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Why Don’t Green Buildings Live Up to Hype on Energy Efficiency?

75 points by _Microft 5y ago

mjevans 5y ago
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.
docflabby 5y ago
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.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  A good heat exchanger with the outside air helps.
  - bregma 5y ago
    It sure helps legionella, influenza, and coronavirus to spread.
    - netjiro 5y ago
      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 5y ago
      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/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7127325/
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      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 5y ago
    Even a simple design gives 80% capture
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > 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/standards-62-1-62-2 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 5y ago
    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.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  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-of-co-and-co2-in-rooms 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.
sokoloff 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    OK, If we accept that, what is the point of adding an unnecessary que to the process?
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      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.
      - bluGill 5y ago
        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.
      - s1artibartfast 5y ago
        If a work flow has a 3 week wait to start year round, it isn't load balancing, it is an obstacle.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
KaiserPro 5y ago
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.
- dakna 5y ago
  > 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-reading https://www.prettygoodhouse.org/the-whole-shebang-in-one-rea...
- wdh505 5y ago
  https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-the-perfect-wall 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
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
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.
- rini17 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
AussieWog93 5y ago
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 5y ago
  That sounds like absolute torture to him.
dash2 5y ago
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 £10m. 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-abandons-ambitious-biomass-scheme 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-string-of-blunders-over-university-of-east-936812 https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/confidential-report-reveals-str...
- taylorius 5y ago
  I do believe this anecdote provides a comprehensive answer to the question posed in the article.
- ramesh31 5y ago
  How could an onsite wood powered generator possibly be more efficient than using grid energy even if it's coal powered? That sounds absurd.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - agurk 5y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration [1] https://www.bioenergy-news.com/news/university-of-east-anglia-quietly-abandons-10-5m-biomass-scheme/ https://www.bioenergy-news.com/news/university-of-east-angli...
avh02 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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).
MarkusWandel 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
etempleton 5y ago
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.
- freshpots 5y ago
  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 https://www.usgbc.org/leed/v4
  - etempleton 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
mangecoeur 5y ago
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 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2021.111253
steve_g 5y ago
Maybe that's a tautology. If something lives up to its hype, hype is renamed to "description".
draw_down 5y ago
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.
amanaplanacanal 5y ago
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?
danans 5y ago
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.
derbOac 5y ago
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.
specialist 5y ago
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/2019/5/31/18646906/climate-change-california-energy-efficiency 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/2018/11/16/18096352/climate-change-clean-energy-policies-guide https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/11/16/180963...
h2odragon 5y ago
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.
wolverine876 5y ago
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.
esalman 5y ago
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 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    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.
marsven_422 5y ago
Because they are government funded virtue-signaling projects.
wdh505 5y ago
Nobody has mentioned the building science corporation. https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/guides-and-manuals/gm-read-this-before-you-design-build-renovate/view 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-the-perfect-wall https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-t... Fun stuff
hikerclimber1 5y ago
Everything is subjective

75 points by _Microft 5y ago

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.

docflabby 5y ago

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.

Robotbeat 5y ago
A good heat exchanger with the outside air helps.
- bregma 5y ago
  It sure helps legionella, influenza, and coronavirus to spread.
  - netjiro 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    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/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7127325/
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    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 5y ago
  Even a simple design gives 80% capture
throw0101a 5y ago
> 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/standards-62-1-62-2 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 5y ago
  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.
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
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-of-co-and-co2-in-rooms 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.

sokoloff 5y ago

> 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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  OK, If we accept that, what is the point of adding an unnecessary que to the process?
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    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.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      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.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      If a work flow has a 3 week wait to start year round, it isn't load balancing, it is an obstacle.

deleted 5y ago

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KaiserPro 5y ago

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.

dakna 5y ago
> 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-reading https://www.prettygoodhouse.org/the-whole-shebang-in-one-rea...
wdh505 5y ago
https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-the-perfect-wall 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

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

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.

rini17 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.

AussieWog93 5y ago

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 5y ago
That sounds like absolute torture to him.

dash2 5y ago

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 £10m. 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-abandons-ambitious-biomass-scheme 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-string-of-blunders-over-university-of-east-936812 https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/confidential-report-reveals-str...

taylorius 5y ago
I do believe this anecdote provides a comprehensive answer to the question posed in the article.
ramesh31 5y ago
How could an onsite wood powered generator possibly be more efficient than using grid energy even if it's coal powered? That sounds absurd.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- agurk 5y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration [1] https://www.bioenergy-news.com/news/university-of-east-anglia-quietly-abandons-10-5m-biomass-scheme/ https://www.bioenergy-news.com/news/university-of-east-angli...

avh02 5y ago

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 5y ago
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).

MarkusWandel 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.

etempleton 5y ago

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.

freshpots 5y ago
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 https://www.usgbc.org/leed/v4
- etempleton 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.

mangecoeur 5y ago

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 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2021.111253

steve_g 5y ago

Maybe that's a tautology. If something lives up to its hype, hype is renamed to "description".

draw_down 5y ago

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.

amanaplanacanal 5y ago

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?

danans 5y ago

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.

derbOac 5y ago

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.

specialist 5y ago

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/2019/5/31/18646906/climate-change-california-energy-efficiency 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/2018/11/16/18096352/climate-change-clean-energy-policies-guide https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/11/16/180963...

h2odragon 5y ago

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.

wolverine876 5y ago

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.

esalman 5y ago

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 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  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.

marsven_422 5y ago

Because they are government funded virtue-signaling projects.

wdh505 5y ago

Nobody has mentioned the building science corporation. https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/guides-and-manuals/gm-read-this-before-you-design-build-renovate/view 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-the-perfect-wall https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-t... Fun stuff

hikerclimber1 5y ago

Everything is subjective