welcome

What if there were a way to save the nation $30 billion a year in energy costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 300 million tons a year and create thousands of new jobs - using existing technologies and at a price so cheap that it would pay for itself in the first year?

Evan Mills, a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, says there already is one: building commissioning, the art and science of maximizing the energy efficiency of commercial buildings.

"Roughly 40 percent of all humanity's greenhouse gas emissions from energy come from the building sector," Mills said. "I would rank it one of the very first, if not the first thing to do."

Commissioning is gaining new attention as Congress considers cap-and-trade laws and earmarks billions of dollars for green jobs. California is the focus of that attention because the state embraced commissioning early on and supports researchers like Mills.

In July, Mills calculated that commissioning the nation's nearly 5 million commercial buildings would yield more bang for the buck in energy savings than just about anything else out there: wind farms, new nuclear plants, improved car fuel efficiency, you name it.

Yet a survey in 2000 suggested that as few as 0.03 percent of existing commercial buildings, and as little as 5 percent of new ones, undergo commissioning for energy efficiency. Building owners seeking energy savings are more likely to invest in new light bulbs than they are to fine-tune their existing systems - like people who buy a new hybrid but don't keep the tires on their old clunker properly inflated.

Mills' work was supported by the Public Interest Energy Research Program at the California Energy Commission, which along with utilities and private firms supports research into new tools for calculating and verifying energy savings from building commissioning, increasing the number of commissioning workers and training programs and removing obstacles to the growth of the practice.

Bridging the interests

Those obstacles are daunting, said Norm Bourassa, an energy commission specialist, such as bridging the interests of building owners who generally pay for commissioning and of tenants who reap the rewards in the form of lower utility bills.

California has supported commissioning research for years, Bourassa said, especially since 2004, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for 20 percent energy savings in all state-owned buildings by 2015. As a result of that long focus, he said, about half of all commissioning activity in the United States has happened in California.

Now other states are paying attention and getting on board.

Business is booming at firms such as Quantum Energy Services & Technologies, or QuEST, an energy-efficiency firm in Berkeley that conducts free energy assessments of municipal buildings under a program supported by Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

Buildings are big and complicated structures, their walls, floors and roofs masking a tangled maze of wiring, pumps, ducts and pipes controlled by old or poorly understood computer systems. But most occupants have little reason to go climbing around in those guts unless something is obviously wrong, said Matthew Denny, a senior engineer at QuEST.

"They're not paid to think about the energy side," he said. "They're paid to think about the comfort side."

But just because a building is comfortable doesn't mean it's efficient. Denny recalled a building where an air intake system routed fresh air past two sets of pipes - one to heat air on cool days, the other to cool air on hot days.

Heater locked on

At some point, the heater locked on, leading tenants to crank the cooling system. The result was comfortable tenants with no idea that their air was originating outside at 70 degrees, being heated to 130 degrees and immediately chilled to 60 degrees.

"I saved them probably close to a million therms, and at a dollar a therm that's like a million dollars a year," Denny said. Such discoveries are common, he said - cooling systems running two pumps when one will do or timers to turn off air conditioners at night that instead are stuck turned on.

Private owners aren't the only ones who overlook such problems. In July, the U.S. Department of Energy's inspector general reported that the department was failing to use thermostats that turn off the heat or air conditioning at night in its 9,000-plus buildings.

Potential annual savings: nearly $12 million.

But fixing broken or overlooked systems is just the simplest form of commissioning. The real goal is to look at whether the building's design meets tenants' needs in an energy-efficient way.

Mills offers an ambitious proposal: commissioning all U.S. commercial buildings within 10 years and reinspecting and fine-tuning them every five years.

It will require training to boost the number of commissioning specialists from 1,500 to about 25,000 and create a $4 billion commissioning industry. Based on Mills' estimates, such an effort would pay for itself in the first year - and as a bonus leave buildings more comfortable and healthier places to work.

The Federal Building in downtown Youngstown, Ohio, features an extensive use of natural light to illuminate offices and a white roof to reflect heat.

It has LEED certification, the country’s most recognized seal of approval for green buildings.

But the building is hardly a model of energy efficiency. According to an environmental assessment last year, it did not score high enough to qualify for the Energy Star label granted by the Environmental Protection Agency, which ranks buildings after looking at a year’s worth of utility bills.

The building’s cooling system, a major gas guzzler, was one culprit. Another was its design: to get its LEED label, it racked up points for things like native landscaping rather than structural energy-saving features, according to a study by the General Services Administration, which owns the building.

Builders covet LEED certification — it stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design — as a way to gain tax credits, attract tenants, charge premium rents and project an image of environmental responsibility. But the gap between design and construction, which LEED certifies, and how some buildings actually perform led the program last week to announce that it would begin collecting information about energy use from all the buildings it certifies.

Buildings would provide the information voluntarily, said officials with the United States Green Building Council, the nonprofit organization that administers the LEED program, and the data would be kept confidential. But starting this year, the program also is requiring all newly constructed buildings to provide energy and water bills for the first five years of operation as a condition for certification. The label could be rescinded if the data is not produced, the officials said.

The council’s own research suggests that a quarter of the new buildings that have been certified do not save as much energy as their designs predicted and that most do not track energy consumption once in use. And the program has been under attack from architects, engineers and energy experts who argue that because building performance is not tracked, the certification may be falling short in reducing emissions tied to global warming.

Some experts have contended that the seal should be withheld until a building proves itself energy efficient, which is the cornerstone of what makes a building green, and that energy-use data from every rated building should be made public.

“The plaque should be installed with removable screws,” said Henry Gifford, an energy consultant in New York City. “Once the plaque is glued on, there’s no incentive to do better.”

Scot Horst, the council’s senior vice president for its certification program, said that any changes in the process would have to be made by consensus to ensure that the building industry would comply. Already, some construction lawyers have said that owners might face additional risk of lawsuits if buildings are found to underperform.

The council is planning several meetings with builders, owners, developers and others around the country in September and October to promote its building performance initiative, which could lead to further revisions in the rating program to ensure buildings reduce energy consumption as much as they can.

Mr. Horst called the issue of performance one of his “absolute priorities.”

“If you’re not reducing carbon, you’re not doing your job,” he said.

The LEED label, developed by the council in 1998 to have a third-party verification of a building’s environmental soundness, certifies new homes, schools and other buildings, as well as existing ones. (The certification for existing buildings is the only one currently tied to energy performance.) Its oldest and largest program, in terms of square footage, is the certification of new commercial and institutional buildings, with 1,946 projects already certified and 15,000 more that have applied for certification. Many other buildings include environmentally friendly features and advertise themselves as “green” but do not seek the LEED label.

The program uses a point system based on a broad checklist of features and buildings can be certified by accumulating points on not just efficient energy use but also water conservation, proximity to public transportation, indoor air quality and use of environment-friendly materials.

Council officials say that these other categories also help reduce energy use and emissions. And many architects and engineers praise the comprehensiveness of the label. But the wide scope of the program, many in the industry point out, also means that buildings have been able to get certified by accumulating most of their points through features like bamboo flooring, while paying little attention to optimizing energy use.

Another problem is that the certification relies on energy models to predict how much energy a planned building will use, but council officials and many experts agree that such models are inexact. Once a building opens, it may use more energy than was predicted by the design. And how a building is used — how many occupants it has, for example — affects its energy consumption.

“If the occupants don’t turn off the lights, the building doesn’t do as well as expected,” said Mark Frankel, technical director for the New Buildings Institute, which promotes improved energy performance in new commercial construction and conducted the research commissioned by the Green Building Council on LEED buildings.

“In the real world, the mechanical systems may have problems, so that increases energy use,” Mr. Frankel said, adding that keeping track of energy use is rarely a priority for owners.

LEED energy standards have grown more stringent over the years, and construction like the Youngstown federal building, built in 2002, would not be certified under the current version of the program, the G.S.A. study noted. The LEED standard goes through periodic revisions, and this year, the minimum energy requirements needed for the basic LEED certification for new buildings were raised.

But in its own study last year of 121 new buildings certified through 2006, the Green Building Council found that more than half — 53 percent — did not qualify for the Energy Star label and 15 percent scored below 30 in that program, meaning they used more energy per square foot than at least 70 percent of comparable buildings in the existing national stock.

Anecdotal information from follow-up research to that study indicated that the best-performing buildings had limited window areas and tended to be smaller.

Sometimes, a building’s inhabitants are the first to notice energy-wasting features.

At the Octagon, a LEED-certified residential rental building on Roosevelt Island in New York City, residents like Alan Siegal say that obvious energy savers, like motion sensors in the hallway, are hard to miss.

But Mr. Siegal, 59, a customs service broker, said his three-bedroom apartment has floor-to-ceiling glass windows that offer great views but also strong drafts.

“If there’s a lot of glass, is that going to be efficient?” he asked.

Bruce Becker, whose company Becker and Becker Associates developed and owns the Octagon, said that the windows offer day lighting but conceded that there were plenty of opportunities to become more energy efficient. He said the Octagon would soon switch to a fuel cell system for heat and electricity, partly to cut energy costs at a time of a depressed rental market.

Mr. Horst, the LEED executive, said that LEED may eventually move toward the E.P.A.’s Energy Star model, which attests to energy efficiency only for the year the label was given, similar to restaurant ratings.

“Ultimately, where we want to be is, once you’re performing at a certain level, you continue to be recertified,” Mr. Horst said.

When I mention the words “high-rise office building” what do you think of? Probably an enclosed glass and steel box, stripped of detail, perfect in its photogenic, modernist simplicity.

Perhaps, like me, you also imagine its occupants: hunched at their desks, panting for fresh air and light, mesmerized by the hum of overhead fluorescent fixtures gone buggy. In fact, our cultural understanding of “high-rise” seems to include its occupants being divorced from their natural surroundings, sequestered in a technologically advanced, artificial environment.

A lot of us have been wondering just how advanced our current model really is.

Mick Pearce is an African architect who has tried to change that model, demonstrating his ideas in two signature buildings, the Eastgate Building in Harare, Zimbabwe, and the Council House 2 Building in Melbourne, Australia. Both buildings employ common-sense passive systems for climate control based on gradients, and both were inspired by the work of a tiny insect, the termite.

The termite is one of nature's more accomplished builders, erecting the tallest structures on our planet (when measured against the size of the builder), and maintaining a constant temperature inside despite wide temperature swings outside.

The mounds that they build are extremely durable structures of mud, often employing sophisticated buttressing and, in the case of so-called compass mounds, a precise shape and siting that optimize the effects of the sun.

The compass mounds of Australia are shaped like large blades, narrow at the top and gently curved to a narrow boat-shaped footprint. They get their name from their consistent north-south orientation, and it is this orientation and shape that allow them to optimize their environment. When the sun angle is low and temperatures are chilly the mound receives the maximum exposure to its flanks and gains heat needed to warm the nest. When the sun is overhead, in the heat of the day, the narrow blade edge receives very little sunlight and unwanted heat gain. Shape saves energy, again, in the natural world.

What impressed Mr. Pearce about the local African mounds was the climate control. Despite a daily fluctuation from 40 degrees C to less than 0 degrees C, the termites are able to maintain a constant inside temperature of 30 degrees C.

Within thick, insulating walls they accomplish this by creating and constantly maintaining a draft of air from low openings to top holes. They make use of the so-called stack effect, convective airflow from cool to warm. The termites are constantly tweaking these openings for optimum performance, sometimes adding wet mud that aids cooling with its evaporative effects.

This is a classic example of surfing for free on a gradient, discussed in my last two essays, and the termites' lesson was not lost on Mr. Pearce. When the developers of the Eastgate office building asked him to design a structure with a passive climate control system in 1996, he employed some of these principles. The complex is actually two buildings that shelter an interior atrium (right). Heat gain is reduced by limited glazing, deep overhangs, and building mass, and the architect took advantage of night cooling, thermal storage and convective air currents to moderate temperatures.

During the day the heavy building mass and rock storage in the basement absorb the heat of the environment and human activity. At night, cool air is allowed into the bottom of the building and starts the convective flow that vents the hot daytime air through roof vents. This cool air is also stored and then distributed the next day into offices via hollow floors and baseboard vents.

These passive techniques, although not able to supply all of the climate control for the building, contributed to some impressive building conservation statistics. The approximately 32,000 square meter building was built with 10 percent of the typical ventilation costs for the area, 35 percent less energy costs, and 10 percent fewer typical capital costs, translating to a savings of $3.5 million for a $36 million building.

Ten years later, Mr. Pearce had perfected some of the principles tried at Eastgate, this time in a more contained, 10 story, 12,500 square meter building in Melbourne, Council House 2 (CH2). The use of gradients is also key to this design.

The owner of the building, the Melbourne City Council, estimates that CH2 achieves an 80 percent reduction in typical energy use and a 70 percent reduction in water use.

Like Eastgate, CH2 is cooled by a timely management of the difference in temperature between night air and day air. In this case, a whole side of the building is opened up to direct air intake through automatic shutters made from recycled wood (left).

This “night purge” vents the warmer air directly from the office and shop spaces and cools down the overhead mass of concrete. The warm air rises up to openings in the ceiling and then travels through hollow floors to a vertical shaft and eventually to roof vents. This passive treatment alone is enough to keep the spaces comfortable for a part of the day. Cooled fresh air rises up through floor registers throughout the day.

CH2 also uses another temperature gradient of a fluid, water, to condition the air in the building. First, water is “mined” from the sewage supply of the city, triple filtered and then put to work flushing toilets, watering plants and conditioning the air. The AC water is run down the outside of the structure through five 15-meter “shower towers” (below) which create evaporatively cooled air for induction into the lower commercial spaces.

The remaining water is piped into basement storage where it is cooled through a phase change apparatus and distributed when needed. The phase change apparatus is made up of 10,000 stainless steel spheres containing salts with a high freezing point (15 degrees C) which are frozen at night and then used to chill the water for distribution during the day, much like ice cubes chill your drink as they melt. This newly cooled water is pumped from the basement to chilled beams at every level of the building. These beams are arrayed copper pipes that drop cool air down later in the day when the effects of the night purge have worn off.

This building also uses thermal mass to absorb heat, reduces heat gain by a strategic placement of glazing, and produces power and heat by photovoltaic and thermal solar panels and a gas-fired cogeneration plant. It also hosts an equivalent amount of plant leaf surface to the site (to replace what theoretically was lost by development of the land), which oxygenates the air indoors and out. The building receives a fresh air change every half hour, and the owner claims a 10.9 percent improvement in worker productivity as the biggest payback from the  $11 million (Australian) ventilation system. This increased productivity is calculated to be worth over $2 million (Australian) a year in staff time and means that the investment will likely pay for itself in 5-6 years. What a difference a difference makes! 

While one architect's successful use of gradients inspired by nature is the main theme to this essay I believe there are more building lessons to be learned from the termites. These fascinating creatures don't build these mounds alone, or use any forethought, and they certainly don't understand the methods they are using. They take humble materials, however, and build 25-foot high structures that require a stick of dynamite to remove. Moreover, they maintain precise living conditions for millions of inhabitants in a complex and ordered society. They do this with brains the size of a pinhead. This is the power of the super organism, of which I will write next time.

India will make energy efficiency ratings compulsory for electric appliances, including air-conditioners and refrigerators, from January 2010.

For five days, millions of people in the Indian city of Calcutta have endured long queues in the stifling heat at bus and taxi stands, metro railway counters and on auto-rickshaw routes.

They are braving both the humidity and the rain in the hope that what has been termed the city's "great transport mess" will finally be cleared up.

While the difficulties of getting from A to B may be greater now than at any time over the last two decades, the air of the city is much cleaner than before 1 August.

That was when police started seizing all pollution-emitting pre-1993 vehicles to ensure they are kept off the roads in keeping with a Calcutta High Court order.

Kidney illnesses

A survey done by the Calcutta-based Saviour and Friend of Environment (Safe) says that around the city's four most polluted intersections - the Dunlop crossing, the Shyambazar five-point crossing, Park Circus and the Rashbehari Avenue-SP Mukherjee Road crossing - hydrocarbon levels more than halved.

That is important because high hydrocarbon levels have been blamed for an increase in liver and kidney illnesses as well as higher level of cancer.

With less traffic on the roads, the oxygen count shot up by around 15 to 20%, leading to a drop in the percentages of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.

Suspended particulate matter, the main cause of bronchial diseases that makes Calcutta the asthma capital of India, dropped by 50%.

"Calcutta is back to low pollution levels it enjoyed until about 20 years ago," said Safe's convenor, Sudipto Bhattacharya.

"The vigil has to continue and none of the 15-year-old vehicles or those older should be allowed to go back on to the streets."

Mr Bhattacharya said that Safe's findings vindicated the green activists' stand against older vehicles.

Many other fresh air fans agree with him.

"The sharp drop in the hydrocarbon level proves that older vehicles are the major culprits," said green activist Subhas Datta, who lobbied the city's high court to seek the withdrawal of all vehicles older than 15 years.

"They emit unburnt fuel into the air that pushes up the hydrocarbon level to dangerous levels. Let us hope that Calcutta will breathe freely from now on."

Dilapidated machines

But some of the worst polluting vehicles, especially the two-stroke petrol engine auto-rickshaws, are still plying the Calcutta suburbs because police surveillance is mainly focussed on the core metropolitan area between the main airport in the north and Garia in the south - and from the Kidderpore-Behala arc in the west to the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass.

Owners of old vehicles are upset by the ban

Many of these old and dilapidated machines have been getting a fresh coat of paint to fool the police into thinking they are less antiquated than they are.

In some painting workshops of the city, two-stroke autos are being painted green to mislead the authorities that they are running on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

"But that is not the case," admits Radheshyam Das, a paint workshop owner.

"They have not converted to gas, they are taking the new paint only to bamboozle the police.

"But I cannot refuse to paint them because I am not the right authority to check what fuel the auto is running, I am just supposed to paint them."

Many of the autos coming into the paint workshops are the worst offending pre-2000 two-strokes, which have been banned by the high court.

A few are "dual mode" - able to run on petrol but also fitted with an LPG kit.

These too have been prohibited, as the government will allow only single-mode LPG autos that have no chance of ever running on petrol or diesel again.

Police say that spotting auto-rickshaws breaking the rules by having a green paint makeover presents a challenge.

"But we have prepared a detailed list of the older vehicles and that has been circulated to the police, so continuing to fool the police won't be easy," says West Bengal government's transport secretary, Sumantra Chowdhury.

Silver lining

Nearly 4,000 private buses, 6,800 taxis and more than 95% of the total fleet of 65,000 auto-rickshaws have been barred from operating in the Calcutta Metropolitan Area following the Calcutta High Court order.

The ban affects thousands of taxis, mini-buses and auto-rickshaws.

Those laid off work as a result of the ban, especially the auto rickshaw owners, have been trying to prevent the "green" autos from running. That has made life difficult for Calcutta's five million commuters.

"But I would rather stand in long queues for a bus or a green auto than patronise these polluting vehicles again," says Sudeshna Majumder, a school teacher who changes transport three times - using an auto rickshaw, a bus and a suburban train - to reach her school in western Calcutta.

So for the time being it seems as if the city's hard-pressed commuters are broadly in support of the government. They may not have the transport they require but they do have clean air.

It would seem that there is a silver lining behind the city's poisoned clouds.

(Steve Parsons/PA) Britain faces the prospect of a vegetarian diet in the event of a world food shortage

The British people face wartime rations and a vegetarian diet in the event of a world food shortage, a new official assessment on the UK’s food security suggests today.

Even though the nation is 73 per cent self-sufficient in food production, higher than during the 1950s, the food chain is at risk from global influences such as a worldwide increase in population, climate change bringing extreme weather patterns, higher oil prices and more crops being grown for bio-fuel instead of food.

Supplies in future may also be disrupted by animal disease outbreaks, disruption of power supplies, trade disputes and interruptions for shipping and at ports.

The UK however has one of the highest cereal production capabilities in the world with seven tonnes grown per hectare, compared a world average of 3.3 tonnes per hectare.

In the event of an extreme event, cereal crops would be used to feed the nation and ensure that each person received sufficient daily calories.

But people would have to consume less — the average number of calories eaten per day in the early 1960s was about 2,100, whereas the most recent figure compiled by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation is 2,800.

Even during the Second World War Britain did not have to rely wholly on domestic food production, but Hilary Benn, the Cabinet Minister with overall responsibility for food policy, has ordered officials to prepare for a scenario where the country could feed itself.

In the event of an extreme emergency the most dramatic consequence would be every person eating a predominantly vegetarian diet — more cereals, fruit and vegetables and less meat and poultry. Cereals used to feed farm animals would be shifted into human food production.

A paper setting out the food security assessment states that the food on offer would be “a highly restricted, if sufficiently nutritious diet”.

One of the biggest threats to the supply chain would be restrictions in trade of meat and poultry from Argentina and Brazil or of GM soya, the main commodity used to feed livestock in Britain.

The threat of climate change however will also require new growing techniques such as reduced water usage in agriculture.

In times of normal trading, however, the Government also wishes to ensure that the nation eats a healthier diet and is particularly concerned that low-income households are able to afford fresh fruit and vegetables.

Ministers are also anxious that consumers have confidence in the safety of food and further work is to be undertaken to help reduce the incidence of food poisoning caused by common bugs such as salmonellas, listeria, E.coli and campylobacter. Hygiene inspections at food outlets by local authority enforcement officers is likely to be stepped up.

Mr Benn today called for a radical rethink on the way the UK produces food. He also insisted that GM crops in future could help boost food production especially if some varieties were drought-resistant or required less water, fertilisers and pesticides.

He backed the need for GM crop trials to find out the facts about the new technology and to use the science to boost production.

“We need a radical rethink in how we produce and consume food. Globally we need to cut emissions and adapt to the changing climate that will alter what we can grow and where we can grow it. We must maintain the natural resources — soils, water and biodiversity — on which food production depends.”

“And because we live in an interconnected world — where the price of soya in Brazil affects the price of steak at the local supermarket — we need to look at global issues that affect food security here. That’s why we need to consider what food systems should look like in 20 years and what must happen to get there.”

He is anxious to engage the wider public in debate about the future of the country’s food security as well as how best to help people eat healthier diets and to ensure that new production techniques do not damage the UK’s natural resources.

A new UK food strategy is to be published before the end of the year.

The world food market is still "seriously exposed" to speculators artificially driving up prices and worsening the risks of malnutrition, according to one of the world's leading agricultural researchers.

Linking the recent food and financial crises, Joachim von Braun, the head of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), warned that the world was at risk of a new panic over grain unless commodity markets were more tightly regulated and production expanded.

"The banking sector is in the process of being re-regulated worldwide, but the food market remains seriously exposed to short-term flows of indexed funds into commodity exchanges. That vulnerability needs to be addressed," he said in an interview with the Guardian.

Von Braun was one of the first to predict the sharp rise in food prices that peaked last year, when 13 nations halted cross-border trade amid fears of shortages.

The crisis, which escalated over four years, hit poor people hardest and saw pasta protests in Italy, tortilla rallies in Mexico and onion demonstrations in India.

During that period, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates the number of hungry people in the world rose from about 800 million to more than 1 billion.

At the time, most of the blame for the price spike centred on growing populations, climate change, biofuels, rising oil prices and increased demand from fast-growing economies like China and India that were running down food stocks.

But von Braum said recent research highlighted the role of commodity speculators: "What we didn't foresee two years ago is how speculation exacerbated the real market issues. It was not a primary cause but a second-round amplifier, which added seriously to the problem."

Daily trading volumes on the Chicago commodities exchange surged at the peak of the crisis between December 2007 and March 2008, boosted by the entry of non-commercial investors entering the market to speculate.

"When food supply is at risk, speculators are attracted, especially when trade barriers are put in place," he warned.

Exchanges in India and China were closed down to prevent similar speculative attacks.

The global credit crunch also hamstrung government efforts to boost food production by reducing the money available for investment in new technology and better irrigation.

With climate change expected to reduce yields by 15% by 2050 even as demand grows from a rising world population, von Braum said it was important for nations and international institutions to respond with more funds for agriculture.

China, Japan, South Korea and several Middle Eastern nations have begun buying up farmland in Africa and South America as a hedge against food shortage risks.

Global prices are down from their peak thanks partly to effective measures by the Chinese government to rebuild grain stocks, increased agricultural investment in India and a great focus on food production in the aid programmes of the UK and other donor nations.

But von Braun said prices remain high in many African countries because of trade constraints and foreign exchange rates, while an unusually dry Indian monsoon could affect harvests in Asia. A UN report published earlier this week warned that Asia faces dire food shortages unless hundreds of billions of dollars are invested in better irrigation systems to grow crops for its growing population.

"Fundamentally, the crisis of high food prices in the majority of poor countries is not over at all," said von Braun.

How much are typical Americans willing to pay for technology that allows them to monitor and manage their home energy usage?

About $48 on average, according to a recent survey by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates and Burson-Marsteller.

That could present challenges to companies seeking to sell in-home energy management systems directly to homeowners, given that most of those systems are pricier than that.

It could also lend ammunition to those that argue that utilities need to pay for or offer incentives for such in-home energy management systems – or, alternatively, that they need to be folded into other home systems, like telecommunications or security systems, to be commercially viable (see iControl Gets $23M For Home Security, Home Energy Management and The Telco Home Energy Invasion). 

According to the 2009 Green Power Progress Survey released Monday, $48 is the average price American will pay in a one-time fee for installation of hardware to facilitate the "benefits of smart grid technology" (see slide 16 of the survey for more details).

And out of the respondents that yielded that average, a quarter weren't willing to pay anything at all, another quarter weren't willing to pay more than $25, and only 7 percent would pay more than $100.

There is another category of "green elites," or people who said they are involved in sustainability or environmental efforts, willing to pay about $70 on average, with 14 percent of them willing to pay $100 or more, the survey found.

But those people likely make up only a small percentage of the population, noted Beth Lester, a vice president at Penn, Schoen & Berland.

As for monthly fees to support those services, the typical American would pay $13 a month, with 30 percent of them unwilling to pay anything and 19 percent willing to pay more than $20. Among green elites, the average acceptable monthly fee rose to $36.

Still, the wording of the survey left unclear just what kind of functionality respondents imagined they'd be getting from the "hardware" they set a price ceiling on.

For example, Google is working on a platform called PowerMeter to read overall household energy usage information from smart meters or other devices at people's homes and present that data in web format – and it wants to give it away for free (see Lu's Google PowerMeter Update: Open APIs, More Partners Soon).

Microsoft is developing a similar web interface that it intends to be free for homeowners (see Microsoft Launches Home Energy Site, Sees Devices, Demand Management in Future).

Simply giving homeowners a view of their energy use has been shown to yield 5 percent to 10 percent reductions in energy use, though it's unclear if those reductions will hold out over the long term.

And the two IT giants are following the footsteps of a host of companies – Tendril Networks, EnergyHub, Greenbox Technology, Onzo, AlertMe, eMeter and OpenPeak, to name a few – developing in-home energy management systems aimed at being deployed in partnership with utilities rolling out smart meters to customers (see The Smart Home, Part I).

But getting more detailed energy usage information broken down by major loads such as air conditioners and appliances – not to mention providing the ability to control such loads to reduce peak power demand or save energy overall – is likely to cost quite a bit more, according to companies now supplying such technology.

For example, Control4, which makes integrated home entertainment and security systems, is coming out with an energy-specific device for $200 next year, one that includes the ability to control thermostats and lights, rather than simply see how much energy they're using.

That's a discount from the $500 and up the company charges for its overall systems, but still higher than the average price survey respondents said they'd be willing to pay for in-home energy management - one reason, perhaps, why Control4 is looking at deals with utilities, as well as direct sales to consumers, as a route into people's homes (see Control4 Gets $17.3M to Expand Home Energy Management). 

Utilities and their partners working on home energy management platforms have been doing their own customer surveys to get a better sense of what customers are willing to pay for seeing and controlling their energy use.

Similar customer expectations will doubtless play a role in how major appliance makers, such as General Electric and Whirlpool, bring new "smart appliances" to market.

GE, for its part, plans to make a line of appliances that can be remotely managed to power down at customer or utility command, and expects them to cost about $10 more than traditional appliances. But it also expects that its "home energy manager" device to manage such controls will cost $200 to $250 – a price that might require utility incentives to be attractive to homeowners (see GE's Smart Appliances: Smarter with GE Home Energy Manager).

Derek Richer, director of Penn, Schoen & Berland, noted that the survey's findings went beyond the price people are willing to pay for in-home energy use.

In general, the survey indicated an overall acceptance by consumers of bearing a portion of the costs of a range of "smart grid" projects to make the nation's electricity grid more efficient, he said.

Two-thirds of respondents said today's grid wastes energy, and 63 percent supported government incentives for smart grid investments to curb that waste, the survey found.

Still, the survey indicated a "perception gap" between the cost respondents were willing to pay – about $18 a month, or a 15 percent increase, to their utility bills, on average – and the $62 per month they expected such smart grid improvements would add to their monthly power bills.

Posted 12:27 PM on 28 Aug 2009
by David Roberts

Solar Roadways

A while back I mentioned Solar Roadways, a clean-energy idea that appears kind of kooky, at least on the surface. (See what I did there?) The notion is to replace paved surfaces with rugged, specially built solar panels.

The Solar Road Panels would contain not just solar panels but LED lighting (to enable real-time communication with drivers), heating units (to prevent icing), high-voltage power transmission lines, and even electric-vehicle recharging stations. It’s transportation, power, and grid infrastructure in the same place.

At the limit, if all paved surfaces in the U.S. were replaced with 15% efficiency solar panels, the resulting distributed power network could provide three times the electricity the nation consumes, with zero carbon emissions and no additional power grid infrastructure. (Yes, I’m aware manufacturing, installing, and maintaining it would generate emissions, as with any infrastructure project.)

So crazy it just might work? Apparently the Dept. of Transportation thinks so:  Solar Roadways has received a $100,000 contract from DOT to build a prototype:

The Solar Roadways will collect solar energy to power businesses and homes via structurally-engineered solar panels that are driven upon, to be placed in parking lots and roadways in lieu of petroleum-based asphalt surfaces.

The Solar Road Panels will contain embedded LEDs which “paint” the road lines from beneath to provide safer nighttime driving, as well as to give up to the minute instructions (via the road) to drivers (i.e. “detour ahead”). The road will be able to sense wildlife on the road and can warn drivers to “slow down”. There will also be embedded heating elements in the surface to prevent snow and ice buildup, providing for safer winter driving. This feature packed system will become an intelligent highway that will double as a secure, intelligent, decentralized, self-healing power grid which will enable a gradual weaning from fossil fuels.

... Fully electric vehicles will be able to recharge along the roadway and in parking lots, finally making electric cars practical for long trips.

It is estimated that is will take roughly five billion (a stimulus package in itself) 12’ by 12’ Solar Road Panels to cover the asphalt surfaces in the U.S. alone, allowing us to produce three times more power than we’ve ever used as a nation - almost enough to power the entire world.

There are some cost estimates on the site. They argue that roadways could be solarized for roughly the same net cost we’d pay for power plants, grid infrastructure, and asphalt.

As usual with large-scale, visionary ideas like this, it’s difficult to agree on a cost-benefit analysis. The costs are mostly quantifiable—multiply cost of panel by 5 billion, etc.—but the benefits are not. Many are speculative or unpredictable, many are avoided costs. What are the benefits of not building coal plants and grid infrastructure? Not paying for accidents from ice and wildlife? Not having centralized, brittle power infrastructure?

New infrastructure does not merely replace old infrastructure; it provides a platform for new kinds of innovation. Who knows what would grow out of massively distributed power, a national smart grid, or an electrified vehicle fleet? What would it mean to have an overabundance of clean electricity?

Decisions about projects of such scope can’t   be made with a mathematical formula. There are irreducible elements of aspiration and faith, values and ethics, fear and desire—just as there were in America’s decisions to wage war,  guarantee health care for seniors and the poor,  go to the moon, or extend broadband internet access. Conservatives and Blue Dogs tell us we can’t afford it, presuming a shared understanding of what it’s worth.

Think not just about solar roadways, but more generally about the goal of clean, abundant energy, economic renewal, and a livable climate. What’s that worth? And why do the Blue Dogs get to decide?