On a recent episode of Radio Ecoshock, Canadian scientist Bill Rees emphasized the need to reduce our emissions, not just reduce the growth rate of emissions. He mentioned that we are already past the carrying capacity of the planet, and that we cannot continue to grow without further depleting our "ecological capital". The show is available as a free download at the above site.
During his talk, Dr Rees provided some very interesting statistics about housing and the construction of so-called "green" houses. In 1950, the average house size was 900-1000 square feet. In 2004 it was 2300 square feet, and has probably risen since then. That's a massive increase. The additional construction has required much more material and energy and has produced much greater carbon emissions. Also, larger houses are further away from each other, so you have more transportation, longer roads, and more farmland paved over. Modern houses also have much larger appliances, and more of them. Air-conditioning wasn't common in 1950, for example.
However, it gets even worse. The average number of people living in a house in 1950 was 3.7, today it is only 2.6. So, we have houses as much as 2.5 or more times larger, but with a third less people living in them. On a per capita basis, the amount of floor space per person has more than tripled since 1950. Yet, for decades, we've been hearing about how housing is being built more efficiently, and how "green" features are being incorporated.
Today we do have houses specifically designed to be green. Some of these manage to improve efficiency by as much as 25 percent. However, a 25 percent improvement over an average house today, is still using more than twice as much energy as a house from 1950! You've had doubling and tripling of sizes, then just a 25 percent reduction in energy use from today's inflated house. That is not green!
We already have green houses available to us, without having to build big new special buildings with fancy technology. Most of the houses built from 1950 or before are much lower impact. With improved insulation, efficient appliances and other simple changes, their environmental impact can be lowered even further.
For the many large houses that already exist, many of these can be subdivided into 2 or more separate residences, or converted into apartments. This is a great way to increase density, which makes it cheaper and more efficient to deliver residential services such as roads, water, power, etc. This can also save a lot of resources by not building new houses. With a glut of housing already on the market and the ability to repurpose existing houses, there is no reason we should be building more houses in the vast majority of areas.
Sometimes new technology can provide useful energy savings and can be help to protect the environment. This should be used where appropriate. But in many cases, the simple approach of downsizing and using low tech solutions is far more effective. Both should be used together, but we shouldn't be building bigger and more wastefully, and using new technology and methods just to hedge this waste a bit.
Posts
4 comments:
I agree with you 100%! We need to design more efficient homes, not just with respect to energy consumption, but with respect to use of space - smaller, more efficient houses.
I agree with some of this. You're argument makes it sound like the best energy efficiency gains that can be made is 25%, when in fact many homes are being built which generate more power than they use. I agree that we should retrofit current homes before continuing to add to the housing stock, but at some point we will need to build new, and we should probably start getting smarter now.
It's easy to criticize the green movement since there is a lot of "green washing" going on. But if we stop looking forward, and try to move back to our parents homes, we will be in some trouble.
Anon, agreed that it is possible to make more efficient houses, but we're talking custom jobs by rich people, this is pretty rare. We have to look at the average.
The point I was making (or the point Dr. Rees was making) is that we can't keep *growing* and building, we need to reduce. Yes, occasionally we'll need to build new buildings and they should be designed to be as efficient and long-lasting as possible. But on the whole, we have enough housing (and in fact, an excess in some areas.) If we make our cities denser with more apartments, and convert large houses into multi-family dwellings, that will reduce the need even more.
In yesterday's article I talk about how we need to reclaim some of the paved over land anyway in order to feed ourselves in the future.
More efficient houses are a must. The government should apply harder regulation to change to green method building.
Post a Comment