Movin' On

This marks my last post to this blog, unless of course, something changes to bring me back here. But do not despair, I still rant regularly, but in a new location. I am now part of Green Building Advisor, a new website on all thing residential and green, a joint venture of Taunton Press and Building Green. Check out the site, it has a wealth of useful information, even if my buddy Michael doesn't think so, but he is young, so what does he know?

So please come visit, comment, complain, etc. I look forward to it.

My blog can now be found at my own URL: www.greenbuildingcurmudgeon.com. Please come visit, comment, complain, or just lurk. I look forward to it.

Nudging us Towards an Efficient Future

I read an article in the NY Times today about the concept of “nudging” people towards better behavior. The story noted that after etching images of flies in the urinals at the Amsterdam airport, “spillage” on the men’s room floor dropped by 80%. An expert in behavioral economics stated “Men evidently like to aim at targets”. This is an example of a “nudge” - a harmless bit of engineering that manages to “attract people’s attention and alter their behavior in a positive way, without actually requiring anyone to do anything at all.” Great little story, and I would probably be similarly influenced were I to pass through the Amsterdam airport. This led me to think about where nudging would be effective in changing our behavior for the better regarding energy efficiency. The article reminded me of one of the first nudges I recall affecting my personal behavior. After buying an SUV several years ago (before I saw the light), I was captivated by the instantaneous and cumulative miles per gallon display on the dashboard. You could watch your mileage drop as you accelerated and increase as you coasted. It became a game for me, and I found myself always striving for the best mileage. Unfortunately, this vehicle barely got over 12 MPG on a good day, making me feel like I was always losing the game. I now drive a Prius, also with live mileage data, and I now enjoy playing the game while driving. On good days I can get over 45 MPG, and it continues to be fun to “win” as well as slightly disappointing when my attention slips and I “lose” a little. I think that every vehicle should have these mileage gauges in them, and people should be trained to drive efficiently. I get (a slightly sadistic) joy out of tooling down the road at or lower than the speed limit, watching people accelerating past me only to have to stop at a traffic light, to which I coast up right behind them as it starts to change, having used little or no fuel to get to the same place they just arrived.

I may be (probably am?) different than most people, but I have heard anecdotal evidence that driver’s behavior does change when they have instantaneous feedback on their mileage. Similar evidence exists for home energy use. The July/August issue of Home Energy Magazine , reported on a study of homeowners using household energy monitoring devices. They calculated an average energy savings of approximately 10% in homes which monitored their energy usage on a real time basis. Very interested owners saved as much as 13%, while even those who were totally apathetic still reduced their power use by more than 2%. I installed a TED (see photo) in a house I built and the clients almost immediately changed their behavior, if only slightly, regarding power usage. While simple versions of these monitors cost less than $150.00, more sophisticated systems can run to many thousands of dollars. Regardless of the price, it seems apparent to me that with just a little nudge, almost anyone will make the changes necessary to lower their consumption. If it is possible to cut power usage by an average of 10% with a simple, inexpensive device installed in every house, what is keeping us from doing it? While there is much debate about the value of mandates, it seem to me that if at the time of sale, every home had a monitor installed, we could save a significant amount of power in a short period of time. I imagine that realtors and builders will jump up and down and start screaming about anything that might raise the cost of a house by a fractional percentage, but we need to ignore those cries and start making the simple choices that will begin to lead us on the path to efficiency (and sanity).

The Earth is Our Drug Dealer

As I was reading about a bill in the Georgia legislature (unlikely to pass) forcing utilities to stop buying coal from mountaintop removal, it occurred to me that our dependence on fossil fuels and the havoc that they are wreaking on the environment is kind of a cruel joke played on us by the Earth. It’s like the story of drug dealers passing out free samples to kids in the schoolyard, then once they are hooked, there is a built in clientele. For the first 100 years or so, coal and oil were cheap and easy and we didn’t see (or ignored) most of the downside. Now we understand the problems, but we are as addicted as a junkie is to his regular fix. When an addict has a support network they may have an intervention or go to treatment, and many of them succeed in kicking their habit. The big question for the planet, is do we have a sufficient support network to kick our habit? Our dealers and their network of energy companies do not appear to be interested in helping us out. A bad combination of strong profits and regulation in many areas (particularly the Southeast US) that encourages rather than discourages more power generation gives them little incentive to reduce fossil fuel use. In those few areas where regulations encourage energy efficiency by utilities (the Western US comes to mind), per capita energy use has declined while it continues to rise in most other areas. So we have these islands of efficiency, places that have succeeded (at least partially) in “kicking their habit”, surrounded by the rest of us, happily smoking our “crack pipes” of oil and coal day in and day out. They must be pretty ticked off at the rest of us.

Environmentalists often speak of saving the earth. The real issue, however, is saving humanity. We are the irritating boil on the earth, causing most, if not all, of the problems. Once we are gone, the earth will, over many millennia, very likely heal itself quite well. This century-plus addiction of ours may just be a cruel joke played on us by our planet – it has plenty of time to wait out our demise, after which it can go back to business as usual.

Is everything green?

Just leaving the International Builders Show in Las Vegas, and even though attendance was down, it is as overwhelming an experience as ever. First, let’s get rid of the formalities. Las Vegas has to be the most surreal place on the face of the earth. The scale is not even close to being human - everything is huge – the buildings, the roads (typically 8 lanes wide), casinos, hotel rooms, and this trade show. Everything is designed to make sure you are completely disoriented all the time – walking through a hotel is an endurance test and a psychological puzzle – you feel like a rat in a maze, only the rat is smarter because you can’t figure out how to get out.

As to the show – green is definitely the color. Everyone and everything is, or wants to be seen as green. People are throwing around phrases like greenhouse gas emissions, carbon footprint, sustainability, and the like as if their lives depended on it. I’m not quite sure where this trend is headed, and while I am glad that there is finally some serious attention being paid to green building, I am very afraid that the general public, as well as much of the industry, is going to end up giving it a lot of lip service and we will see more and more greenwashing and flat out misrepresentation (read: LYING) about materials and methods and how green they are. I wade through literature and websites and I will share the best (or worst) examples of obfuscation that I can find.

Stepping back into some semblance of reality, I attended a news conference today which presented the results of a study of the efficiency of homes in California. Accompanied by some pie charts that very clearly spelled out the study’s results, it was pointed out that while homes account for about 14% of the energy usage in CA only – 0.12% of the energy is consumed by new homes. This is very telling data that states the case all too clearly that if we avoid addressing efficiency in existing homes, we are seriously missing the boat. It sounds like the new administration has gotten this message, let’s hope that they get the ball rolling on existing housing improvements and do it right.
Graphic courtesy www.consol.ws

Risky Living

A friend of mine recently had an extremely unpleasant experience, one which I would wish on no one else. Due to an unfortunate series of events, police entered his house and stumbled upon a certain illegal substance, determined that he was a hardened criminal, and hauled him off to jail, handcuffed, in the back of a patrol car. This being a Saturday night, he spent all day Sunday in jail, posted bond at 7AM Monday morning, and was finally released Monday evening after a twelve hour wait, a victim of a slow bureaucratic criminal justice system. The inefficiencies and frustration of dealing with an opaque system (the county jail), and being confined with a wide range of unfortunates and criminals provided him some perspective and led to some important revelations and decisions in his life.

His short stay in jail exposed him to people in dire circumstances, many of whom were unable or unwilling to accept their own part in their problems. He shared that almost to a man, everyone insisted that they were falsely accused, not guilty, or otherwise not responsible for their personal plight. Realizing that he needed to accept responsibility for his actions, he ended his confinement taking full responsibility for his actions, vowing to change his behavior so as to not every again jeopardize his freedom. This acceptance of responsibility and eagerness to make necessary changes is admirable behavior, one that should be used as a model for most of society. I’m not saying that we are all involved in illegal activity, but we are doing things that are detrimental to our lives, our country, and the planet that we can and should change for the better.

Many of us in the green building industry are focused on making better buildings, which is a good and important thing. I am concerned, however, that, as a society, we are not taking full responsibility for the effects of our actions, and until we do, we continue to cause and exacerbate environmental, social, and economic problems that we are in a position to solve. What if we all decided at once to stop building oversized houses with huge garages? How about only building homes meeting the highest level in one of the available green building programs? I know that this won’t happen quickly or universally. If you refuse to give a a customer what they want they will just go to someone else. We all need to make a living and can’t run off customers, particularly given the current state of the economy. But we should take the time to discuss efficient and sustainable options with our clients and push them as far as we can to make the right decisions for their homes. Let’s start taking responsibility for our actions and changing our behavior for the better. We may not end up in jail, but some of the long term consequences may be just as bad.

Green from the Start Part III

This one rambled off course somewhat, so please forgive me...

I hear one particular question very frequently these days – “How much more does it cost to build a green home?” While this is an excellent question, it makes me realize just how far we still have to go in order to move towards a completely sustainable economy. Everything comes down to dollars with everyone. Even people with practically endless amounts of money are cost conscious. Not that it is a bad thing to be aware of what you are spending, but it isn’t good to make every decision based on cost. As green building professionals, we have a long way to go in effectively demonstrating the value of sustainable buildings. There is the cost saving model – investing now in energy efficiency will pay off in reduced bills in the future. This works, but only to a point. Most of us are all stuck in a big box/discount store mentality. I am reminded of a great line of Woody Allen’s “in my family, it was a sin to buy retail”. In the 1970’s this was a humorous cultural stereotype, but now it seems to have become the mantra for most of our country. Development since the 1950’s has elevated the automobile to god-like status, and practically killed independent retail businesses. Between warehouse discount stores, malls across the country that look frighteningly alike, “outlet” malls, and on-line retailers, we can all shop for the absolute cheapest prices for everything. This mentality has taken over everything in our lives, and our goal to find the cheapest price controls many of our most critical decisions.

One of those critical buying decisions in our lives is our personal residence. For most of us, our house is the biggest and most important investment we will make, but, we often know less about the homes that we buy than our car or stereo. This isn’t necessarily our fault – it is easy to get objective information about mass produced manufactured products, but there are no clearinghouses for information about new or existing homes.

Inspection services provide a certain amount of information, depending on the skills and honesty of the individual inspector, someone who is often referred by a real estate agent and is relied upon to provide enough information, but not enough to jeopardize the sale. The closest we have to truly objective information about homes are green building certification programs available in the marketplace. These programs generally do a good job of assuring purchasers that their house meets a certain level of performance, but they are still a long way off from providing comprehensive quality control that should be available for purchases of this magnitude. I find an interesting parallel between the lack of oversight on home renovation and construction and investing. We put our life savings in the hands of “experts”, many of whom are not much more than clerical level help in large investment firms, expecting them to help us save for retirement, with no assurance that they will succeed, no insurance that our money won’t disappear (Every heard of Bernie Madoff?), and no transparency about the fees they are charging. We do much the same with our homes. Too many people in the construction industry have little if any training or experience, and there is no way to determine the skill level of the individuals who put your house together. Construction is a business, and the goal of business is to make money, which, until recently, many contractors did very effectively. We only wish that they had done as good a job on the construction of their buildings. The recent excesses in the home building industry, not unlike the financial industry, have been fueled by profit and greed. How do we change this? Can we take 100% of the profit motive out of building and remodeling? Should we require high performance homes by regulation? Can we enforce the building of green homes? Why isn’t healthy and efficient housing a right, instead of a privilege? Education is a right, legal representation in criminal trials is a right? I think it is time that we consider that all housing should, at a minimum, be healthy, efficient, durable, and sustainable – call it green, call it purple, just do it. All we need are some solid requirements, and the ability to enforce them, and we are on our way to a healthier and more efficient future. This would help to level the playing field by requiring better homes, eliminating the cost differential between “green” and “standard” homes, giving us a head start towards a healthier more efficient future.

Unintended Consequences

I was listening to NPR the other day and heard a very interesting segment on problems in the paper recycling industry. It seems that the bottom has fallen out of the market for waste paper to be recycled. The price recently fell from $150/ton to about $20/ton, making recycling very difficult from a financial perspective. The primary side effect of this is that more paper will be landfilled instead of recycled until the market comes back up. Interestingly, most of this scrap paper was going to China, filling up containers that came over filled with TV’s, Ipods, and the other consumer goods that we have been eating up for decades. China was in a position to pay a premium for the waste paper, since their ships would otherwise return empty, making their shipping costs essentially free. Now that our shopping binge is pretty much over, fewer goods are being made, reducing the number of boxes to package them in, which means that they need less paper to recycle into those very boxes. According to the LA Times, almost 100,000 Chinese plants have closed this year, putting millions of people out of work, and, indirectly, killing the US market for recycled paper.

So what is the moral here? Should we start buying foreign made consumer goods again to put people back to work and keep our old newspapers out of the landfill? Sorry, folks, I don’t have the answer, but these consequences of a global economy raise more intriguing questions. One of the primary side effects of our current financial crisis is increasing unemployment in all sectors of the economy. President Elect Obama plans to address this with a depression-era style stimulus package, investing heavily in infrastructure to create jobs, get Americans back to work, put money in their pockets, and get the economy going again. While deficit spending is complicit in what got us where we are right now, unfortunately, we will need to expand the deficit to keep from falling into a deep depression. I agree with the general consensus that the recovery will be long, slow, and painful, but the alternative is much worse. Thankfully part of the stimulus package includes investing in improving our buildings, putting people to work to make them more efficient, reducing energy use, saving money, and, ultimately helping improve our air and water quality from reduced power plant emissions. What I like about these projects is that they keep money in our local economies. When we spend money on power and fuel, we send it to multinational businesses that mine, refine, and generate power all over the world. When people are working to improve existing and build new buildings that are energy efficient, that work is happening right were we live and work. Workers buy food, clothes, and tools, go to movies, eat out, pay rent or mortgages, and invest where they live. Of course, many of the materials are purchased from other regions, but this work is labor intensive, keeping much of the investment in the local and regional economy. Once the work is complete, the occupants of these efficient buildings pay less for their energy - forever. Every dollar not spent on energy consumption can be invested or spent locally, invigorating the economy. Or they can be spent on a new TV or Ipod, requiring a Chinese factory to reopen, making more boxes from waste paper, restoring our recycled paper market, keeping last Sunday’s New York Times out of the landfill. Think about it.