Energy Matters

A LEED AP's Journey

Today I received a copy of the "Existing Buildings version 2.0 Reference Guide" from the US Green Building Council (USGBC) which I will study in order to become (and blog about becoming) a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Accredited Professional (AP).

The book is 496 pages long and I have just finished reading the section on how to get 1 point towards your LEED accreditation through providing bike racks and changing/showering facilities (page 58).

I have a long journey ahead of me which will culminate in taking a $400, 80 question multiple-choice test. If I pass I will become a LEED AP like the 56,000 before me. If I fail I will probably curse a lot, study more and retest (if I have the money).

I chose to become an expert in LEED certification for existing buildings because it focuses on reducing operations and maintenance costs/materials rather than on green building planning (as is the case for new construction LEED certification). Since I am not an architect, building designer or engineer I am not qualified to help out with new building design (I do know that load baring walls should not be messed with). I think I should stick with helping owners of existing buildings go green through changing landscape, O&M stratagem and other  lifestyle changes.

The certification is broken into 6 main categories.
1. Sustainable sites (talking about green site and exterior management, building/area density, alternative transportation, stormwater management, heat island reduction etc)
2. Water Efficiency (landscaping, use reduction, etc)
3. Energy & Atmosphere (energy use reduction, ozone protection, etc)
4. Materials & Recourses (reducing, reusing and recycling building materials)
5. Indoor Environmental Quality (venting, heating, daylighting etc)
6. Innovation in Operation & Upgrades (If this project required anything new and really clever, it gets a point. It also gets a point if a LEED AP worked on it)

I have a lot to learn, but I am looking forward to it. I have already learned a few neat things, for example the "wavy" bike racks are inefficient since they are more often then not used improperly preventing higher utility. That and turbid water absorbs less sunlight than still water reducing the ability of aquatic plants to photosynthesize and thus die. 

Pretty neat huh?

Oh, I have run across a small issue in there example of how to calculate the minimum number of bike racks the site should have to get the credit. It says you should provide the greater of 125% of the bike rack demand or 1% of the Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) of building occupants. They provide the calculations for figuring out the FTE (which in the example is 285), but they say that would require 15 bike racks. Last I checked 285 x 0.01=2.85 not 15.... I have emailed the USGBC asking for clarification, I hope they get back to me soon. When I learn, I'll let you know.

The goal is to finish the book by August 27 (the start of school...I think) and reread various sections every few days to keep myself sharp.

That was my first step on this journey of 1000 miles (although the first step may have been ordering the book).

Change We Can Believe In?

I'm glad I didn't say that "I believe in Barack Obama" in my post from the other day or else now I would have egg on my face. It looks like Obama has bowed to political pressure and now supports continuing our addiction to oil and ignoring the solution to the much large problem drilling offshore.

He justified his support for this plan by saying that he didn't want "the best to be the enemy of good." Now that he supports offshore drilling as part of a bipartisan effort supposedly people from both sides of the aisle can all get together, sing kumbaya and pass meaningful, positive energy regulation.

Of course this is all done in the name of lower gas prices right now (by right now we mean 2030...you know...15 years after Peak Oil). So this supply side solution to high gas prices isn't going to work. But if we address demand we could change the price much faster. Rapidly increasing oil price is not caused by rapid decline in oil supply (in fact it's still growing albeit slowly), it's caused by rapid increase of demand. If we slow down the increase or (dare I dream) decrease the demand of oil prices will go down right away.

So if politicians really did want to cause gas prices to drop ASAP they would invest in public transit in dense areas, encourage cities to adopt congestion pricing, encourage people to bike more and encourage the utilization of solar thermal water heaters. The low hanging fruits are policies to enact in dense urban areas (where a of Americans live), but they will help those in rural areas too by lowering gas prices.

Then once we get our house in order, energy-wise, we can be a good example for other nations to follow and we can stop telling China to "do as I say, not as I do". Then good things might happen.

Eating is not a Luxury!

The New York Times just wrote an article about bust locavores who pay people to grow a garden for them. A locavore is someone who only eats locally produced food to reduce the fossil fuels required to bring the food from farm to plate.  Anyway, in the article they quote Corby Kummer (food columnist and book author) as saying “The highest form of luxury is now growing it yourself or paying other people to grow it for you... This has become fashion.”

How is the "highest form of luxury" growing your own food or buying food from someone else? Either of those are fundamental parts of society and survival, it is not a luxury. I know food prices are on the rise, but eating is not a luxury.

I understand that the article is focusing on local eating, but why should that be a luxury? Why is it considered more luxurious to eat a tomato grown less than 100 miles from your house compared to a tomato grown in China? Has our society become so fossil fuel dependent that it is cheaper to grow parts of our meals on other continents than in our own town? Local home gardens once provided 40% of our nations vegetables, what happened? Now eating locally is considered a luxury and a home garden is a rare thing.

When did local become exotic?

Not listening to the Conversation

With Congress having a few hearing on energy issues and energy news getting more coverage, more people seem to be not just listening to the conversation, but participating.

Today I met someone who wasn't doing either.

We were chatting and she asked me what I am studying or what field I plan on going into. I told her that I work and plan on working in the renewable energy industry...She then asked me what is renewable energy. I was shocked and her friend said it's "green" energy, conversational sort of broke off, and they left.

She was a Pennsylvanian (I am too....sorta) so maybe she is One with the F.O.R.C.E. and that's why she didn't know what renewable energy is.

I don't know what else to say, I was caught so off guard by the comment I still haven't fully recovered.

How can someone not have heard about solar power or wind power? It's in popular movies (I Am Legend, Wall-E, Back to the Future II), it's in popular video games (Marion Galaxy, Super Smash Brother's Brawl), it's talked about in nearly every newspaper, even Fox Business news had a special report on Boone Picken's Wind Farm.

Le sigh

SEX! GAS! SENSATIONALIST NEWS!

A 34 year-old woman is accused of prostituting herself in Kentucky for gas.... I saw this piece by way of my friend Chris by way of  thesmokinggun.com. There are so many jokes to be made, I'm having a hard time picking which one I want to make.

Now as gas prices have gone up people have changed their lives a bit. People are driving less, hypermiling more and I guess turning tricks more.

I always thought that higher gas prices would cause a downturn in the prostitution industry as many johns drive to the parts of towns where the prostitutes frequent. Maybe as gas prices go up, johns will start carpooling more...

I think the better theory would be that higher gas prices-> more desperate car owners-> more car owners becoming prostitutes.

Also, I just want to point out that the average price per gallon for unleaded gas in KY is about $4 even (I couldn't find the exact figure)
In California it's $4.573

Which state has more prostitutes? Now if correlation=causation, this would not bode well for Europe.

Although Amsterdam's average price per gallon is around $7....mmmmm

 

Green BAMFs of the Season

In this post I would like to honor some serious BAMFs.

First, major props to Judge  Thelma Wyatt of Georgia who blocked a 1200 MW coal-fired power plant outside of Columbus because it had no plans on limiting CO2 emissions.

Next, we should all recognize Mercedes for being a BAMF car maker. They are the first major car maker to say they are going to get rid of petroleum from it's line up, and they are doing it by 2015. Now that is awesome.

Plus there is Wall-E. The solar-power-earth-cleaning adorable robot. So what if he doesn't exist, he is still a BAMF.

And of course, Samuel L Jackson. Not because of anything Green he has done lately, but because it is not possible to have a list of BAMFs without him.

McCain <3 Nuclear Power

So I just read the McCain wants to build 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030 which would be a very impressive feat for a 70-something year old, especially as he will be in his early 90s by the time he plans on finishing the project. But I am guessing he probably wants other people to build them, which would make a lot more sense. What doesn't make sense is how someone could claim to be tough on terrorism but want to increase the amount of fissile material out there. 45 new nuclear power plants would produce a lot of waste (which we can't permanently store by the way) which could be used in making a nuclear bomb. The thing that stops terrorists from making nuclear devices isn't the technological complexity (a basic bomb can be made by throwing two pieces of uranium at each other) it's getting the nuclear material. So if we drastically increase the number of nuclear plants we have, we will increase the likelihood of terrorists getting nuclear material (and the likelihood of others getting cancer/radiation poisoning).

Oh, and don't forget that Nuclear power plants need lots of water, an increasingly scarce commodity.

Oh, and the fact that companies are reluctant to make a nuclear power plant without tons of gov't subsidies, which of course we all know is a big tenet of McCain's platform.

I wish I had the numbers on the cost per watt of solar and wind compared to the full cost (including semi-permanent storage) of nuclear power. Also, I wonder how many brownie points solar and wind get since they don't contribute to terrorist threats as nukes do.

Power outage in DC

There was a power outage in downtown DC today, it caused huge problems for the Metro, causing some to shut down, and it caused a lot of traffic delays because of traffic light outages.

If only traffic lights could be powered in a way that doesn't require them to be hooked to the grid. If only there was some sort of scalable power generation equipment you could put on top of a traffic light so it would have power in case of emergencies. If only it could be a environmentally friendly power generator as well, then you could make puns off of the idea "Green Means Go". 

Anyway, back to the power outage. It lasted for three and a half hours, a lot of businesses were closed during that time. Commutes were extended, food spoiled and life was disrupted. The full extent on the economic damage done by this outage is not know yet, but blackouts have resulted in the loss of up to $10 billion of economic activity*.

Electricity is like a lot of things, you don't realize how much you rely on it till it's not there when you need it.  Maybe this will inspire Pepco to modernize its grid and improve its infrastructure.

It's also going to be interesting to see  what happens to power in DC later on in the summer when electrical demand skyrockets.
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*This is the high-end figure for the cost of the Great August 2003 that hit the Northeast, Midwest and parts of Canada.

Farming on the other side of Hubbert's Peak

Before the mechanization of farming, tilling was done using animal power. But then the age of cheap oil hit and with it tractors started to dominate farming. However, the age of cheap oil is coming to an end (or has already ended, it's hard to tell when you are so close to the Hubbert's peak) and some things will start to revert to the way they were. However, things will be done a little smarter since we, as a society, are a little bit wiser and experienced. Some American farmers have given up their fossil fueled machines because of high gas prices and have gone back to using mule power, and with increasing fuel prices, expect to see more farmers taking similar steps. Also, as rising fuel costs drive up the costs of foods that have been trucked across the country, eating locally and home gardening will come back in style.

So maybe with the rise of fuel costs we will all learn to eat locally, eat lower on the food chain and grow some of what we eat to save money, energy and the Earth...

Of course there might be some massive famines* as farm productivity tanks in the process.

*not if you live in a well functioning democracy according to the Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen

Nuclear Threat in Georgia

A nuclear power plant in Georgia was forced to shut down today because of a cyber attack. I would just like to point out that this couldn't happen to distributed power generation, nor could it happen to a solar farm or a wind farm. Also, any accident on a solar farm or a wind farm would cause much less damage to surrounding areas than any other type of accident at a power plant.

Just another advantage of renewables.