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Thinking and Acting Globally and Locally
Larry Kinney, President and CEO
The environmental problems facing the world are even larger than the serious threat of global warming. They include unchecked non-renewable energy and population growth, species extinction at the alarming rate of over 100 per day, and devastating fresh water shortages around the globe.
When I became impassioned about energy and environmental matters 35 years ago, ‘global warming’ was not part of public parlance. Nonetheless, the authors of the Club of Rome report and such visionaries as E. F. Schumacher (Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered) and the University of Colorado’s own tireless Professor of Physics, Al Bartlett, had already sounded the clarion about the ravages of the exponential growth in the use of finite resources.
The quad is a large unit of energy, a million billion British thermal units. A million Btus is roughly the energy equivalent of a person year of labor, so a quad is a billion of those. In 1970, our nation had used an amount of energy in the previous 18 years that equaled its use over its entire history. Thirty six years ago, the world used 207 quads. This year, the world is using over 400 quads and US alone, with less than 5% of the world’s population, is using over 100 quads, about a quarter of the world’s total. Department of Energy predictions are that in 2020, the world will use well over 600 quads—600 billion person years of labor energy equivalent—a tripling in 50 years.
Presently, the phenomenon of global warming is manifest to all but those with obvious agendas to deny it. Its effects are admirably documented in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” [www.climatecrisis.net] In addition, the fact that oil production peaked in this country around 1971 is acknowledged by most reputable scientists, and many believe that the global peak in oil production has been reached. [www.peakoil.net] My view is that both global warming and peak oil can be usefully viewed as predictable consequences of unchecked growth in the use of non-renewable energy. However, it is possible to believe in any of these three powerful forces (exponential growth, global warming, or peak oil) independently of the others and reach the same conclusion: we are in deep trouble and must change our wasteful ways now.
“Let us by all means think globally and act locally,” environmental ethicist Baird Callicott observed. “But let us also think locally as well as act globally, and try to tune our global and local thinking as the several notes of a single and common chord.”
Confronted with the enormity of our fragile planet’s environmental problems—dramatically illustrated by the breaking off of massive portions of polar ice caps—it is only natural to wring our hands in despair. However, I hope our hand wringing is quickly replaced by the rolling up of sleeves. There’s lots of important work to be done. Or in the memorable words of “An Inconvenient Truth,” let our prayers be accompanied by the movement of feet.
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Synertech’s movement is oriented toward concrete actions to enhance the energy performance, comfort, and safety of buildings. Why? Because there is a great deal of waste in the building sector and practically achievable savings are strongly correlated with the magnitude of waste—actual waste in the case of retrofit work on existing buildings, potential in the case of new ones.
We are pleased to see the recent blossoming of interest in Green Building, while at the same time are disappointed to see unfortunate actions being undertaken by well-meaning enthusiasts.
*A utility employee I met suggested that using photovoltaics to produce electricity to heat hot water seemed like a good idea. I pointed out that a direct thermal hot water system is likely to be more direct and cost effective. By analogy, harvesting the sun's lumens directly during the daytime is much more elegant than is using electricity from PV power to illuminate light bulbs.
*Some homeowners install PV systems on dwellings that have the US residential average of 38 incandescent lights installed and whose refrigerators use 1500 kWh per year. Four-fold savings result from replacing those bulbs with compact fluorescent fixtures and ENERGY STAR refrigerators, saving energy for a tenth of the cost of supplying it by PV.
*Many passive solar dwellings use twice the amount of south-facing glazing than makes sense from the energy or comfort point of view, but employ no moveable insulation to protect from nighttime losses in the winter, then achieve comfort on winter mornings with electric resistance heat.
Our focus at Synertech is on systems that actually work to achieve the ends of “green building” while avoiding overpriced “green wash” that adds fluff and cost without function or savings.
Harvesting the sun’s lumens via thoughtfully-designed daylighting systems that spread sunshine across light-colored ceilings can produce lovely, glare-free lighting environments. We find that trying to make the sun emulate bad electric lighting designs (spot lights from leaky cans in ceilings, garish fluorescent office lighting) is wasteful and inelegant. We should all strive to do better.
We are hopeful that well-conceived and delivered energy education will lead to better decision making and cost-effective designs that work. In the Spring of 2006, I taught a course in Green Buildings at Naropa University and found the students to be quite responsive to an approach that stressed both empirical observation and analysis.
Indeed, we might ask if it is possible to write sufficiently simply about technical matters that non-professionals can learn something of importance about energy and related matters, while professionals avoid boredom and pick up useful information as well. My colleagues at the Boulder Green Building Guild believe that the answer is yes, and are taking steps to prove it. In the summer of 2006, we launched Volume 1, Number 1 of the Boulder Green Builder Journal. Feedback is most welcome as are new members of this dynamic organization [See www.bgbg.org].
Building science is making good progress. It has largely shed its swaddling clothes, has started to crawl, and may well walk soon. There is much that needs to be developed, many inventions waiting to be nurtured, exciting designs to be realized. We must join together peacefully and with great resolve in this most important quest to save our precious planet. [Click for Solar Reflection.] |
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