is not.

Update The state of Victoria has "declared a total ban on open fires tomorrow as high temperatures and strong winds are forecast to return this week."

Nine out of 10 firms ignoring supply chain carbon footprint

BAUAAAE, say the sheep, Business As Usual And Abahhhhv All Else


BusinessGreen.com staff, BusinessGreen, Friday 27 February 2009 at 00:15:00

Accenture survey finds that while supply chain professionals are looking to cut emissions, they do not know where best to start

Just 10 per cent of companies are tracking the carbon footprint of their supply chains, according to a major new study from consultancy Accenture....

The Pickens, You Say

Our dependence on oil from the Middle East, Africa and Venezuela jeopardizes our national security and the dominance of oil interests in our government compromises our national integrity. The next time you hear it said that wind, solar, geothermal and other clean energy exemplify "pie in the sky" thinking, ask yourself if the voices of 70% of Americans who want such energy policy change are being heeded.

 

Watch Pickens Plan video here.