In a win-wIn move for the US Army and the USA, a mutually beneficial financing arrangement was signed this week between the US Army and a new partnership (”Irwin Energy Security Partners LLC”) comprising Clark Energy Group and multinational solar power giant Acciona. By using Enhanced Use Leasing they can now not only finance the solar project for Fort Irwin, but double the size to 1,000 megawatts.
Using just the resources that are currently commercially deployable; 31 of our 51 states, or 60% of US states could get 100% of their electricity from renewable sources in-state, and another 14 percent could generate 75 percent of their electricity in-state, according to a paper published by New Rules Project that focuses on the potential for local production.
In some ways, very local; which actually makes this a conservative estimate. For example:
Solar. The New Rules Project study looked only rooftop solar potential, and not the obviously far larger utility-scale solar potential as the idea was to see what could be done with existing resources only in each state, and not adding transmission lines.
(Strangely; the authors inexplicably omit waste biomass or waste fueled electricity, like from landfill gas, cow power and sewage sludge as sources for producing electricity, that has tremendous potential. There is no peak poop, after all. )
But it still has a wealth of detailed data (2007), well presented in these graphs showing the relative resource for each state for
Pg 2 Wind
Pg 3 Off-shore Wind
Pg 4 Micro Hydro
Pg 5 Combined Heat & Power
Pg 6 Geothermal
Pg 7 EGS
Pg 8 Negawatts
Pg 9 Transmission Potential (my notes)
Pg 10 Relative Costs
Even tiny Island nations like New Zealand could supply behemoths like Boeing all the algae they need to get us to Europe. That's because, with the exponential doubling growth rate of microbes, algae does not need a lot of space to manufacture enough algae to power our planes.
If we keep siphoning it off, of course. Which, no doubt we will.
Taking that impact one very giant step further, here is a very surreal work by Ensamble Studio (engineered by Inorganic Matter Company) that is frankly designed to not merely stun — but to actually alarm.
Almost every angle, material and juxtaposition in this home is designed to make you frighteningly uncomfortable. Unstable. Uneasy. The sense is enhanced by balancing these huge heavy unstable structures.
Yet there is something exhilarating about this feeling of alarm, especially for a swimmer, swimming out into some existential nowhere in this lap pool to eternity:
The surreal pool extending out into the distant horizon would give you pause. The uneasy feeling would be topped off by this enormous Stone-Henge like lump of unworked concrete on top of the concrete beam that welcomes you as you make your return lap back “home”.
Perhaps it is an appropriate feeling to engender in those wealthy enough to afford to build what really amounts to a small freeway to live under, as the second gilded age comes crashing down around all of us globally.
This gratuitous chunk of concrete is just waiting to crash down on you as you swim in your lap pool towards eternity…
Perhaps this Spanish architect has tapped into a kind of existential terror of our times - that a freeway overpass is being subconsciously considered as a place to call home.
Even those still rich enough to build that freeway now –are somehow tapping into the ultimate terror, the zeitgeist of these economic times: Homelessness.
Project: House Hemeroscopium
Location: Las Rozas, Madrid
Here’s another house designed to supply all of its own needs in the harsh Australian outback in an uncertain climate future: Kangaroo Valley House.
This home away from home is designed by the prolific Australian architect Alexander Michael to manage and thrive completely on its own.
(Michael is a bit of a survival fetishist: he makes his pied a terre in the city in a reconstituted nuclear missile silo.)
But this is his cheery holiday home for friends in the outback. Completely open to the elements, it is designed to scoop up all the possible air to cool itself. The solar power on the site supplies the basics; there is no air conditioning.
The entire roof acts as a rainwater catchment device, designed to funnel every last drop directly down into the giant cisterns in the back. Not only that, the rainwater-harvester roof is engineered to cool the house below with shade, because it is not attached to the house itself: an airway passes right through between the two roofs.
The top roof also makes possible this heavy slab of concrete with no support at the edge. The concrete slab in front is suspended from the roof. The top roof is supported on posts right in the reflection pool.
Inside, no walls obstruct the airflow. Virtually every wall can open to allow the passage of air. And if that exposes the plumbing? Who cares.
As Michael says: “The thing I love most about design, whether it’s a mechanic’s tool or a multi-story building, is to see how it’s put together and what makes it work. When these features of machinery are denied by covering up, or burying out of sight for no other reason than decorative, then I think is a terrible waste. I guess it’s the same reason I love to stare at the skeletons of great whales, or fish, or humans; it’s all architectural machinery, its function is to support, and it’s beautiful.
In this climate, it is a pleasure to walk outdoors to the sleeping quarters. This simple house supplies its own water, power and air conditioning in a harsh climate. Maybe we can be self sufficient. Our houses can be designed to supply these needs and protect us from climate change. Other Australian architects have gone here before: the house designed to survive wildfire is an example. This is a new development in architecture: design for climate-change survival.
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