Obama Plans Zero Energy Buildings Nationwide By 2030

Obama's energy plan includes zero energy building codes nationwide for all new buildings starting by 2030, when buildings must then produce all their own energy.

California has already legislated this starting by 2020.

Architects already meet energy efficiency standards like title 24 in California: zero energy buildings are an easy next step for them.

Laws like Title 24 work to save money in the long run. Even if it costs a little more initially, it pays off in energy savings later.

Currently, LEED certified buildings generate a 6.6 percent improved return on investment. Zero energy buildings will do even better, because their energy costs are not just reduced. In the end they will have no energy costs at all.

Solar panels can be incorporated into the roof design in lieu of traditional roofing. Ground heat pumps can warm and cool buildings. Building from scratch already entails digging deep enough to build the earthquake-proof foundations that California building codes demand. Next time, we can pop a geothermal heat pump in there as well.

Zero energy laws won't meet resistance from the architectural design community, as we see with the auto industry. Architects and designers can brush up on new design innovation. They don't have to retool factories. Just mindsets.

So mandating zero energy building is an easier way to reduce carbon emissions, than car efficiency mandates like CAFE. Architecture is driven by individual designers who thrive on innovation, and seek out solutions to problems. And there is an industrial revolution happening in sustainable design and green building.

Design to prevent climate change is a technological and economic challenge, but it is not beyond us. Obama could even move the date up to 2020, like California.

Rolf Disch's solar village: Solarsiedlung

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So much sun, so many people, so much heat...

So, wouldn't you think that surely someone should have come up with a solar air conditioner by now?



Well, someone has.

GreenCore Air has come up with the solar-panel powered AC that can cool a 600 square foot room and is powered by a single 170 watt solar panel.

It already runs on DC power, so there's no need for users to put an AC inverter between the solar panel and the air conditioner, sparing any power loss while converting AC to DC.

The only AC power is to recharge the batteries at night when the sun goes down. But the more solar panels and/or batteries added to the system, the less AC power required for battery charging.

The solar panels charge the batteries and the air conditioner runs off the power stored in the batteries. Depending on outdoor temperature, thermostat setting, global position and season, the system will run for four to eight hours before automatically switching to allow the batteries to charge from standard AC grid power. When the sun is not out the unit runs on the battery bank which is integrated within the unit.

The power required to charge the batteries is far less than the power required to run a conventional air conditioner. A full charge is complete in about three hours, and it keeps working during the charging process.

Prices start at $5,700, depending upon the model. The mobile unit comes standard with a solar panel top lid of the box, but you can add more. The US Navy has picked up some for their more offgrid locations in faraway places.

GreenCore Air says you could run this off a wind turbine too, but I expect that if you have enough wind, you probably don't have the problem that this invention solves.

Photo by Flikr user yezi9713

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Self Powered Jungle Eco City In Costa Rica

Cool and spacious cave-like condo dwellings are dug out of the hillside overlooking the ocean to create a city in the jungle, reflecting an optimistic vision of the future that combines sustainable design and a healthy quality of life.

Each of the 16 Green House residences includes its own individually titled, free-hold lot ranging from 1,500 sq meters to over half acre, in a nation that does not require a passport for Americans to visit.

Alouatta is sited in gorgeous Costa Rica, which is itself a visionary leader with many world heritage sites and a high percentage of land that has been set aside in protected areas to nurture its enormous biodiversity.

Alouetta's ward-winning architects have engineered a city of unique freehold residences and bio-climate condo clusters within the jungle where residents and visitors can live, work and play, demonstrating that a community can be both beautiful and sustainable in the midst of large tracts of native vegetation that connect and create riparian protection areas.

Much of the power will be generated on-site. In addition, the dramatic design utilizes both natural light and innovative strategies to conserve power and thermal energy. They have applied for LEED certification for their innovative site development including water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental air quality. Integrated water conservation measures are integrated throughout.

Additionally, by concentrating eco tourists within this small-footprint settlement, Alouetta offers many benefits to the local community: providing financing and housing volunteers for local conservation efforts, promoting environmentalism and conservation, serving as economic justification for wildlife and habitat preservation, and supplying local peoples with viable land-friendly economic alternatives to logging and farming.

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New Ziggurat For A Million Citizens

3000 years after the first ziggurat, a futuristic carbon neutral city will create its own moist weather-system in the desert

Timelinks, a Dubai Engineering firm has created a sustainable design for the largest man-made residential structure on the planet.

With a foundation covering almost a square mile and towering almost a mile high, it dwarfs the tallest tower in the world the Burj Dubai.

But it is more than just the biggest building in the world. This is a design for an entire small city, able to support a million people sustainably. The Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians of ancient Mesopotamia would be astounded by this luxurious future ziggurat a mere 3000 years into their future. The sheer bravado of this gorgeous concept is just breathtaking.

Using solar and wind power, the mega structure will actually create its own moist internal weather using solar power. Steam generated from solar power and collected through photovoltaic cell panels on the pyramid’s exterior would be piped from the ground level to the uppermost heights of the pyramid’s interior and then released, instantly turning it into a soft drizzle which would fall on the lush garden communities inside the pyramid.

Such an eco system, full of vegetation, mild temperatures and regular rainfall, would make it a highly very desirable city for people living in dry desert conditions. Transport throughout the complex would be connected by an integrated 360 degree network horizontally and vertically. Private cars would be not needed at all for travel within the city.

Ridas Matonis, director of Timelinks, has created a futuristic vision of sustainable cities grounded in an ancient past. It would require 90 per cent less land than a traditional city. Timelinks has patented the design and technology incorporated into the project and has applied to the European Union for a grant for technical projects.

Timelinks will unveil the concept in Oct at the Cityscape Dubai. A number of eminent professors will be on hand to explain the technicalities of how the Ziggurat project works and how these communities can be integrated in master projects.

Via ecoworldly
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Sweden Exceeds Kyoto: Economy Booms

They cut carbon 9% and had 44% growth. You just don't want to know how they did it...

Between 1990 and 2006 Sweden cut its carbon emissions by 9%, largely exceeding the target set by the Kyoto Protocol,while enjoying economic growth of 44% in fixed prices.

Sweden achieved this by instituting a lot of sensible ideas such as having district heating in every city (like we have in New York City) where hot water is piped to buildings within a neighborhood.

Previously, these had been coal-fired but now the water is heated using waste from forestry. Sweden switched to direct electric heating in the 80's and in recent years increasingly utilizes heat pumps which take two-thirds less electricity to heat.

But their most bizarre secret?
Pig parts.
And sewage.
And confiscated liquor. Well, biogas.

Biogas can be made any combination of a number of a stomach-churning assortment of garbage ingredients, and in Sweden, it is.

Blood, innards and other unusable slaughterhouse waste, human sewage, animal waste, and even confiscated liquor goes into a tasty brew heated to 70 degrees celsius for anaerobic bacteria to feast on for a month. Although certifiably cradle to cradle sustainable and plain old waste-not-want-not frugal, this solution is revolting.
Amazingly though, the final product is squeaky clean. It is virtually odorless, creates a nutrient-rich residue that can be used as soil or construction materials, and slashes vehicle carbon emissions an astounding 95%.

SvenskBiogas produces, distributes and sells biogas for transportation in eastern Sweden. Each year the company takes 50,000 tons of this mess and turns it into virtually carbon neutral biogas. “Before, this just went to a landfill and would lay there and rot and create methane seepage,” says Svenk's marketing boss, Peter Undén.“So it’s a good thing to use this energy in a positive way.” In the fifth largest city Linköping, every bus and garbage truck, some of the taxis and the train pictured above all run on biogas. The city of Gotenborg has a network of pipelines pumping its purified biogas to specialized filling stations, where it is pressurized for delivery to vehicles.

We too could be generating huge amounts of fuel from sewage by producing biogas, and in California we have cows operating power stations on the side. It can be easily produced by fermenting any of these ingredients and we have them all. Any of the new vehicles being developed to run on natural gas, as for the T. boone Pickens plan, can run on biogas as well. And thats good news, because we will have peak natural gas some day, sorry T. Boone...

But peak poop, I don't think so.

From the UK Guardian
the International Herald Tribune
and meta efficient

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Fleet Owners Want Their Fords Electrified

The Canadian company Envia converts Fords into plug-ins or completely electric models that have more torque than the gas version Ford provides.

While a Ford converted to an electric truck can get the same speeds as the gasoline original; the range is shorter. Depending on which battery is chosen; you'd get a 50 to 125 mile range between recharging.

These electric Fords are FastCharge capable in under 3 hours using 220 volt, and of course can be recharged each night like a cell phone in household 120 volt plugs.

But range is not much of an issue in commercial use where a truck typically can recharge at the work site, as well as at night.

Fuel cost is a big issue, though. For the average commercial truck driver the difference between the high cost of gas and the low cost of electricity can make for enormous savings that more than justify the cost of the conversions.

The conversion expense has a pay back time of about 4 years for a truck in typical commercial use. Not a bad investment.

I spoke with Jay Giraud, the owner of Envia yesterday. He told me that most of his work has come from fleet owners who contact him to have their current fleet converted to EVs or PHEVs, but he also converts even brand new Fords.

Giraud's company shares a large building with fellow EV enthusiast David Gilroy's business bmcmotorworks where finishing touches are being made to a new Rapid Electric Vehicles showroom targeted for opening in October.

Envia also partners with local Ford dealer Metro Ford to provide charging stations and for parts and service on the Fords he has converted to electric. They will continue to honor the Ford warranty on Envia's conversions. Giraud is currently working on creating a solar partnership to provide the power for the charging stations.

Fleet owners are finding a solution to the high cost of running gasoline vehicles.

Its bad news for Ford when their best customers need to get their great commercial trucks redesigned to meet their needs, but the customer is always right.

As Wired puts it, it's been a really Ford Tough year for Ford.

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