[HN Gopher] Why Don't Green Buildings Live Up to Hype on Energy ...
___________________________________________________________________
Why Don't Green Buildings Live Up to Hype on Energy Efficiency?
Author : _Microft
Score : 71 points
Date : 2021-08-08 07:54 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (e360.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (e360.yale.edu)
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I'm not sure why the researcher's measures of efficiency should
| be taken as more credible than their subjects'. Don't we have two
| measures that disagree?
|
| Tangentially: Why don't buildings replace interior lighting with
| sunlight collectors and mirror systems (or fiber optics?)
| directing the free, renewable exterior light to where it's
| needed? Too expensive to implement? Yes, you'd need electrically
| powered lights to supplement it, but you would eliminate energy
| consumption for lighting when there is sunlight.
|
| Tip: Just don't turn on the lights during the day. It's a bit
| dimmer, but far more peaceful and relaxing, and the sunlight
| through the window is enough (especially when looking at an
| illuminated computer screen) - depending on the room, of course.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| A large part of my old man's last job consisted of rating the
| energy efficiency of commercial buildings according to the
| Australian NABERS system.
|
| A large part of a building's NABERS rating had nothing to do with
| how much energy the building consumed at all, but whether or not
| it implemented certain "green" technologies.
|
| As someone who had worked in the insulation industry for 25+
| years prior to this, it used to shit him to no end.
| Decker87 wrote:
| That sounds like absolute torture to him.
| esalman wrote:
| Things like this are basically sticking plasters for hiding real
| social and cultural issues.
|
| Example: I always get 2 or more times uses out of every polythene
| shopping bag that I get my hands on. At least once for carrying
| groceries, once for carrying trash, and maybe once or twice more
| for storage.
|
| If everyone did that, the demand and production of polythene bags
| would go down by at least half. This is something almost every
| household in a 3rd world country do. But almost nobody does that
| in a first world country- instead they waste resources on green
| buildings and such.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > But almost nobody does that in a first world country
|
| Bags cost a few cents each. I spend $100 per month on natural
| gas to heat a poorly insulated apartment during the winter.
| esalman wrote:
| That's also a feature of first world countries. There's a
| reason low-middle income countries are concentrated around
| the equator and high income countries are in the high
| latitudes.
| derbOac wrote:
| Interesting piece, but most of this can be generalized in two
| ways: beyond buildings to the ecological and energy efficiency of
| other things, and to other buildings beyond energy efficiency.
|
| This model-reality gap in discussing energy and resource
| efficiency has long been an issue with all sorts of things, from
| toilets to materials to washing machines and so forth. There's
| some prototypical lab schema that's used to evaluate efficiency
| (in energy or other resources) that fails to take into account
| real-world conditions, and once it's put in those real-world
| conditions the efficiency breaks down.
|
| We live in what might be considered a green home in some ways,
| and try to be sustainable, but I do think there's lots of limits
| to the scenarios that are used to develop them. I suppose in a
| general sense this can be extended even further as one example of
| model-reality discrepancy with all sorts of things we use.
|
| The other thing this article maybe misses is that even in
| buildings that aren't trying to be green, or are, but with
| reference to non-green elements. I've gone into new buildings of
| different types, and when there's elements of the building that
| are relatively specific to that building (i.e., the design of the
| building is unique), there's all sorts of problems that arise due
| to discrepancies between what the designers had in mind and
| reality. One building I'm familiar with had certain design
| elements for aesthetic and practical reasons, but ended up
| creating huge sound problems; another one was done for aesthetic
| and other reasons but had a problem that was obvious in
| hindsight, but led to critical facilities being unused because
| people shunned it until it was rectified.
|
| This isn't necessarily a criticism of the article but I think
| it's important to keep in mind a lot of these arguments aren't
| unique to "green" goals or buildings per se.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| Sometimes these "green" buildings ignore human nature. One that I
| work in came with modern low-flow residential sink taps in the
| coffee areas - that take 1-2 minutes to fill up a kettle - and
| low-flow shower heads in a locker room area kept cool enough that
| in winter you'd get the shivers even under a fully on, hot-as-it-
| goes shower.
|
| After a howl of protest, they went in and removed the flow
| restrictors. Now the shower heads spout a satisfying amount of
| water and the sink taps work the way they should and life is
| good. Probably makes very little difference in the overall
| "greenness" of the building but these are just examples that I
| know of.
| corty wrote:
| Low-flow anything is especially stupid anywhere north of the
| alps. Wastewater systems need a minimum flow, determined back
| in the first half of the last century. If modern appliances,
| toilets and faucets do not provide that minimum flow,
| wastewater systems need regular flushings, usually from a fire
| hydrant. Overall water consumption stays the same, cost rises
| (because someone needs to do the unclogging and flushing) and
| greens applaud the useless spread of freshwater conservation in
| regions where there is an excess of water all year round.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| The first example was down to sheer incompetence and failed
| integration. If your heating is on too much, then the building
| will try and dump the heat.
|
| Good green building design isn't entirely rocket science. The
| biggest cost in terms of energy is heating and cooling. Depending
| on your location the sun is either your enemy most of the time,
| or only for a few months.
|
| Either way, you need good thermal mass, low U walls, low U
| windows and air control This will get you 90% of the way to low
| energy, the last 10-20% is a lot harder to get.
| wdh505 wrote:
| https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-t...
|
| Green building design is normally ~90% conservation outlined in
| the link above and 10% green energy sourcing
| dakna wrote:
| > Good green building design isn't entirely rocket science.
|
| Agreed, I think the Pretty Good House concept sums it up quite
| well without going too deep into building science:
| https://www.prettygoodhouse.org/the-whole-shebang-in-one-rea...
| etempleton wrote:
| The problem is a buildings, "greenness" is typically measured
| based on how many green elements are implemented into the design.
|
| Triple pane glass? Check. Green materials? Check. High efficiency
| heat pump? Check. Etc. Etc.
|
| If you check as many boxes as possible your building is labeled
| green and everyone applauds.
|
| The real way to measure this would be energy used to construct
| the building, factoring in supply chain and then ongoing energy
| usage per square foot. You would also need to factor in what the
| building was being used for and perhaps, depending on the
| building, the output and production of said building.
|
| All of this is to say, it is complicated. I suspect many modern
| buildings are space inefficient leading to less production per
| square foot. Therefore even if it is a green building that is
| well designed there is a certain level of inefficiency in that it
| is a larger than needed building that has to be lit, heated,
| cooled, etc.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I get the feeling that society in the large is all about vague
| implementations and vague evaluations models that are vaguely
| good enough to not be cancelled.
|
| Society is extremely inefficient
| marcinzm wrote:
| A slight improvement is better than no improvement due to
| perpetual planning deadlock.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Inefficient when compared to what alternative though? To
| actually get anything perfect would require an infinite
| amount of time, so any requirements are a balancing act.
| agumonkey wrote:
| fair enough, in the context of energy savings you'd have a
| point, but I was mentioning this as a general problem even
| for non pressing issues
|
| it seems to me that we could still provide more with less
| (resources and time), without going in analysis paralysis
| Meandering wrote:
| Yes, yes, and yes. The problem is "virtue signaling" and the
| ideological capture of politics. People know what they want
| at the end of the day. "I don't want to destroy the earth" or
| "I don't want to poison the well" are common enough goals for
| most environmental people. The problem is a society where
| worker specialization has ostrated people from function
| knowledge and the time to understand the full scope of any
| given issue. We are now dependent on public sentiment towards
| possible solutions which is normally pushed via politics. We
| are pushing extremes to break through into action which
| diminishes the effectiveness of any resulting system. We
| gather around buzz words or a sentence from some academic
| article to justify the righteousness and effectiveness of one
| piece of a complex system. Since people can't be honest in a
| political environment, we cannot identify the cons or
| initiate substantial dissent within an approach. We are
| unified by the common denominator of our intelligence and
| access to information in order to roar through legislation.
| We are left with an ineffective system at an unreasonable
| cost resulting in a poor ROI.
|
| *steps off soapbox
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > The problem is "virtue signaling" and the ideological
| capture of politics.
|
| An example: Instead of talking about green buildings, you
| 'captured' the conversation into politics, repeating well-
| worn cliches that don't inform us - everyone has heard them
| before, as you know - but do signal something.
| Meandering wrote:
| The issue is that buzz words and politics are an integral
| part in the system. The types of technologies and methods
| that receive government and NGO support will prevail. Tax
| credits are use to incentivize the adoption of certain
| technologies while building codes favor certain
| techniques. The point is that attempting to create green
| buildings is inherently political and the inefficiencies
| of politics is preventing the execution of science.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > attempting to create green buildings is inherently
| political
|
| There is nothing 'inherent' about your individual
| actions. Instead of being interested and curious and
| talking about science, you dismissed other people's
| perspectives with political stereotypes.
| Aerroon wrote:
| People want justifications for their choices. Being able to
| point at reasons why x is better than y makes us feel
| better about the choices we make. That's why you buy the
| gizmo that can do 6 things rather than 2 - it's easier to
| justify in your mind.
|
| We analyze the benefits and costs of our choices, but only
| on some specific metrics. We remain (sometimes
| intentionally) blind towards what we might not know. And if
| others justify things the same way, then we feel more
| secure in our choices.
|
| If everyone says that x is _green_ and _green_ is _better_
| then we believe it. We don 't question whether it's
| _actually_ better. Eg promises of recycling vs actual
| recycling.
| rualca wrote:
| > I get the feeling that society in the large is all about
| vague implementations and vague evaluations models that are
| vaguely good enough to not be cancelled.
|
| Well, western society didn't adopted central planning, in a
| good part as central planning's failure to meet society's
| needs.
|
| Anyway, I don't think it's fair to criticize these efforts by
| depicting them as some sort of failure or the result of
| incompetence or shortsightedness. We have to have some
| humility when discussing these topics specially if they are
| from a field where we have no insight at all. In this case,
| we should keep inind that valuing energy efficiency and
| externalities is something that's extremely novel where
| society as a whole is just starting to take it's first steps.
| It's quite literally a highly transformative change that
| involves changes in all steps of an entire industry,
| including in building regulation and even urban planning.
| Change is happening as we speak, but what you are looking at,
| and criticizing, is society's first step in a much needed
| direction.
| agumonkey wrote:
| it's true, it's easy to criticize from a chair, but I've
| noticed way too much failures (wind turbines failures if
| not scam at times, who also set back a lot of other
| projects due to the bad press; extremely bad public sector
| policies causing bad work environment + bad work quality +
| multi-year long delay)
|
| I think it's fair to at least voice it out, I'm just trying
| to dig out what are the real reasons and potential new
| ideas.
| mogadsheu wrote:
| This!
|
| The process you're describing is called lifecycle analysis and
| it's complicated.
|
| The greenest building is something like a giant tent, high on
| total resource efficiency but lower on comfort.
|
| There are tradeoffs to consider and a lot of them are lifestyle
| choices, like wearing a sweater indoors.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I used to live in a 19th century building that was
| simultaneously LEED certified and a registered historic
| landmark. These two statuses were very much in conflict with
| each other, because the latter status often prohibits necessary
| changes to the building in pursuit of the former.
|
| In the case of the building where I lived, they were required
| to retain the original windows for historicity: rickety,
| drafty, single-pane affairs that leaked prodigious quantities
| of heat. These windows were very large and the ceilings high,
| so in winter you essentially needed to run the heater non-stop.
| To offset that, they unnecessarily and often quite uselessly
| over-engineered other parts of the building construction for
| green-ness, which I presume helped with whatever scoring system
| made the building "green". None of which changed the fact that
| the building fundamentally leaked energy like a sieve.
|
| It was always a mystery to me how they managed to LEED certify
| one of the most poorly insulated buildings in which I've ever
| lived. Nothing else you do to a building should be able to
| offset that fact.
| freshpots wrote:
| You seem to be operating old information and/or bad assumptions
| about the typical standard (LEED). It very much covers the
| criticisms you claim it does not include. It isn't simply a
| bunch of check boxes for no reason.
|
| https://www.usgbc.org/leed/v4
| lukeschlather wrote:
| I went to a talk that specifically said LEED is a terrible
| standard and contrasted it with other standards that actually
| work.
|
| The LEEDv4 marketing materials don't have the tone I would
| expect if LEED has actually evolved into something more
| useful than a greenwashing marketing program. Maybe they've
| improved it but I would need to have some third party say
| "earlier versions of LEED didn't actually mean any of the
| things you would expect, and LEEDv4 has corrected that in a
| meaningful way."
| etempleton wrote:
| Interesting! Yes, I am not familiar with LEED v4, but am
| reading through it now. My experience is based on older
| models of LEED. V4 does appear to address some of my
| criticisms or at least move in the right direction.
|
| And to clarify, I don't believe the "check boxes" are
| completely meaningless, rather the issue is that it provides
| room for gaming of the system to achieve a rating. This of
| course will probably always occur to some extent.
|
| Thank you for edifying me.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| I think you still have a point however.
|
| What is objectively true vs. what is subjectively
| understood and expected from "Green" as an ideology, are
| generation two completely different things.
|
| Expectations are unreasonable in the latter. So that causes
| the judgement of "success" to be unreasonable.
|
| Most people do not have an objective understand or
| perspective of what being Green under LEED would mean.
|
| Most people think and act as though you can throw up a few
| solar panels and then run an iron blast furnace with the
| Green energy. The numbers simply don't work. Most people do
| not understand how much energy is required to provide their
| current lifestyle!
|
| The level innumeracy and its universality of that
| innumeracy is that Epic Fail.
|
| It's the worst in places that are the most religiously
| strident places like California. In general, you'd need
| land for solar panels equivalent to your entire
| neighborhood to merely duplicate and provide your current
| energy use just from your own home. And that doesn't even
| cover EVs being charged!
|
| So how much did that house cost you? And now you need 10x
| that much land just to be Green? And what about the energy
| inputs to build and keep the Grid going so you can use
| cheap land for that? It's a lot more than anyone typically
| is aware of! Try 20x-500x depending on specifics of things
| like thermodynamic efficiency and resulting impact on
| supply chains!
|
| And a 10x-20x puts you into fossil fuel, nuclear power
| territory being optimal.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >It's the worst in places that are the most religiously
| strident places like California. In general, you'd need
| land for solar panels equivalent to your entire
| neighborhood to merely duplicate and provide your current
| energy use just from your own home. And that doesn't even
| cover EVs being charged!
|
| Math please. A 100 square foot solar panel would generate
| around 150 kWh per month given around 5 hours of sunlight
| a day. The average household uses under 1000 kWh per
| month. So you'd need around 700 sqft of solar panels to
| cover that which fits on the roof of a single story house
| easily.
|
| edit: And plenty of people sell electricity back to the
| grid on average while having rooftop solar panels.
| danans wrote:
| > In general, you'd need land for solar panels equivalent
| to your entire neighborhood to merely duplicate and
| provide your current energy use just from your own home.
|
| That's false because it is based on the assumption that
| you should convert the input BTUs of your natural gas
| heater directly to hypothetical kWH consumed if
| substituted with electricity, which is silly because if
| you are trying to generate 100% of your energy
| consumption locally (a goal of questionable value
| itself), you would change your mechanical systems to
| electrical ones that are 3-5x more efficient at
| delivering space heating than natural gas furnaces.
|
| The most efficient nat gas furnaces are 96% efficient,
| but heat pumps routinely achieve 300-400% efficiency.
| That works out to far lower energy input for space
| heating.
|
| A far more sensible approach to local electricity
| generation is to move to more efficient building and
| mechanical systems and only generate enough electricity
| via solar+storage to power critical loads during a grid
| outage.
|
| > And that doesn't even cover EVs being charged!
|
| Given, the average American commute distance, EVs will
| always be a grid coupled technology due to their huge
| energy requirements. This is a good thing because they
| will needed to provide buffers for grid and home
| resiliency to less predictable power supply and demand
| patterns.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Most people think and act as though you can throw up a
| few solar panels and then run an iron blast furnace with
| the Green energy.
|
| Which people?
|
| > It's the worst in places that are the most religiously
| strident places like California.
|
| Like the prior quote, this characterizes and denigrates a
| different set of people. It tells us nothing but your
| willingness to insult and ignore them. Let's stop
| dismissing people (probably not coincidentally, a certain
| political grouping being dismissed using the language
| common to another political grouping) and use genuine
| curiosity about the world - and other people - to further
| our knowledge. Maybe some people in CA know something
| important; maybe they should be treated with respect and
| listened to, being other genuine people.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| > Most people think and act as though you can throw up a
| few solar panels and then run an iron blast furnace with
| the Green energy.
|
| Electrowinning iron takes about 4kwh per kg. So maybe
| $200/ton worth of electricity.
| freshpots wrote:
| YW, older LEED standards have really left a bad taste in a
| lot of people's mouths so to speak. We have a building at
| work that is LEED and it has some issues so it is LEED's
| fault. That kind of thing spreads and then those average
| people start to believe 'eco-friendly' buildings are
| useless and don't help the environment. I hope LEED
| developers focus more on the human aspect and the
| implications of biases when 'checking boxes'.
| mjevans wrote:
| The test case building at the start of the article had just about
| as much go wrong with it as anyone should expect.
|
| Designers wanted to show off, sought the maximum possible savings
| under the most optimistic cases, and just couldn't stick to
| fundamentals, nor a good study of the conditions at the site.
|
| Something designed with smarts, instead of 'to be smart' in the
| know it all sense might have met expectations. Though just like
| machine learning can produce solutions that tear through the test
| cases it's given, there are probably factors like acoustic
| isolation that get overlooked by the quest for maximums outside
| of a wholistic set of goals.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The last "green" building I worked in, they sealed all the
| windows. Then it was so tight they kept the internal humidity so
| low that some of my co-workers lost their voices and got special
| dispensation to bring a humidifier into their cubicles. Everybody
| has been working from home since covid, so who knows what the
| current status is.
|
| I assume they were actually saving energy, but who knows?
| steve_g wrote:
| Maybe that's a tautology. If something lives up to its hype, hype
| is renamed to "description".
| specialist wrote:
| Better governance would surely help.
|
| "How California became far more energy-efficient than the rest of
| the country" [2019] https://www.vox.com/energy-and-
| environment/2019/5/31/1864690...
|
| TLDR: California Energy Commission's performance standards, which
| automatically improve over time at predictable rate, instead of
| administrivia of targets, specifics, picking winners & losers.
|
| More background:
|
| "Climate change policy can be overwhelming. Here's a guide to the
| policies that work." [2018] https://www.vox.com/energy-and-
| environment/2018/11/16/180963...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I can't believe this is actually a big issue if that's the best
| example they can come up with.
|
| Most of the problems could be traced to simplified models they
| claim, yet the two they actually mention in detail clearly did
| not. And they make no attempt to quantify the contribution (in
| terms of cost Vs energy waste) of the ones that do.
|
| It seems highly unlikely that they'll rival having your heat on
| too high and the windows open to vent the heat.
|
| In particular, a school in a valley in the UK having its lights
| on doesn't on really seem like a big deal as long as they're
| using LED lights. Attempting to harness natural light in this
| type of building sounds like a feel-good notion that can't
| possibly compete with decent led lighting run from a renewable
| grid.
| jaggederest wrote:
| > Attempting to harness natural light in this type of building
| sounds like a feel-good notion that can't possibly compete with
| decent led lighting run from a renewable grid.
|
| Most indoor lighting is below 1000 lux. Bright daylight without
| direct sun is 10000 lux. There's no comparison between proper
| daylighting and almost any reasonable amount of indoor
| lighting. This is why it's very difficult to see things even on
| a very high luminance screen like a Macbook Pro outdoors during
| daylight.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Are you suggesting that being unable to read a computer
| screen is some kind of desireable quality in a classroom
| setting?
|
| I didn't mean compete in terms of max lux output, though if
| they actually wanted to do that for whatever odd reason (film
| studio? indoor weed farming?), the basic tech probably could
| as well.
|
| I meant effective task lighting for multiple people and
| multiple tasks across seasons in a large building with
| multiple very similar large rooms that have windows in
| different places but usually along one wall only (in a
| valley, in a cloudy country relatively far from the equator).
| jaggederest wrote:
| No, I'm saying that there's no reasonable lighting system
| that can approximate even "cloudy country far from the
| equator" brightness that comes through windows. So if they
| set the windows up wrong, you can't patch over it with
| LEDs. Especially for children, whose visual cortexes are
| still developing, which requires bright light and high
| contrast.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| You still seem to be suggesting that a) a very large
| amount of light is required in a classroom setting and,
| b) it is beyond our current technology to achieve this
| level of light via LED lighting without sunlight provided
| by windows.
|
| Which on the face of it, seems totally absurd. Things
| such as Night School, and schools/offices near the poles
| for example, exist. Is there something more specific that
| you're actually saying?
| postoak wrote:
| I'm guessing they aren't saying the light is necessary
| for school/learning, but that it is unknown whether it is
| needed for human development. Most of the time mammals
| and humans evolved they probably spent a substantial
| amount of time outdoors and if kids spend the majority of
| the day without sufficient light it could effect their
| development. Of course there probably isn't sufficient
| research to know, but it seems pretty clear that sunlight
| exposure affects sleep and mood which are pretty
| important for the brain to function well.
| jaggederest wrote:
| https://parentingscience.com/kids-need-daylight/
|
| Especially children need significant time spent in bright
| daylight in order to develop normally. It's not beyond
| our technology, but nobody actually does it.
| Zababa wrote:
| > In particular, a school in a valley in the UK having its
| lights on doesn't on really seem like a big deal as long as
| they're using LED lights. Attempting to harness natural light
| in this type of building sounds like a feel-good notion that
| can't possibly compete with decent led lighting run from a
| renewable grid.
|
| Maybe that's just me, but natural light is way better for my
| mental health than artificial light. Being forced to depend on
| artificial light makes me feel like I'm in a basement, which I
| don't like at all.
| rini17 wrote:
| You dismiss is as mere feel-good notion, I say it's prevention
| of seasonal depression.
|
| I live in a house with huge southeastern window... and when
| there's occassional clear winter morning, the light and later
| the warmth, that's...glorious! No idea how could I replicate
| that with LEDs, would be probably pretty expensive.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Having gone down the indoor hydroponics/aeroponics rabbit
| hole, I find it likely that you could buy leds with the exact
| frequency or spread of light needed to counter the light
| perception issue - seasonal depression is probably a complex
| of deficiencies, though, so light alone probably wouldn't be
| sufficient. Some combination of atmosphere, temperature
| differential and duration, physical activity, and recurrence
| could all come into play. And vitamin d and possibly other
| nutrient deficits depending on seasonal food in your market.
|
| If it was as simple as light exposure, leds on glasses would
| be an easy cheap fix - wear light therapy glasses x minutes a
| day while you work or listen to podcasts, etc.
| namibj wrote:
| Interestingly, solar panels and LEDs are more efficient
| than plants directly in the sun, due to the spectrum
| inefficiency of the green light absorbing dye.
| bregma wrote:
| Photosynthesis uses energy in the red part of the visible
| spectrum. That's why they look green. They do not absorb
| the green light, they reflect it.
|
| Plants store their solar energy in a hydrogen-carbon bond
| for storage. To compare a plant with a solar panel and
| LED you need to also include the storage technology,
| which is usually batteries. Because plants do not as a
| rule glow brightly, a more apt comparison would involve,
| say, a locomotion system. Comparing the efficiency of,
| perhaps, a car that drives at night powered by a
| solar/battery system vs. a plant/combustion system. It
| would be an interesting experiement.
| namibj wrote:
| No, the comparison is between a glass roof and a solar
| roof with LEDs underneath.
|
| And yes, I know the dye doesn't absorb green. It's still
| a green dye; last I checked we name dyes by their
| reflected color.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I think your post and the reply of the previous poster is
| a perfect example of why comma's are important.
|
| You meant a "green, light-absorbing dye" (using hyphens
| to make the distinction clearer), the previous poster
| understood "a green-light absorbing dye".
| rini17 wrote:
| It is sometimes as simple as not having tinted windows :)
| oldsecondhand wrote:
| But then you can't read computer screens and annoy people
| with the sun blinding them.
| rini17 wrote:
| It's possible that in few years we'll switch to e-ink
| anyway. But we'll stuck with architecture based on
| minimising natural light "annoyance" for a very long
| time.
| marsven_422 wrote:
| Because they are government funded virtue-signaling projects.
| danans wrote:
| Since this article was published (2017) there has been a slow
| progression from checklist-type green building certifications
| like LEED to performance based approaches like Passive House
| which use measurable metrics - like air-changes-per-hour at 50
| pascals (ACH50) and modeled heating/cooling energy consumption
| per unit area of living space.
|
| These standards, however should be updated to consider occupant
| load and ongoing monitoring of energy consumption in these
| structures.
|
| Although approaches like these if done well are a huge
| improvement for a building's occupants (in comfort and
| efficiency), they are of still of limited global impact because
| they are optional.
|
| Going forward, to have any hope of impact on climate change the
| best of these approaches, from architectural and system design to
| construction, needs to be put into the building codes. Relying on
| the Prius (or nowadays Tesla) effect is not enough.
|
| That said, demand for increased savings/efficiency and comfort
| must be induced in the population via incentives and via the
| general discourse, and not just be part of an expensive optional
| green building certification pursued by enthusiasts.
| draw_down wrote:
| A lot of "green" stuff amounts to a jobs program. Saving the
| earth and energy efficiency and so forth is just the pretext, to
| a large extent.
| docflabby wrote:
| The problem is there are conflicting problems with energy
| efficiency.
|
| How much energy is used to build and maintain the building.
|
| Can the building function as a building people want to use - if
| just sits empty its a huge waste of energy. Removing all the
| windows would help but wouldn't be very appealing.
|
| And lastly ventilation is probably of of the most tricky, it's
| very easy to create an energy efficient sealed box, but how do
| you create a healthy environment - older buildings are drafty but
| it comes with health benefits and keeps the building dry by
| allowing moisture to escape. The answer is normally a complex
| HVAC system but that then uses power and requires maintenance.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I think this is overlooked far too often. Through various
| programs, my mom went crazy on the insulation and energy
| efficiency in her old ranch style house but didn't add an air
| exchanger. We realized we felt like crap there and measured the
| CO2 and it was hitting over 3000 ppm!
|
| https://www.kane.co.uk/knowledge-centre/what-are-safe-levels...
|
| I'm horrified to think of all the poor people in these programs
| that are probably feeling bad but have slightly better energy
| bills. Good health is the most important quality we have. There
| need to be energy conserving air exchangers put in with each
| tight house made. That's the best of both worlds.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _And lastly ventilation is probably of of the most tricky, it
| 's very easy to create an energy efficient sealed box, but how
| do you create a healthy environment_
|
| ASHRAE 62.1 and 62.2, "Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air
| Quality":
|
| * https://www.ashrae.org/technical-
| resources/bookstore/standar...
|
| > _The answer is normally a complex HVAC system but that then
| uses power and requires maintenance._
|
| > _older buildings are drafty but it comes with health benefits
| and keeps the building dry by allowing moisture to escape._
|
| Drafty buildings are bad. The air comes in through random
| cracks and crevices, which may have mold and which also allow
| bugs and rodents to enter. The rodents may leave droppings,
| which the flowing draft may then pick up particles from. There
| are no health benefits to that.
|
| > _The answer is normally a complex HVAC system but that then
| uses power and requires maintenance._
|
| The drafty house you laud above will also use power: in the
| winter air that was heated will leak out, and the cold air that
| comes in will have to be brought up to temperature; in the
| summer the cooled air will escape and the hot (and perhaps
| humid) air will then need to dealt with to make the building
| comfortable. And that doesn't include dealing things in the air
| like dust and pollen (plus the above mentioned critters).
|
| Or you can install some ducting to remove stale air from the
| house (esp. bathrooms and kitchens), and introduce fresh air
| (esp. to bedrooms) that is first filtered (MERV 13+) and then
| tempered via an ERV/HRV core so there's a minimum of re-
| conditioning needed. The main source of maintenance is the
| changing of the filter(s). And running an ERV/HRV will use less
| energy (W or BTU) than re-conditioning the leaky air.
|
| This is a solved problem: build tight, ventilate right.
|
| After air tightness throw on some insulation (while reducing
| thermal bridging) and you can have a house that uses minimal
| energy in dealing with environmentals. You just have to make
| the effort up-front when designing it (or when doing a
| renovation/retrofit).
| docflabby wrote:
| I don't disagree the problem is solved - I the problem in the
| UK is humidity is quite high most of the time and most houses
| don't have HVAC and there seems to be a complete lack of
| knowledge around ventilation - very little thought goes into
| it for domestic properties, so you send up with these sealed
| up houses under the guise of "energy efficiency" which makes
| people ill though mold growth due to lack of air flow. It's
| probably also contributed to the spread of covid 19.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I the problem in the UK is humidity is quite high most
| of the time and most houses don 't have HVAC and there
| seems to be a complete lack of knowledge around
| ventilation_
|
| Mandating (whole house) dehumidifiers in building codes may
| help with that if air tightness is also mandated.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I live in a Passive House[1] in the equally-humid Pacifc
| NW, without any kind of dehumidifier. I do have a Heat
| Recovery Ventilator (HRV) running 24/7, which pulls in
| fresh air from outside and exhausts indoor air, running
| them through a heat exchange as they pass each other to
| save some of the energy that went into the air while it was
| inside. As a plus it also runs the air through a MERV 13
| air filter, which gets rid of pollen and some PM2.5
| pollution.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house
| Robotbeat wrote:
| A good heat exchanger with the outside air helps.
| bregma wrote:
| It sure helps legionella, influenza, and coronavirus to
| spread.
| netjiro wrote:
| Plenty of options to fix that problem.
|
| E.g. a cheap addition to existing installations: aircode.se
|
| Limited but sane research from around 2013(?) points to
| even cheaper options of ventilation treatment.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Legionella generally comes from fresh water sources. If
| you're worried about it filter your water.
|
| Airborne contagions do not spread from bringing in outside
| air and tempering it via an HRV/ERV. The risks rise when
| you _do not_ bring in fresh air but rather recirculate
| indoor air, but these can be reduced by using MERV 13+
| filters:
|
| * https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7127325/
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Use a HEPA filter. But even without a HEPA filter, for most
| shared indoor spaces (restaurants), it'd better to exchange
| with the outside air than to recirculate unfiltered inside
| air.
| netjiro wrote:
| Even a simple design gives 80% capture
| h2odragon wrote:
| I'll offer a different take on a "green" building: open to and
| designed for the landscape it's in. All the old "mother Earth
| News" hippie things.
|
| Super sealed and well insulated walls are great! but bugs and
| things get in, can't get out, and you have biological processes
| (rot, mold) that go on from there. Walls with poor seals on the
| outside don't collect crap, what crawls in finds nothing to eat,
| and crawls out.
|
| The inside can be better sealed but should it be? Fresh air is
| worth a lot; and while your air quality won't be better than
| outdoors; it won't stay worse for very long either.
|
| Digging into a hillside for at least one wall of the house gives
| you opportunity to use a large volume of earth as a heat sink. I
| also gives you the opportunity to deal with moisture issues and
| drainage problems, everything has trade offs.
|
| This is usually applied to small buildings but much of it scales
| up. New York's use of radiators to provide heating and air
| circulation is underappreciated genius.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > promising to take three weeks off the planning permissions
| process for developers who commit to posting actual energy usage
| to an online database
|
| I'm all for posting actual results to an online (and public)
| database. I'm opposed to projects who don't do that having an
| arbitrary three week delay in planning permissions. (If you can
| safely cut three weeks from some projects at the developer's
| option, either you're cutting corners on those projects or
| needlessly delaying the others.)
| jakewins wrote:
| No, this is just queue theory.
|
| People boarding airplanes in the priority lane don't get to
| board faster because there is a redundant wait applied for
| everyone that can be removed for prio boarders. You just let
| prio borders bypass the queue.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| OK, If we accept that, what is the point of adding an
| unnecessary que to the process?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It's not an unnecessary queue... Do you even know how this
| system works? "Bureaucracy" isn't always (or even usually)
| a mere obstacle; it has important functions. Queues usually
| come from _not enough_ of it, not _too much_.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If a work flow has a 3 week wait to start year round, it
| isn't load balancing, it is an obstacle.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Unless it's an _average_ (or "up to") of three weeks, or
| if part of the work is bypassed by meeting certain
| standards to start with.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yes, I totally agree there are valid reasons to employ
| wait times. There are also nefarious and user hostile
| reasons. These come up more often when the interests of
| the users and providers are out of alignment.
| bluGill wrote:
| That depends sometimes the work of the bureaucrat is to
| verify things that shouldn't even be required. For
| example in some cities the color you paint your house is
| limited, thus eliminating your right to live in an ugly
| house.
| mangecoeur wrote:
| Its alluded to in the article, one of the biggest issues is the
| lack of incentives to actually check whether anything is working.
| Energy is cheap and construction works by ticking regulatory
| boxes, as long as there is no incentive or obligation to check no
| one does it. And of course people howl at the mere suggestion of
| increasing energy price so forget any 'market mechanisms'. We did
| a pretty in depth review of this problem
| https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2021.111253
| dash2 wrote:
| The University of East Anglia built a green building which won a
| large government grant. All electricity was to be provided by
| biomass, using a biomass plant which cost PS10m. Unfortunately
| the biomass converter didn't work. Instead, every week a truck
| would pull up and deliver natural gas to the generator....
|
| "...students and staff told the Guardian that the plant's wood
| storage area is now being used to store Christmas decorations."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/03/uea-aban...
|
| "Once the decision was taken, the estates team appear to have
| been driven by a need to meet a timescale to qualify for a DEFRA
| grant.
|
| The estates team seem to have struggled to find a proven
| technology at scale, but were introduced to Refgas, who convinced
| them that their design would work.
|
| With time pressing and due diligence on Refgas incomplete, the
| standard procurement and contracting processes were bypassed."
|
| https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/confidential-report-reveals-str...
| ramesh31 wrote:
| How could an onsite wood powered generator possibly be more
| efficient than using grid energy even if it's coal powered?
| That sounds absurd.
| agurk wrote:
| One explanation would be that this appears to be a combined
| heat and power installation [0][1]. These may not have higher
| thermal efficiency in generating electricity than grid
| sources, but as the waste heat from that cycle is used
| productively it reduces the overall energy demands. This is
| particularly the case in regions that don't have district
| heating, as I believe East Anglia does not.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration
|
| [1] https://www.bioenergy-news.com/news/university-of-east-
| angli...
| [deleted]
| taylorius wrote:
| I do believe this anecdote provides a comprehensive answer to
| the question posed in the article.
| wdh505 wrote:
| Nobody has mentioned the building science corporation.
| https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/guides-and-manuals...
|
| That is a link to only one of their articles. Generally pretty
| buildings with lots of glass are inefficient (glass has a r value
| of about 2). Buildings that look like windowless Boxes with no
| windows can have an r value up to infinity. The easiest way to
| make a "green building" that has glass walls is to compare it to
| extremely inefficient buildings in the prebuild analyses.
|
| The perfect wall (perfect order of exterior wall control layers)
| makes for highly energy efficient buildings.
| https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-t...
|
| Fun stuff
| avh02 wrote:
| I'm very happy to use green technologies when they're equivalent
| or better than the classic technology they replace.
|
| Low power bulbs were one example of this, some models taking
| minutes to reach full brightness, nowadays led bulbs do well, I
| gladly use them.
|
| Smart cooling in some office buildings do stupid crap like allow
| you only plus or minus two degrees of freedom on the placebo
| thermostat, or disable the air conditioning of the entire open
| space as soon as a small window is opened (of which the space had
| 20, so it was inevitable). Supposedly the system cooled the walls
| rather than circulated air... Summer sweat doesn't go away fast.
| But it's okay, the building's efficient and green on paper.
| XorNot wrote:
| Most people have underlit houses that they've gotten used to
| the use of warm white bulbs to light.
|
| Once color temp became a consideration with CFL, two bad things
| happened: (1) they used cool white, which doesn't feel cozy but
| will feel dim if it's dim, and (2) they tried to do "lumen for
| lumen" replacement (using those equivalency guides) which meant
| their already dim house now looked wrong.
|
| Whereas if you swap for CFL (or these days LED, which work way
| better) and just aim to halve your wattage...you still end up
| putting down about 3 times as much light which just plain looks
| nicer unless you're specifically aiming for mood lighting -
| which most people aren't, the options just sucked before hand
| (I have wall sconces for atmosphere setting lights, overhead is
| all neutral/daylight color).
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-08-08 23:02 UTC)