CMI: Efficient Vehicles part 1

Article 8 in a series that looks Princeton's Carbon Mitigation Initiative, which has proposed 15 carbon reduction strategies, in 4 broad categories, each of which could be scaled up to provide 1/7th the CO2 reduction necessary to stabilize the atmosphere.

Category 1: Efficiency and Conservation

Efficient Vehicles

One full wedge could be achieved if by 2054 we increase the fuel economy for 2 billion cars (four times the number currently on the road) from 30 to 60 mpg, with the fuel type and average miles driven (10,000/year) unchanged.

CMI: Efficient Buildings

Article 7 in a series that looks at Princeton's Carbon Mitigation Initiative, which has outlined 15 carbon reduction strategies, in 4 broad categories, each of which could be scaled up to provide 1/7th the CO2 reduction necessary to stabilize the atmosphere.

Carbon Mitigation Initiative:
Category 1: Efficiency and Conservation


Efficient Buildings:
Programs promoting or mandating efficient buildings in the U.S. are still in their infancy. Two voluntary programs deserve special mention.

ENERGY STAR
A section of Energy Star is devoted to promoting efficiency in new and retrofitted homes. Their program focuses on reducing the energy needed for heating and cooling:

Insulation
Sealed Ducts and Leaks
Efficient Windows
Efficient HVAC, Lighting and Appliances

About 200,000 new Energy Star qualified homes were built last year, about 12% of the total, and another 12,000 were overhauled to improve efficiency, bringing the total to 725,000 and 26,000 respectively. Energy Star homes are between 15 and 20% more efficient than those built to "code." Energy Star is currently partnering with about 3,500 builders.

LEED
The organization that has been getting the most media attention is LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Created by the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED is system that rates buildings for sustainability. According to their web site:

"Based on well-founded scientific standards, LEED emphasizes state of the art strategies for sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality. LEED promotes expertise in green building through a comprehensive system offering project certification, professional accreditation, training and practical resources."

While I have had difficulty finding numbers that give an estimate of the impact of LEED, their roster lists something in the neighborhood of 6000 registered projects, representing many million square feet. Given that the certification process only began in the late 1990s, and that in 2002 there were only 12 registered projects, growth in this area has been remarkable. More significantly, thousands of architects and building professionals have become LEED "certified," holding out the promise that these key professionals will make sustainable building the norm.

Certainly, LEED is associated with cutting-edge design, which will hopefully increase its influence, especially with young professionals. One risk, however, which is evident throughout the Green products arena, is that instead of becoming the norm for new buildings, LEED will become more influential as a prestige label. In New York City, certainly, it is best known for a hand-full of ultra-luxury, high-profile "starchitect" projects rather than for more mundane commercial and residential building.

While these voluntary programs have shown impressive growth, again mandatory standards are clearly needed to make sure our building stock is as efficient as possible.

Judging from a paper published on their web site, the National Association of Home Builders is as opposed to mandatory standards as the electricity or auto industries. They draw the following conclusions about emissions tied to residential housing:

• More than half of the energy consumption and CO2 emissions attributable to the residential sector is the result of energy “lost” in the generation and transmission of electricity.

• New homes (those built in the last ten years) account for about 12 percent of residential energy consumption.

• Per square foot, new homes consume less than two-thirds the energy of older homes for the core HVAC uses controllable by builders.

• Behavior of the occupants has a larger impact on non-HVAC energy consumption than those items under the control of the builder.

• More stringent energy conservation requirements for new homes can have a reverse effect of retarding filtering and keeping people in older, less energy-efficient homes.

In other words: the new houses we build are not the problem, old houses are; it's the owners not us; it's the electric companies not us; if you mandate efficient building, people will decide not to move or renovate.

Given the difficulty of educating and motivating 3oo million people, Green Factoids would argue that the least effective and efficient way to control home energy use is by focusing on individual decisions. Is it even helpful for the average person to become knowledgeable about duct-work and high-efficiency windows? It seems clear that if we are going to achieve anything close to one wedge of reductions from efficient buildings, builders should be pressured and ultimately required to maximize efficiency in those areas directly under their control, whether or not homeowners know enough to ask for these measures or not.

CMI: U.S. Programs for Appliance Efficiency Part 1

Article 4 in a series that looks Princeton's Carbon Mitigation Initiative, which has proposed 15 carbon reduction strategies, in 4 broad categories, each of which could be scaled up to provide 1/7th the CO2 reduction necessary to stabilize the atmosphere.


Category 1: Efficiency and Conservation
Efficient Buildings

In the U.S. two government programs emphasize appliance efficiency. One is appliance efficiency standards, overseen by the Department of Energy, and the other is Energy Star, overseen by the EPA in conjunction with the DOE.

Energy Star:

In the U.S. the most well-known program focused on energy efficient appliances is Energy Star. Products that are labeled Energy Star are more efficient than their non-Energy Star counterparts, using between 10 to 75% less energy. According to the EPA's own numbers, during 2006, use of ENERGY STAR products helped Americans prevent about 37 million metric tons of emissions and save about 170 billion kWh, or about 5% of the total 2006 power demand.

In the past 5 years, the total number of Energy Star products sold has doubled, to about 2 billion; the carbon savings associated with Energy Star products has also doubled since 2000, and grew by 10% over the last year. There are now 50 product categories eligible for the Energy Star label, up from only 35 in 2002. About 200,000 new Energy Star qualified homes were built last year, and another 26,000 were completely overhauled to improve efficiency.

Next Post: Appliance Standards

CMI: Building and Appliance Efficiency

Continuing our segment on the Carbon Mitigation Initiative, Green Factoids will consider in more detail the areas which might be capable of providing a whole or partial wedge. In several papers, lead scientists Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow outline 15 options, each of which could produce one wedge if fully deployed. Seven wedges are needed in order to stabilize the atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Each wedge represents the reduction of 25 billion tons CO2 over the next 50 years, or 1 billion tons per year by 2054.

Category one: ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND CONSERVATION


Energy Efficient Buildings:

Roughly one wedge could be achieved if we install the most efficient lighting, appliances, space heating and cooling, and water heating, and improve insulation in every new and existing building by 2054. Doing so would reduce CO2 emissions by buildings by about one quarter.

One half of these savings are in buildings in developing countries.

They estimate that approximately one quarter of a wedge could be achieved just by switching all incandescent bulbs to CFL's.

Next Post: U.S. Government Efficiency Programs

Agreement for Efficiency Standards

The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy announced last month that transformer equipment manufacturer ABB has agreed to increase the efficiency of its transformers, which are installed on countless electric poles throughout the country. The Council estimates that improving the transformers' efficiency could save 26 billion kilowatt-hours annually, which according to their numbers is enough electricity to power 2.3 million U.S. households in 2005. The savings will reduce annual emissions from electric power plants by 15 million metric tons, about equal to the average annual emissions of 2.7 million automobiles.

The agreement gives helpful insight into the importance of efficiency standards and the crucial role of corporations, manufacturers, government bodies, and environmental groups in promoting efficiency. A change in the manufacturing standards of one type equipment has the potential to reduce U.S electricity use by 2%.

Understand Your Electricity: Sleeping your work Computer

From the Alliance To Save Energy

New Report Highlights the Power of Powering Down

A new report on personal computer usage and power consumption released this month suggests US business could be saving billions of dollars simply by shutting down machines at night. The survey, commissioned jointly by the Alliance to Save Energy and power management software company, 1E, found that nearly half of all corporate computers (roughly 31 million PCs) are not regularly switched off at night. According to the study, this lack of inactivity is costing US businesses $1.72 billion annually and adding over 14 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere per year.

Comment: pulling out my handy calculator, and borrowing a few PC numbers from Mr. Electricity, we can estimate that an average workplace computer uses about 100 watts just sitting there. The Alliance estimates that as many as 31 million PCs are left on at night. Forgetting about weekends, let's assume each of these is on instead of off or asleep for 10 hours every day, four nights a week; each one would thus waste 1 kWh per day, or 208 kWh per year. For 31 million computers that adds up to more than 644 million kWh per year, or a year's electricity for 586,181 homes. (Using my 11,000 kWh/year average). Each computer that is left on for 60 hours over the weekend wastes another 312 kWh per year. If 15 million of these were left on over the weekend year round, they would waste more than 4.68 billion kWh, or enough electricity to power more than 4.25 million homes.

Let's hope that these companies are sensitive to the other green, cost: according to the EIA, the average commercial cost for electricity this year is 9.28 cents/kWh. Using my numbers, each computer left on overnight during the work week wastes about $19 a year and each one left on over the weekend wastes another $30 a year.