October 10th, 2009 · Comments Off on “CASH is green”
Each of the Solar Decathlon’s20 teams developed their own philosophy, developed within their own regional requirements and styles, and developed a sustainable home from that. Some teams aimed for the upscale market, creating visions for the Hampton beach goer or the empty nesters sipping wine in Napa Valley. While those on the high might find their home appealing, the Puerto Rican team focused their efforts toward developing something
Putting CASH Together
not just with appeal, but also affordability.
The Caribbean Affordable Solar House (CASH), with the slogan “CASH is green”, combines innovative approaches, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and attractive (livable) design with affordability.
Team California brought to the Mall a home where life will follow the sun. The Refract House, a three room (or, dependent on weather, four counting the patio) home is laid out so that life moves through the house with the sun. One wakes in the east, as the sun enters into the bedroom, life flows into the kitchen/central area, with the afternoon sun supporting enjoyment of the living room. Each living space has direct access into the patio, providing a core space for enjoying those beautiful Napa Valley days in sustainable style.
Team California strove for that high-end customer.
Our mission with the Refract House is to demonstrate that green living does not require a compromise in lifestyle
And, they’ve succeeded. Wander the house and the beauty of the design shines forth.
Amid praise for the roll-out for the Kerry-Boxer climate legislation, Senator Merkley laid out a cogent and clear message that laid out the situation in a stark manner.
There are things that are easier to wrap your hands around then ecosystems.
It is a pretty choice.
It is a choice between clean air and dirty air.
It is a choice between $1 billion a day in invested in US clean energy or sending $1 billion a day overseas to Venezuela or Saudi Arabia or …
It is the difference between developign U.S. technology and products or buying technology from overseas.
It is a powerful case for pushing forward with all due speed.
I just helped kick-off the Department of Energy’s 2009 Solar Decathlon. This is a unique student competition on the National Mall that showcases the latest energy efficiency and solar power technologies. It is a great chance to see students pushing the boundaries of what’s possible today …
As a sign of the times, the Obama White House links into Facebook, with Chu’s post linking to Chu’s facebook page (announcement of it on WH blog) where he posted some 19 Decathlon photos. Now, seeing that Chu’s post appeared on the White House web page, here is a question that I might have asked the Secretary if I had (or if I have) the chance:
Mr. Secretary: A huge number of people will visit this event. Even more will see it in news reporting. But, most Americans will have no idea that this exists. The Solar Decathlon is a wonderful tool to explain to people the economic, life-style, and American leadership benefits from seizing the opportunities for better building design incorporating sustainability, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.
Mr Secretary, why not propose to the President that the winning house be put on the White House lawn, near the organic garden, for a week so that all Americans will have a chance to learn about The Solar Decathlon, the tremendous achievements of these university students, and the opportunities that these 20 homes exemplify?
He said other companies should quit the group because the Chamber does not fully recognize the business possibilities in taking aggressive action on climate.
“I would encourage the Chamber of Commerce to realize the economic opportunity that the United States can lead in a new industrial revolution,”
Evidently, if we understand Donahue’s words correctly, Steven Chu is also having his strings pulled by some unseen conducter of environmental organizations. Perhaps Tom Donahue should take the time, with others from the US Chamber of Commerce, to visit The Solar Decathlon, to see the quite real opportunities that these houses create, and help figure out how to get the 100s of involved students working for Chamber members helping carve out profitable business opportunities for US businesses helping lead the transition to a profitable and climate-friendly future.
The University of Minnesota’s Solar Decathlon team‘s handout to visitors to the DOE Solar Decathlon, which opens Thursday on the Mall in Washington, DC, (which I had a chance to visit earlier today) is subtitled “A New Tradition”. Their ICON Solar House hopefully is just that, a representation and sign of “a new tradition” that will help create a prosperous climate-friendly future for America and Americans.
Creigh Deeds’ new ad begins “Does Bob McDonnell really stand with us?” With his misogynist and regressive views, as detailed in his Liberty University thesis or McDonnell’s half-baked and truthiness-laden concepts to raid educational funds to pour concrete in an insufficient answers to Virginia’s transportation challenges to, well, many of McDonnell’s views and “proposals”, it is hard to imagine that Bob McDonnell’s core values are those of the majority of the Commonwealth’s citizens.
In this ad, however, Creigh Deeds seems to speak to McDonnell’s core reality-challenged base, using talking points that seemingly come from the Republican Party of Virginia rather than the Democratic candidate for Governor.
We need a Governor who understands us. Creigh Deeds says no to any new energy taxes from Washington. And Deeds has a detailed jobs plan for families around here.
Imagine the environmentally conscious socialite and their new cottage at the Hamptons. That is the feel that Virginia Tech’s Lumenhaus gives in their, quite simply, luminous website and presentation of their entry into the DOE Solar Decathlon, which opens Thursday on the Mall in Washington, DC, and which I had a chance to visit earlier today.
As the name suggests, Lumenhaus is a dwelling playing with light and living off it with extensive windows and both solar photovotaiic (electric) and thermal (hot water) systems.
The Lumenhaus’ system also has two-sided solar panels which seem to be a ‘new’ feature appearing in a number of the homes this year. These Sanyo panels, VT claims, have a 15% performance improvement over single side producing systems.
Control systems that ‘run the house’ automatically, including moving around louvers as the solar angle shifts. (While the owner could override this, the automation is aimed to maximize performance — whether heat gain / retention in winter or minimization / cooling in summer.) This means that the system is constantly monitoring system performance, weather and interior conditions, and weather forecasts to achieve the optimal performance not just for that moment but also for the hours and days to come.
“LUMENHAUS uses technology optimally to make the owner’s life simpler, more energy efficient and less expensive.”
These louvers are quite impressive, with laser cut ‘circles’, all bent to maximize light gain and minimize unwanted heat gain (thus, each of the 1000s of cuts is specific to that location on the louver). Seeing them on the mall, with multiple color reflections looking toward the Washington Monument was stunning (let’s hope the photos come out). The Lumenhaus Eclipsis system actually is more than ‘simply’ these rather beautiful metal shutter shades, but also includes translucent insulating panels filled with aerogel.
All of this monitoring and automation means that the Lumenhaus, left to its own devices, will have a quite different look dependent on time of day, weather conditions, or time of year. As they ask, “does your home dress for the seasons?”
Wandering the Solar Decathlon is like being caught in a big candy store for the ‘eco-geek’ within, but it is also eye candy for the aesthetics’ oriented (even though, of course, the integration of technology into our lives has a beauty of its own). Already mentioned, is the changing nature of the home during the season, the beauty of the shutter shades yet there is much more. Watching the video, walking into Lumenhaus (even while under construction) creates an “I want that” moment, seeing it as an eminently livable space … effective not just in energy terms.
Truth be told, essentially every one of the Solar Decathlon homes creates moments and feelings of “I want this” or “what a wonderful approach” or … That is one of the reasons it is such an Energy COOL event.
No, we’re not speaking about Cold Fusion, but Penn State’s entry into the DOE Solar Decathlon, which opens Friday on the Mall in Washington, DC. Let’s take a look at some of Natural Fusion’s features from its website, which is dynamic, enabling rapid connection of concepts and approaches with the home’s physical layout.
Simply put, it is hard to exaggerate the reasons for enthusiasm about the Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon. This is a truly Energy COOL ten day period in DC, with literally 100s (1000s?) of truly impressive people from universities around the world having a chance to show off their innovative approaches to solving real problems while competing for honors in a truly serious competition.
Somewhat hidden to most Americans (on purpose), the Bush Administration’s Executive Order 13423 was perhaps the best energy-related action taken by George W Bush. It set meaningful energy efficiency targets and created paths for more effective energy management across the federal government. Today, President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order that builds on 13423 and builds on the funding from the stimulus package to accelerate the Federal government toward more aggressive sustainability goals across energy efficiency, reduced oil consumption, water conservation, waste reduction, and the use of Federal purchasing power to increase the speed of market adoption of environmentally-responsible products and technologies.
“As the largest consumer of energy in the U.S. economy, the Federal government can and should lead by example when it comes to creating innovative ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase energy efficiency, conserve water, reduce waste, and use environmentally-responsible products and technologies,” said President Obama. “This Executive Order builds on the momentum of the Recovery Act to help create a clean energy economy and demonstrates the Federal government’s commitment, over and above what is already being done, to reducing emissions and saving money.”
The Executive Order, Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance, will require agencies to set, no later than 90 days from now, sustainability targets for 2020. It will require serious efforts to measure, manage, and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Here are some of the explicit targets laid out within the Executive Order:
30% reduction in vehicle fleet petroleum use by 2020;
26% improvement in water efficiency by 2020;
50% recycling and waste diversion by 2015;
95% of all applicable contracts will meet sustainability requirements;
Implementation of the 2030 net-zero-energy building requirement;
Development of guidance for sustainable Federal building locations in alignment with the Livability Principles put forward by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EO provides some specific steps within each of these target arenas, such “reducing potable water consumption intensity by2 percent annually through fiscal year 2020, or26 percent by the end of fiscal year 2020, relative to a baseline of the agency’s water consumption in fiscal year 2007, byimplementing water management strategiesincluding water-efficient and low-flow fixturesand efficient cooling towers.”
The Federal government occupies nearly 500,000 buildings, operates more than 600,000 vehicles, employs more than 1.8 million civilians, and purchases more than $500 billion per year in goods and services. These buildings, these ‘vehicles’, these civilians, these purchases are being put on a path to be leaders in fostering a path toward a prosperous, climate-friendly future.
This Executive Order should help bring sustainability goals to the table for all agency strategic planning and investment/purchase decisions. The EO tasks agencies to develop “an integrated Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan” providing prioritization the actions toward achieving the EO’s goals, with a particular emphasis on “lifecycle return on investments”.
Now, as to that last, there is a real question as to how that “life cycle return” will be analyzed. Will, for example, evaluations of productivity improvement, reduced employee absentee rates, and lower health care bills due to green buildings be counted in that “life-cycle return”, or will the analysis be stove-piped solely within energy efficiency? The government, of course, should be interested in larger impacts, such as reducing urban heat island impacts through (ever so) “cool roofs”, but will that larger societal benefit be “countable” within payback return analysis? Now, the EO provides guidance that captures at least some of this as here is the EO’s second paragraph:
It is further the policy of the United States that to achieve these goals and support their respective missions, agencies shall prioritize actions based on a full accounting of both economic and social benefits and costs and shall drive continuous improvement by annually evaluating performance,extending or expanding projects that have net benefits, and reassessing or discontinuing under-performing projects.
To be honest, seeing that requirement for “continuous improvement” with continuing performance evaluation, providing the window for reinforcing successful programs and discontinuing “under-performing projects” is the sort of good governance approach that all thoughtful citizens should applaud.
Truth be told, there are already many great examples across the U.S. government of cost-effective sustainability projects from energy efficiency to clean energy to land management practices reducing office impacts. This new order should reinforce those successes, making sustainability the basic standard for Federal practice and, we can hope, blazing a path for change throughout our society.
follow the sun. The 
handout to visitors to the 
That is the feel that Virginia Tech’s 
enabling rapid connection of concepts and approaches with the home’s physical layout.