ONE TOWN SQUARE: at the intersection of peak oil, climate change, and land use

The DOE has released a series of reports on the future of the US electric grid. The overall evaluation is that the government needs to make a significant intervention in the power market; it has completely failed to do so for the past eight years (and longer); and conservation needs to be part of anything we do.

Gail “the Actuary” Tverberg at The Oil Drum has a “letter to Obama” post pointing out that our buildings are the first place we should look to cut our energy consumption. The “why?” is obvious from this graph:

That’s right – running our buildings takes almost half of all the energy we use. And our buildings are terribly inefficient.

We know how to build really efficient buildings. It’s already being done in Britain.

And then there’s the Passive House architectural movement that originated in Germany.

The biggest new energy source available is saving energy in our buildings by retrofitting existing buildings and ensuring that all new buildings approach zero net energy use. Tverberg has a list of specific recommendations for getting there that deserve a look.

The DOE’s FINAL Report on Electricity Supply Adequacy says that energy availability, climate, and other problems could be lessened by  “demand-side resources” – that is, efficiency measures that reduce the generating and transmission needs – but “current energy efficiency and demand response / load management programs are barely scratching the surface of what is achievable.”

And that’s without reducing demand by increasing building efficiency, which was beyond the scope of the DOE’s studies.

Here’s a major way that the way we develop and use land has contributed to global warming.

click to view image

This graphic is from a post by Nate Hagens at The Oil Drum titled “A Long Term Solution to Our Financial Crisis: The Other Forms of Capital.”

Newsweek architecture critic Cathleen McGuigan says she hates “green” architecture. It’s all hype.

When it comes to green, people don’t want to hear that size matters. And driving 40 miles a day to work – how green is that?

People are attracted to sustainable houses partly as a cool novelty, when in fact green dwellings have been around for eons. Igloos, tepees, yurts -all took advantage of readily available local materials and were designed to suit their specific environments. Shelters around the world tend to be situated to benefit from the sun in the winter or to shield their inhabitants from chilling winds. But our sprawling American suburbs forgo all those basic principles.

We shouldn’t have to trumpet green architecture – it should be required of every architect and builder. Then we could all shut up about it. Sustainable features would become as exciting as the plumbing systems and as essential as a roof that keeps out the rain.

Brent Blackwelder and James Henry at The Nation propose a great idea: as long as we’re bailing out Fannie and Freddie, while we’re at it we should seize the opportunity to attack the energy crisis and the threat of catastrophic climate change by making the two gargantuan government-sponsored enterprises go green.

It’s really a no-brainer: stop subsidizing McMansions and sprawl, and require green building design.

The energy waste by homes and office buildings in the United States is enormous. Buildings account for more than 2/3 of electricity and wasted energy, and nearly 40% of our national carbon dioxide emissions.

And at the same time we could stop underwriting the building of homes in hazard areas such as floodplains and places susceptible to fire and in environmentally important areas such as wetlands.

Roger Scruton at City Journal has a fascinating article about antimodernist architect Léon Krier. The city is one of the most remarkable achievements of our species – but, in the name of progress, we have “either connived at the evisceration of our cities or actively promoted it.”

The alienating architecture of modernism did its part. But the problem is more systemic:

“The “zoning” idea—the idea that the city’s functions should be disaggregated, with industry assigned to one area, housing to another, shops and amenities to a third. As Jane Jacobs argued in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, this idea has been largely responsible for the steady flight from the urban center and the loss of the humane, lived-in street.”

We’ve lived to see the result of the way we have chosen to live within the landscape: an energy crisis – the design and layout of our buildings are both enabled by and reliant upon energy cheap and abundant energy – and a global climate crisis resulting from the consequent emissions. Solving our energy and climate crisis will require that we redesign the way we live.

Read the rest of this entry »

What happens when one rearranges home, office / workplace, store, school, café and entertainment locations so all are within a 10-minute walk.

“The need to drive is eliminated, thus thousands of people who move there stop consuming all the direct and indirect products and resources required for daily driving. For people who live in such a place (we call it a parallel village) the loss of the car is painless. Health improves as the body gets exercise, the lungs need not filter the pollutants, and the young, elderly and distracted do not get run over by fast moving steel boxes. The thousands of dollars each person spends on vehicles and fuel becomes free for other purposes (or one can live well earning less). Time becomes available. One has time and proximity to meet people on the plaza, to enjoy a cup of coffee and a read of the paper in the time one would have been stuck in traffic. All these benefits to the natural environment come by changing the physical environment.”

Claude Lewenz at WorldChanging argues that while designing for a low footprint on the natural environment is imperative, what’s essential is that people will love the place.

In order to secure a relatively high-density environment where everything is within a ten-minute walk, housing needs to be close with shared walls between buildings. But people don’t like density – do they?

“It turns out the problem is not proximity but an aversion to neighbour conflict. The closer two neighbours are, the more they get on each other’s nerves. It turns out that it has to do with the physics of noise through air. The quarter acre section gives enough distance that the decibels of the noisy neighbour drop enough to be comfortable. The alternative is to use design so neighbours do not make irritating noise that travels. For a start, place the outdoor activities somewhere else: on the plaza or in the greenbelt rather than next to the house. Do not have a back lawn that needs mowing with an 85 dBa mower. Do not have a back yard where people curse each other. Build the row houses wide rather than deep and make the common wall soundproof. The developer listened, considered and replied ‘Yup, that should do it… you’re right. I had never considered why.’”

Lewenz concludes that we have to be clear about our intent:

“Basically, what we are doing is designing with a different intent. Suburbs were invented to sell cars. What happens if your intent is to create a wonderful place to live? Intent shapes the environment. Environment shapes life.

Metro Vancouver – like Oregon – has a planning model of suburban communities linked by gas-guzzling highways.  But sky-high fuel and food prices will eventually make this model economically obsolete.

The Vancouver Sun has a story about Vancouver architect Richard Balfour, who argues for a different vision – one resembling Switzerland rather than Los Angeles.

“Balfour argues that Metro Vancouver should begin creating Swiss-style hill villages linked by rail rather than towns on flood plains and valleys connected by pavement.”

Balfour says a radical revisioning is required:

“What is suggested here is the need for a radical rethink of all we take for granted. The recommendation in this rethinking is not based on wishful thinking but on the need to carry out strategic sustainable planning to achieve a new workable pattern of community for a post-oil age.”

Balfour’s vision of rail networks and eco-towns on hillsides is set forth in a new book, Strategic Sustainable Planning: A Civil Defense Manual for Cultural Survival. [Note: I couldn't find the book on either Powell's or Amazon].

Balfour also argues that rising oil prices will make it uneconomic to import food, meaning we’ll have to rely more on locally produced food.  Currently, Metro Vancouver produces about 48% of the food it consumes. The policy implications are that southwest B.C.’s low-lying farmland needs to be protected and turned into a “green commons” for food production to serve nearby urban areas. Land lost in the past two decades to urban development or industry must be reclaimed for food production.

Balfour says the time to act – and to abandon the automobile – is now:

“The move to the hill towns has to start now, not another generation from now, as we do not have the time to delay. This means not following the current oil-age planning criteria or automobile engineering standards.”

Eric de Place at Sightline Institute asks, why are townhouses expensive and ugly?

Answer: because our laws require that owners provide housing for their cars as well.

“Nearly every townhouse in the city is required by law to provide offstreet parking. Since cars don’t fly, the practical effect of the minimum parking regulations is that each and every townhouse has a garage on the bottom floor. And these garages are often the prime culprit in walling off the townhouses from the street, and of sending the residents upstairs. They also severely crimp design possibilities, making the units tend toward uniform. Somewhat ironically, because the garages are small and the driveways are tight, the residents who have cars often end up parking on the street anyway.

The obvious solution: eliminate the parking requirements.

As the Scot Trevor Shaw points out, it ironically is the staunchest free-market advocates who are in favor of socialist-style regulations mandating accommodation of the automobile.

It seems that our “over the cliff” style of planning isn’t unique to America. In Scotland, too, cities see their future prosperity tied to big box retail centers with supply chains and business models based on cheap oil. Have our city fathers not heard of peak oil?

As McCain and Clinton pandering to voters by proposing a gas tax holiday demonstrates, governments seem completely unable or unwilling to deal honestly or realistically with peak oil.

The transition town movement, which was started in Britain by Rob Hopkins, acts on the assumption that change must come from the grassroots. The idea with ‘transition’ is to engage communities in pushing for these things, so as to take the fear out of making these decisions for politicians. One way of doing this is through an “energy descent pathway,” a step-by-step plan compiled by residents designed to wean the town away from a reliance on carbon fuels. Some ‘transition towns’ are already beginning to implement the plan. Another tool is to emphasize local economies – local production of food and other necessities, even local currencies.

The transition town movement takes its inspiration from the past. Part of the transition process involves consulting with older members of the community to find out what life was like when people were more self-reliant.

This isn’t being regressive – rather, Hopkins insists it’s realistic. The ‘transition’ approach is not about convincing anyone to give up anything. It is about saying that many of the things we increasingly take for granted will become steadily more expensive and less and less dependable. So we’d better figure out how to do stuff ourselves.

Speaking of transition and localization, John Michael Greer points that many Willamette Valley farmers this year are planting wheat instead of their normal grass seed crops. We’ve seen this right here on the narrow county road leading to our farm house. Fields that have been in grass seed for decades are now being plowed and seeded for spring wheat.

What’s next, a local boulangerie  or depot de pain? Now that would be something. I can see it now, Irina bicycling down the road with a fresh baguette tucked under her arm. Powering down might not be so bad after all . . .

The February S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices show that declines in the prices of existing single family homes across the United States worsened in the second month of the new year. 17 of the 20 reporting MSAs posted record low annual declines, 10 of which are in double-digits.

Mish has posted this chart:

click on chart to enlarge

Portland has held up pretty well, showing only a 5.5% drop since peaking in July 2007. Only Charlotte, N.C. has shown a smaller decline – 3.4%. Seattle prices have fallen 6.5% since August 2007.

The Southwest has been hammered: Las Vegas, 24.5%; Phoenix, 24.1%; San Diego, 24.0%; Los Angeles, 21.6%.

Data from the CME Futures market – which only trades the top 10 cities – shows when traders are betting the downturn will end and how much lower it will go.

Note that traders are betting that the decline in home prices will exceed 40% in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami. Las Vegas at 46.3% is predicted to fare the worst. Odds are we’re only half-way into the housing crash, with two years or more of falling prices yet to go until we hit bottom.

Declan Butler has an article in Nature on the huge potential of green architecture for mitigating climate change (pdf here).

At his blog he reminds us that buildings account for up to half of all energy consumption, and are the biggest single contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Much attention is given to exotic future remedies, such as carbon sequestration and clean coal. But a way to slash emissions using existing technologies is sitting under our noses: simply rethinking how we design the buildings we live and work in, to use much less energy.

We know how to build homes, offices and other buildings that use 80–90% less energy than existing buildings. The most efficient of these structures are almost completely ‘passive’, meaning they require very little, if any, traditional heating or air-conditioning. Yet the overall comfort they provide is, if anything, superior to existing buildings.

Nor is there necessarily a cost penalty: these ultra-energy-efficient buildings are often no more expensive to build than conventional structures, and work out far cheaper if energy bills during their occupation are taken into account.

But more than a century of cheap energy has divorced the architecture of buildings from energy considerations, and from their environment.

Fully passive houses need only supplementary heating or cooling, in tiny amounts, or just on the coldest and hottest days. Such efficiency levels make the buildings amenable to being made zero-carbon by meeting their low energy needs, either from small, local renewable sources, or using grid electricity generated from renewable sources. Read the rest of this entry »

From Climate Progress:

“Pringle Creek Community in Salem, Oregon, named the 2007 Green Land Development of the Year by the National Association of Home Builders, may be the greenest neighborhood in the country. It uses 35 sustainable goals to guide planning and construction, including building an entire neighborhood of carbon neutral homes, encouraging contractors to use biodiesel, and creating a community garden.” All development homes can employ a geothermal heating and cooling system that reduces heating bills to a quarter of conventional costs, and homes outfitted with solar-generating photovoltaic cells can bring their bills to zero.

“The new homes, built while preserving 80 percent of existing trees, are constructed with 100 percent Forest Stewardship Council-certified lumber. Neighborhood streets use porous paving permitting 90 percent of rainwater to go through asphalt and concrete, eventually entering the aquifer as clean water.

“A custom home nearing completion is listed for $432,000. The 1,460-square-foot home scored 103 points from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, which is the highest score ever recorded by LEED.”

Now if we could just figure out how to eliminate the 35-50% (depending on who’s counting what, where) of energy consumption and consequent emissions that are ascribed to the transportation sector . . .

“A new study of 17 different transit-oriented developments in four metropolitan areas showed that they generated only about half as many car trips as the standard planning reference guide predicts.“

Here’s the entirety of Pringle Creek’s “smart transportation and movement” strategy: Read the rest of this entry »

Please join us next Tuesday at Goal One Coalition’s First Annual Event for an evening of socializing and of exploring the impact of land use practices on energy, climate, and Earth’s ecological systems.

John Miller of Salem will give the keynote address on his sustainable development work in China and in Oregon. His company, JD Miller International, is currently part of an international group including “Cradle to Cradle” visionary William McDonough working to develop sustainable designs for villages and New Towns in China. John is also president of Wildwood Inc., an urban design and development firm in Salem; and Mahonia Vineyards and Nursery, a grower of grapevines, wine grapes, and native plants.

The Event will be February 5 from 6:30 – 8:30 PM at Campbell Center, 155 High Street, Eugene. Campbell Center is located along the Willamette River at northeast edge of Skinner Butte.

Map of 155 High St Eugene, OR 97401-2305, US

For more information call 541-484-4448 and talk to Jason, Jan or Lauri.