The Architecture 2030 Challenge and US EIA Projections
Buildings use a lot of energy. We spend the majority of our time inside them, controlling the temperature, using computers, charging cell phones, keeping our food cold, getting our food hot, taking hot showers...all those things we do in our daily lives that we rarely give a second thought to. Most of what we do in buildings uses energy. Lots of energy.
Ed Mazria is a long-time architect with a deep interest in energy. He wrote a book on passive solar design and has been a leading voice for saving energy in the way we design and construct buildings. A few years ago, he founded Architecture 2030 to help solve some of the environmental problems associated with energy use by making buildings more energy efficient. One of their main goals is to have all new buildings and major retrofits of existing buildings be carbon neutral by 2030, hence the name.
I don't write much about climate change or green house gases or anthropogenic carbon, not because I don't believe that climate change isn't real or that global warming isn't happening. No, I think it's pretty obvious that the planet is changing. I also believe that humans are a significant contributor to that change.
It doesn't matter, though, what you think about climate change because there are plenty of good reasons to reduce our energy use.
- The peaking of global oil production
- Pollution from burning fossil fuels
- Habitat destruction
- Mountaintop removal for coal
- Fracking for natural gas
- Oil spills
- National security
- Economic security
This week, Architecture 2030 published an article showing energy consumption projections from the US Energy Information Administration and how those projections have gone down significantly over the past six years. They show the reduction in building energy use that are part of those projections and compare to the Architecture 2030 target, which is still significantly lower than the projections.
The EIA projections, which come from their Annual Energy Outlook papers, are interesting, but it's good to keep in mind that these are just projections. Also, a lot of the people I talk to don't put much stock in EIA projections becasue they've seemed wildly inflated and based on an assumption that the future's going to be an extension of the past. The folks who put those projections out seem to be cornucopians in their energy ideology.
Anyway, Architecture 2030 is a great group working towards a saner energy future. You should check them out.
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