Building Technology

One year ago today, an earthquake struck the Sichuan Province in China. The earthquake was the 19th deadliest of all time. Early surveys indicate that over 170,000 square miles were affected at a level of “slightly damaging”, and over 1200 square miles on the level of “devastating”. As of May 7^th,, 2009, there are 68,712 dead and more than 17,923 missing. With such excessive damage, rebuilding has been required on a massive scale.

In late April of 2009, media outlets reported that families displaced by the Sichuan Earthquake housed in Temporary Housing Units (THUs) were experiencing health related problems due to the buildings. There is speculation that formaldehyde is the culprit. While FAS has no direct evidence to support or discredit this claim, the work we did on air quality in emergency housing built after Hurricane Katrina makes it possible to make some informed guesses about what is happening in China.

To this end, we’ve put together an article looking at the potential indoor air quality problems in China, with proposed solutions moving forward. The paper can be found here.

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Construction continues on FAS’s demonstration house in Houston, Texas. Trusses have been put up, and the envelope is almost finished. We’ve gotten more pictures as well, and we’re posting them on FAS’s flickr account, which can be found here.

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When it comes to solving the nation’s energy crisis utility bills hardly seem like much of a big deal.  But improving access to the information in the billing records of the nation’s gas and electric utilities could provide powerful tools to increase the efficiency of energy use in the US.  This is particularly true in residential and commercial buildings that consume 70% of US electricity and are responsible for 40% of all US greenhouse gas emissions.

Unfortunately, utility bill information is stored in a huge number of idiosyncratic formats and is not accessible to individuals and organizations that could use it.  This complex, un-standardized landscape means that anyone interested in comparing their energy use with national averages, or understanding how their building is performing in terms of energy consumption, has to do an enormous amount of work sorting through confusing bill information.  The small investment it would take to get these billing records into standardized formats, and making them easily available to anyone with permission to use them, would pay large dividends, for example by helping individual consumers make better decisions when they are purchasing and operating buildings, and by helping officials managing public programs designed to encourage building energy efficiency make better management decisions.

In the future, detailed information about patterns of consumption may make sense when there’s widespread use of “smart meters” that keep track of energy use minute by minute, and possibly appliance by appliance.  But major gains are possible simply by reporting energy use for each month.  Here are some examples:

• Legislation could require that billing records and benchmarking data be disclosed to potential buyers at time of sale.  Labels providing data on a building’s energy use have been developed in Europe and are being considered in California and other parts of the US.  Most labels being considered include both calculated energy demand (called “asset rating”) and measured energy consumption (called an “operational rating”).   The US Environmental Protection Agency has developed a tool called a portfolio manager that lets building owners compare the energy performance of their buildings with the performance of similar buildings in similar climates.  At present nothing similar is available for residential buildings. The burden on the user would be greatly reduced if billing data can be uploaded automatically, using standardized formats.
• If billing records for a building are available online with suitable permissions, a utility, or a third party like Google could provide a service where a consumer could go on line, identify themselves with an appropriate password, and get access to the building’s history of energy use by month – preferably several years of data.  This could then be automatically compared with energy use from similar structures in similar climates, and estimates of the reductions likely to result from cost-effective retrofits.  Consumers might well be motivated to take action.  Benchmarking tools for this purpose have already been developed by the Environmental Protection Agency.
• Good building energy audits involve entering data about a structure into a computer model that estimates a building’s energy use and also computes the savings that would result from different retrofit measures that could be taken (adding insulation, replacing windows, etc.)   Unfortunately these models are often wrong since the outcome depends on the skill and experience of the person using them.  Accuracy can be improved if the models include an analysis of the actual energy consumption of the structure.  Monthly consumption data, made available to building auditors by permission of the building owner, can be used to track the sources of inaccuracy in the data input and, and algorithms could be developed over time that would suggest corrections to the user.   Improved models will lead directly to retrofits that show better performance and are more cost-effective.   The cost of doing this would be greatly reduced if auditors could access consumption data directly over the internet using appropriate network security tools.  In the future most auditors are likely to be using wireless, handheld units at the building site to collect data and perform the energy use estimates.  These could also have direct access to the data.  The software for these tools would need to be adjusted for each utility if each company keeps data in a different format – at a significant increase in cost.
• Utility data available online could also be used to strengthen project management for retrofit programs.  The performance of individual auditing and contractor teams could be continuously measured and compared based on the actual impact their work had on energy use in the buildings they serviced.   The persistence of savings could be measured over a period of years and the actual performance of different approaches to retrofits compared in ways that could lead to continuous improvement of the programs.  This, of course, would require collecting and maintaining data on the kinds of measures undertaken and  the cost of the installations in a standardized format.
• Energy use data collected in a consistent form would also permit continuous analysis of progress, or lack of progress, of city, state, and national programs to improve energy efficiency.  It could be used, for example, to compare programs in different cities, and track the impact of different policy interventions in considerable detail.  While care would need to be taken to ensure that identifiable personal information is not released, statistical agencies have considerable experience in analyzing data scheduled for publication to ensure that this doesn’t happen – and they have a good track record of success.  The novelty in this new system, of course, would be that the data would be gathered online.  Careful design of network security would needed.
• The introduction of “smart grid” technology will open more opportunities for collecting detailed information about building performance.  The new systems will let building owners and utilities adjust consumption to avoid system peaks and provide information useful for understanding the consumption of specific equipment in the buildings that can, among other things, be used to understand the impact of any retrofit measures undertaken in the building — with statistically significant samples.   The smart grid will require standardized approaches to measuring and reporting consumption data.

Taken together, the benefits of a consistent national format for the energy consumption of individual utility customers would be considerable.  The benefits would include much improved management and accountability for retrofit program funds, and more energy savings per dollar invested.  While some utilities may complain about the cost of converting existing data formats to a new format, the overall costs would be small compared with the savings that could be achieved.

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I want to share a recently published paper by John Millhone, senior advisor to the FAS Building Technologies Program. John authored a paper for FAS recounting the history of the Weatherization Assistance Program, as well as recommendations for future actions, which can be found here.

John is currently a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the Carnegie Energy and Climate Program. He is currently evaluating and commenting on U.S. energy policies and focusing on clean energy and economic stimulus initiatives. He is also providing analysis to the U.S.–China provincial and municipal energy efficiency management program for the Carnegie Endowment.

John’s paper for the Carnegie Endowment examines if the massive increase in funding for the Weatherization Assistance Program can be spent well, or if it is simply money thrown at a “feel-good program”.  According to the paper, the answer to this question will “depend on the ability to successfully complete three tasks:

1. Accelerate the administration of the program, including bringing together a federal, state, local, and private sector implementation structurewith transparent monitoring and verification of the results.
2. Secure the support and participation of stakeholders with an interest in the success of the program, not only because their support is essential,particularly in the southern states, but also to build confidence in the directionof the stimulus package.
3. Translate the federal stimulus investment into a self-sustaining,ongoing activity that relies on other funding sources and is recognized as vital in meeting long-term national goals.”

John analyzes each of these three tasks, discussing the potential problems and opportunities associated with each, and he provides recommendations for successfully accomplishing each. The full paper, which I highly suggest reading, can be found here.

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Construction has begun!

FAS is partnering with the Citizen League for Environmental Action NOW (CLEAN), an environmentally conscious community organization in Houston, Texas, to build a home to demonstrate the use of structural insulated panel construction. The home uses fiber cement board faced SIP panels with expanded polystyrene cores. These panels passed rigorous test requirements established by the International Code Council (ICC), which dictates standards for building in the United States, as well as additional tests conducted by FAS that looked at structural and fire safety under extreme conditions.

And now, after extensive designing and planning, construction has started!

I’ll be posting pictures here periodically and providing a running commentary on the construction process as the house takes shape. Photos of foundation prep and the first walls going up can be found after the jump…

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The Weatherization Assistance Program Technical Assistance Center has a great page of information about ramp up capacity and planning for the program to handle the $5 Billion on its way from the stimulus bill. The page contains information about ramp up capacities, workforce scenarios and projected workers needed, and impacts and savings.

While there is still a lot of planning to be done, this page is a great insight into a lot of the discussions that have already been happening.

Read more here.

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On Tuesday, President Obama signed the $787 Billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law. The act is estimated to save three and a half million jobs over the next two years.

We’ve kept an eye on it through its development, and I want to give an update as to what made it out the other side and into law. My comments on building related portions are below. A more inclusive evaluation of the stimulus’s green measures by the Alliance to Save Energy can be found here and here.

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The House and Senate came to an agreement on a final, compromised version of the stimulus package yesterday. As of this afternoon, the final language hasn’t been released yet, so I dont know the specifics as to what made the final cut, and what funding levels will be. Once the language gets released I’ll post an update with some thoughts.

Stay tuned…

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President Obama held his first prime-time press conference yesterday, fielding questions focusing on the current economic crisis and the bailout currently being debated on capitol hill.  Responding to a question on finding bipartisan solutions in the bailout, President Obama continued to support the idea of energy-efficient retrofits as a means of job creation and economic stimulus:

“This is another concern that I’ve had in some of the arguments that I’m hearing. When people suggest that what a waste of money to make federal buildings more energy-efficient — why would that be a waste of money? We’re creating jobs immediately by retrofitting these buildings or weatherizing 2 million Americans’ homes, as was called for in the package. So that right there creates economic stimulus, and we are saving taxpayers, when it comes to federal buildings, potentially $2 billion. In the case of homeowners, they will see more money in their pockets. And we’re reducing our dependence on foreign oil in the Middle East. Why wouldn’t we want to make that kind of investment?”

I couldn’t agree more.

The full text of President Obama’s press conference is available here.

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It looks like we’re not the only ones seeing the value in home energy retrofits as a means of reducing energy use and CO2 emmissions, as well as a way of creating jobs. The UK is set to announce a plan to offer a complete “eco-makeover” for one in four homes. The campaign will involve providing roughly 7 million houses a complete retrofit to improve insulation. Householders could also be encouraged to install small-scale renewable and low-carbon heating systems such as solar panels and wood-burning boilers. Details of the program have not been announced yet, but it is expected to be voluntary, possibly through loans that can be paid back over 25 years from the expected savings on energy bills.

Read more about the announcement here.

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