What's the Straight Dope on "Zero Energy" Technologies?

My dad has been on a “Save The Planet ™” kick, though I suspect less for altruistic responsible environmental stewardship reasons and more that he could rake in loads of grant money.

I’d like to get on the gravy train as much as he does, but I’d also like to know if there’s real, genuine research into affordable, low environmental impact housing and not just Some Guy wanting to cash in on a fad. (So far, a look on the internet is giving me tons of hits from architecture companies, and I have a feeling even the honest ones have a vested interest in selling their products.)

Related to this is: how do you calculate the true environmental impact of a product?

I don’t know the answer to the main question, but I do know this one: you calculate it in the way that makes you look the best.

This comes up especially starkly with car manufacturers who argue that hybrids cars like the Prius or whatever are worse for the environment overall because of something vague about the manufacturing costs of batteries. This always relies on some equation like “Okay, well, one gram of mercury in ground water is equal to 100 tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.” You can’t ground those equations objectively. You could just as easily say a gram of mercury is 1,000 tons of CO2.

You end up just doing whatever calculation sounds the best for you.

One simple measure is how much energy the product requires, over its entire lifespan (or rather, the ratio of energy to lifespan). Make sure you consider all of the costs across the entire lifespan, there, including manufacturing costs and installation costs. For instance, solar panels require a great deal of energy to make, such that it takes years for the panel to pay back its manufacture cost, and many won’t even last long enough. On the other hand, if you’re powering a remote facility, and your other alternative is to drive a truck out there every two weeks to refill the gas tank for a generator, then the solar panels might be the better investment, after all.

There are certainly some energy-saving improvements that are worth the investment, though. You can replace your incandescent bulbs with more energy-efficient ones, for instance, or improve the insulation in your house, or when it comes time to buy a new car, buy a smaller one, or walk or bike places as much as possible instead of driving at all.

Affordable, low-impact energy-efficient housing? Go passive-solar, superinsulate, add thermal mass, and control ventilation. There has been a lot of research on this, much of it an embarrassing number of years ago. The National Research Council of Canada did a lot of work in the seventies, for example.

Look at the operating budget of the buildings you are considering, both in terms of energy used, and dollars based on your chosen energy sources. You can run the numbers for different combinations of construction materials, weather conditions, and input energy costs.

You will a good book on building science: thermal insulation, heat capacity and heat transfer; ventilation, vapour flows, and condensation; the cycles of insolation. “Building Science for a Cold Climate” by Handegord and Hutcheon is a great place to start. The ASHRAE Handbook is another standard reference for the HVAC end of things.

And there’s been a lot of work done in Australia on “permaculture”: agriculture that adapts to the local climate and can be continued indefinitely, reusing nutrients and minimizing the need for external inputs. The reference work here is Mollison’s “Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual”, but for something as intensely local as gardening, you need to turn to local resources: heritage seed associations, local gardening clubs, people who know the plants and microclimates and weather patterns of your area.

An excellent resource for this sort of thing is your state university system’s agricultural extension service. Most states have them, and they’re generally happy to help out with home-gardening questions as well as big ag.

It’s not embarassing. It’s expensive. Not many people can casually afford that kind of stuff, and it greatly limits the kind of buildings you can have sometimes.

Not everything is expensive. When Obama suggested everyone keep their tires properly inflated to save gas the right had a field day, but he was absolutely right. There are little inexpensive and easy things we can do to help, but as anti-science as the US is, it really isnt politically viable.

Otherwise, I agree. Many of the suggestions by environmentalists are not practical either economically or in terms of real energy. Usually those two values coincide heavily.

On the other hand, there are a lot of green technologies that can’t be easily retrofitted to an already-built structure, but which are cheap and easy to implement in new construction, if you know to do it. For instance, give most of your windows a southern exposure, and then make the wall opposite those windows in those rooms out of heavy stone or concrete.

There are everything from simple technical changes to complicated hi tech solutions and fancy materials.

The bottom line is the bottom line. I can build a greener house than the next guy but if mine is twenty per cent more expensive than his for the same area and finish quality what does that do to my market?

There are huge problems in cold climates now with well sealed wood frame homes and classic fiberglass insulation poly vapour barrier construction. Structural Insulated Panels have been around for years and are superior in insulation, structural strength and rigidity and are basically immune to draft moisture issues. However the only time anyone builds with them is when they are building for themselves, because the market will not support the extra expense. There are a hundred other examples like this.

Furnaces and water heaters in the high nineties efficiency range are common now. Heat Recovery Ventilation Systems that capture the heat from exhaust air will soon become standard in Canada. There are lots of products and technology that will be adopted because they are either standard across the board due to building code, or simply because they are economical.

There are some pretty impressive technologies, but most of it is subtle. I do not see some miracle product that everyone is going to make a killing off of.

Or build into the side of a south facing hill. The ground will insulate your house, keeping it at the annual average temperature (55 deg F, where I live), and your south facing windows will allow sunlight to heat the few remaining degrees for comfort. Close reflective curtains in summer, and the ground covering the back side of the house will (assuming good overall design) eliminate the need for A/C.

Good luck getting financing. We looked into this kind of thing - for some reason banks wouldn’t touch it.

Regards,
Shodan

Earth sheltered houses can have some serious Radon issues as well. One of the “Extreme Makeover” houses was due to this.