New figures recently released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) point to residential buildings as the least efficient of any type in their lighting use. Despite the number of technological improvements coupled with the growing awareness and experience in greener building, overall efficiency in residential space has hardly improved at all over the past decade.

According to the Department of Energy, America has an estimated 8.2 billion fixtures actively producing light—about a 17% increase from 2001.  Together they consumed an estimated 700 terawatt hours of electricity. How much is that? (An average sized 650 MW coal plant will produce about 5.7 TWh a year running at full capacity, 24 hours a day.) It’s a lot.

The DOE data analyzed by the EIA on the lighting load of our nation’s buildings over the past decade is… illuminating? Our homes account for 71% of all of the fixtures installed in the country, but they account for only 8% of the lumens produced. The study broke lighting usage into four categories: commercial, industrial, outdoor and residential with each comprising a meaningful piece of the total amount of electrons we produce for illumination. While the first three have steadily improved to reach admirable levels, the lighting used in our homes cemented them in dead last.

Over the past ten years, residential lighting has not only been the laggard in efficiency, but it has also shown little improvement. The figures are calibrated in the metric of efficacy which is the amount of lumens (light) per watt (power). The more light we can produce for less power consumed pushes efficiency upward. Lighting for commercial, industrial and outdoor applications have reached comparable average efficacy levels, all within 10% of each other. Residential spaces drag behind with an average efficacy of only 19 lumens/watt, around 27% of commerical’s very distance 3^rd place finish at 70 lumens/watt. Worse yet, the past ten years have not shown drastic improvement for home lighting, increasing just 2 lumens/watt since 2001.

The source of the relative deficiency is not a mystery: incandescent bulbs. A growing portion of the population is aware that standard incandescent bulbs use most of their operational energy to produce heat rather than light, making them staggeringly inefficient compared to the other options on the market today. Unsurprisingly, our homes use the largest number of incandescent bulbs of any category, comprising 62% of bulbs and 78% of lighting energy use. Figures like this help explain why the average energy use of our homes have remained constant for nearly the past 40 years. According to the DOE, lighting comprises about 6% of our energy at home.

What About Phasing out Incandescents?

Contrary to the best efforts of Congressional Republicans, the phasing out of traditional incandescent bulbs has formally begun with the highest wattages being the first to go by the end of 2012. With the estimated 3.7 billion incandescent lamps in service, it will take a while for them to evolve, but at least we have reached the starting line. The study seems to think that the data should be notably different 10 years from now when a boarder switch to CFL and, more importantly, LED fixtures will have a material impact on the amount of power we use at home.

How Much Power Does it Really Save Us?

Critics of the law requiring increased efficiencies from incandescent bulbs often poke at the question of how much energy will we really be saving. The numbers point out that incandescents are responsible for 156 TWh of electricity annually. The vast majority of this (86.5%) is in our homes. According to the DOE, the standard incandescent has an average efficacy of about 14 lumens per watt, so a 60-watt bulb produces about 840 lumens of light. Conversely, a CFL and LED produce the same amount of light using around 14 watts and 11 watts respectively. A migration to the level of CFLs would be saving about 119 TWh of electricity a year, or about 22 coal power plants.

For designers it is important to remember that the most efficient fixture is the one you don’t use at all, which can be paired with removing spaces in homes that we don’t really need like formal living and dining rooms. Does that hallway really need recessed halogen fixtures every 3 feet on center? Maybe we are past the exterior, color-changing up-lighting? Using elements like skylights and solar tubes can bring more light deeper into a space to negate daytime use of artificial illumination while things like light shelves can horizontally stretch window light into interior space. As a species that spends about 90% of our time indoors, the power-consuming technologies we use play a vital role in our evolution towards a more sustainable society.

Image Credits: eia.gov , besthomy.info

I recently spent some time walking around NYC’s Green Festival at the Javit’s Center (which is currently undergoing its efficiency renovation including the biggest green roof in the city). Claiming to be the largest green consumer convention in the country, the convention hall was packed with everything from Phillips lighting reps with their LED bulbs to organic, free trade chocolate, to environmental activist groups handing out fliers and buttons (I did snag a few of those).

In the course of my wandering I came across a woman standing dutifully and pleasantly next to a sign describing the Fourth Arts Block (or FABnyc). The organization is a community driven non-profit that promotes sustainable programs at the grass roots level. The woman’s name was Betsy Imershein and she is FABnyc’s Sustainability Consultant. She told me that she was at the festival promoting one of the groups most prominent programs called “Load OUT!” designed to target adaptive reuse for waste streams flowing from local theatres. I became instantly intrigued.

Betsy went on to explain that the program currently runs twice a year, targeting smaller theatres that commonly discard used sets and props directly into dumpsters once productions are through. The practice is more common particularly in smaller companies that are short on permanent storage space for used material. Their key group of recipients is other artists that often have plenty of new uses for repurposing old materials. At FAB’s most recent event in March, the group diverted over 6 tons of waste including 1 ton of e-waste and 1 ton of textiles.

It occurred to me that this was only a handful of small theatres in the city. When I asked about the scale of this kind of waste stream at the scale of the whole metropolis, Betsy replied, “It’s immense.”

It wasn’t the only time I had heard of our entertainment industry beginning to make an effort to migrate towards more sustainable practices. I reached out to a source who has spent a growing amount of time on the artistic side of the movie industry. The source will remain anonymous for our purposes, but we can refer to him/her as “Big Screen.”

“In the past few years, the movies that I have worked on have hired someone to be their green or sustainability coordinator,” Big Screen explained.  “Their job is not only to look at the construction and building of sets but also every other department to try and save, reuse and conserve as much as possible.”

Big Screen’s experience pointed to an effort of transferring from paper to digital when it comes to moving information around the studio sites. Another target was the craft service truck where the crew can get food on shoots, trying to use compostable or recyclable materials.

“There was a great sustainability coordinator that was able to coordinate with the fire department and use the set for fire training,” Big Screen went on to  tell me. Apparently the set served as a great opportunity to give new firefighter recruits some new surroundings for setting and extinguishing mock fires.

One sticking point that came up was the issue of liability. No studio wants to get sued because someone gets hurt from props, sets or food that was given away for free. “Typically a lot of food doesn’t get given out for that reason.” Eventually I had to ask if Big Screen thought that these experiences were unique to specific movies and studio companies or was it actually a change being felt across the industry.

“It’s definitely industry wide. I think what helps is that the city is very much on board with it.”

These kinds of efforts point to another source of a growing willingness to change. Like the educational system, the movie industry is a valuable participant to have on board given the amount of money that we spend on entertainment in this country.

On the east side of Kip’s Bay, one restaurant took the opportunity of an adjacent stalled site and turned it into an urban farm used to grow produce for their culinary creations. The project serves as a reminder of how we can make the most of any site in the city in any condition, leaving there no place for vacant lots absently waiting out the test of time.

Where 29^th Street meets the East River, the tower that rises from the shore is the Alexandria Center for Life Science. The building is a taught skin of reflective glass and mechanical grilles, complete with exterior louvers that add a lighter texture to the LEED Gold core and shell holding around 310,000 square feet of space. But the impressive building is actually an unfinished story. As only half of its original vision, the lone tower was to be one of two buildings with the second situated on a site directly west. Walking by, the pedestrian can see the brand new concrete slab poured over a foundation with steel columns poking their heads above the surface, each bearing two large plates with one half affixed to the metal and the other pointing open towards the sky to accept the building that never came to be.

The Alexandria Center was not the only place that felt the sting of an unfriendly market. Hundreds of sites across the metro area were forced to stop at some point of construction until things improved. When it comes to large sites that are only partially built, one of the chief concerns of the city is safety. Issues of stormwater drainage, hazardous materials, refuse, vermin, and illicit activity can all become problems on a vacant construction site when not appropriately monitored. In 2009, the growing number of these sites prompted the Bloomberg administration to create the Stalled Sites Program. In exchange for a series of site safety measures enacted by the client, the Department of Buildings would allow the construction permits for the project to be renewed for up to four years instead of the customary 12 months allotted by code.

For some this vacant site would be viewed as little more than an inconvenience, but an innovative neighbor saw it as an opportunity. Residing in the base of Tower 1, the restaurant Riverpark enjoys water views and the relative peace of being a block away from fast-moving traffic. Funded by celebrity chef and restauranteur Tom Colicchio, Riverpark is a high-end restaurant specializing in healthy food. When the vacant site of tower two lingered beside them, the restaurant approached the developer with an idea to make use of the site as a temporary urban farm. The developer agreed.

Now the restaurant can enjoy things like squash, tomatoes, radishes, broccoli and a world of herbs that travel a mere 100 feet from soil to the kitchen before being beautifully plated for consumption. Last week I got to listen to the restaurant’s head chef, Sisha Ortúzar, talk about the eatery’s farming project. According to Ortúzar, the farm is the largest urban farm in the city that is directly associated with a restaurant. Apparently the creation of the garden created a full time job for two urban farmers and is worked year round.

Though there is a growing conversation about the possibility of cutting edge urban greenhouses and even vertical farms, there is nothing high-tech about the Riverpark Farm. 15,000 square feet of soil is held inside modified milk crates, stacked two high to lift the 6,000+ plants off the ground. Unsurprisingly, the restaurant utilizes its own food-based waste stream that can pour fresh (and free) nutrients back into the soil via composting. In the winter tents are erected around the site to facilitate a continued growing season. In building the farm, the restaurant was not putting down roots as it were, underscoring that the farm is constructed as a temporary venture to take advantage of the conditions that currently exist.

“The thing we had to get past was the idea of building something that had to last a long time,” Ortúzar said.  So far, the results speak for themselves. In the cooler months, the farm fills around 10-15% of the restaurant’s demand for fresh produce. “But in the coming months,” Ortúzar pointed out, “it will be up to 80%.”

The cityscape is an ecology with individual parcels going through their own cycles of life, death and rebirth. Part of using our urban landscapes sustainably is maximizing the value that any site can offer in any state of its evolution. Plus, while the restaurant may be harvesting its cash crops, the farm itself is contributing to the city in other ways. An installation like this is essentially a green roof, which brings a number of accolades to the urban environment as a whole. With every rainfall, the water that the plants are craving is stormwater that the rivers are trying to avoid. In the absence of the rows of plant-laden milk crates the sun would be beating down on an open concrete slab that would collect and store sunlight, contributing to the city’s heat islands as it radiated higher temperatures throughout the day and night. Instead, the sunlight is captured and turned into energy for healthy products. Not only is it in Riverpark’s best interest to sponsor this farm, it’s in the entire city’s best interest.

New York currently has over 600 sites in the Stalled Sites program, meaning there is still a wealth of opportunity for similar conditions to be utilized with temporary facilities. Why not community gardens? Or farmer’s markets? Or showcases for container homes? Or new pieces of infrastructure? If plots are sitting there gathering dust then there should be little reason for owners to hold back from offering a space for community use that would likely cost them nothing.

This also begs the question as to why only these 600 sites are getting this kind of attention and innovation. As far as I’m concerned, any site that is vacant or unused (inside or outside of the city) is “stalled” with the possibility of conversion into some temporary facility. For many developers and owners, the process of trying to find and facilitate these uses might be considered more of a hassle than its worth, but if some network was created that linked groups with usage terms then we could end up with temporary homes/studios/markets for more young businesses.

Image Credit: riverpark.com

In my wanderings at the NYC Green Festival, I met Judy Pezdir, the co-founder of a company called We Add Up that she started with her daughter in 2007 in Cleveland, Ohio. In walking by their display, at first glance I caught a bunch of different colored t-shirts spread out on a table and I almost continued on without a second thought, dismissing the entire thing as one more exhibiter who was trying to sell something. Fortunately, my walking by coincided with Judy explaining their business to another festival patron and my ear managed to catch enough to slow down my gait and backtrack for closer inspection.

The world of graphic t-shirts is nearly boundless. In the age of sites like Red Bubble or Zazzle just about anyone can come up with a design and try to sell it to the online community so differentiating oneself in that field is increasingly difficult—promoting my skepticism. However, We Add Up makes a pretty good run at it.

On the backs of their t-shirts, the company has numerous options that each depict a positive practice aimed at sustainability like “Compost”, “Mass Transit” or “Drink Tap.” Below that, each shirt holds the adage “No One Can Do Everything, Everyone Can Do Something.” Concise. Correct. I approve. With the varying colors and the clever icons, this puts them on par with most other environmental t-shirt operations. The difference comes in the front of the shirt. Similar across every genus, the front side stacks the test We Add Up over a summation line, below which is a number. This number changes with every shirt that is made, rendering each and every shirt unique (it turns out that they collectively just passed 24,300).

The nature of the company title quickly becomes clear, but I liked the ability for the shirts to associate with a particular cause/practice/life mantra while still bearing an ever-growing tally of collective support. The concept seemed even more appropriate for sustainability. After all, when it comes to sustainability there is no single, silver bullet solution within the mix that will combat the large scale of the issues, nor is there a single person capable of compensating for the unsustainable lifestyles of everyone else. The message also helps to debug some people’s misconception that progress necessitates universal acceptance of every plan equally.  Each shirt reflects the singular person beneath it but also marks the constantly growing strength in numbers. In a way, the concept was similar to the PRODUCT (RED) campaign (that I am also a big fan of) with a little extra twist. Additionally, the shirts are 100% organic cotton grown in the good old U.S. of A.

So since the shirts that I saw were over 24,000, I had to ask if Judy and her daughter were the proud owners of shirts #1 and #2. As it turns out, shirt number #1 was set aside and is currently gathering celebrity signatures in order to be auctioned off for charity. Shirts #2 and #3 were sent to Al Gore, who reportedly gave his endorsement to their efforts. As a result, Judy and her daughter claimed #4 and #5 for themselves.

My only critique of the operation is that the growing number at the bottom of each shirt is a collective tally across all of the shirt message types, rather than having separate tallies for each individual life practice. I can see the case for the way it is, but I wonder if having different running totals could have created a better image of how these practices are actually sit within society. Could these shirts have functioned as a social litmus test for where support is versus what we had to focus more on?

That being said, I definitely plan on partaking.

Image Credits: guardian.co.uk , weaddup.com

One of the problems with hype is that it makes the difficult task of conveying the entire story in the news even more difficult as it battles with increasing emotional weight from viewers. Hype’s viral nature allows it to feed on itself with the potential to grow exponentially, regardless of the accuracy of the underlying information, before eventually reaching a swift death, most likely at the appetite of new hype.

Like milk, our constant use of gasoline makes it (as of now) vital to the functioning of our economy. In 2008 Americans consumed around 380 million gallons a day so fluctuations in its price are felt quickly by the populace. Undeniably, the prospect of higher gas prices brings a cost that will have a material affect on the stability of our economy and its potential for growth.

When in comes to the realm of hype, the familiarity of gasoline’s residency is matched by a particular suggested solution: more drilling for oil. Fervently presented by its proponents, the case for more domestic oil drilling revolves around a seemingly simple equation of supply and demand; that if we have more drilling rigs then our supply of oil will rise and the price will fall. In its simplest form this is accurate and given that hype struggles with increasing complexity, it survives well as a fast-tracked bullet point.

The problem is that it, like most other things in our society, is more complicated than that and the rest of the story is very important. Increasing more drilling rights or expediting the review process for new drilling, as President Obama has recently done, will not have immediate, material affects on the price of gas. The process from permitting to an increased supply of oil from a new well can take ten years, meaning that proposing “more drilling” for the high gas prices would be the same as proposing to plant more vineyards for a high price of wine. Could it eventually help offset some of national oil demand? Perhaps, but according to the EIA the capacity for ANWR and offshore sites to significantly affect gas prices is limited.

If more drilling was presented as a component to a long term energy plan, then I would have less of a problem with it. Instead, it is presented in an expedited way of half-truths in an attempt to create a point of debate for the next election with neither side offering real solutions to the underlying issue. The residual casualties can become things like focus on important topics like renewable energy. A recent report showed that American support for alternative energy construction declined in deference to more support for fossil fuel extraction–a choice no doubt affected by the assumption that more drilling will provide gas price relief.

Hype also has its share of unintended casualties. A recent poll conducted by Pew Research Center revealed that a slimmer majority of Americans prioritized renewable energy development over expanding exploration and production of fossil fuels. While 63% reportedly favored renewable technologies a year ago, the number dropped to 52% in 2012, likely due to the desire for cheaper gas and the impression that more oil production in the United States will provide quick relief to local gas prices. Unfortunately, this could mean that we are taking time, energy and focus away from components of a long term solution in order to pander to a false pretense of the possibility of a quick fix.

Possible Solutions?

The oil is a finite resource which means that if our rate of consumption remains constant in the short term, the price will continue to rise. If lowering the price of gasoline is a goal of our society then we are not without options to do so:

Lift the Value of the Dollar:

Like most commodities, oil is priced in U.S. dollars. Our government has been positioning a weak dollar for some time now in order to make American products more attractive for export to other countries. It also, however, makes the price of imported commodities more expensive for us.

Reduce Consumption:

Continuing to reduce how much oil we use will help depress demand and its price. This could be through more improvements to the efficiency of our vehicle fleet or a continued migration to mass transit, allowing us to drive less. It could also be affect by how we heat our buildings and the use of virgin plastic.

Release Strategic Oil Reserves:

Though decidedly temporary, it would be possible to flood the market with supply of domestic oil through the liquidation of our nation’s strategic oil reserves.

What Will Actually Happen?

Oil prices will likely rise moving into the summer, only exacerbated by any rise in tensions with the Middle East. Higher gas prices will have a material effect on middle income Americans, not only for commuting but for our food supply that is hit doubly hard by costly petroleum (once by the oil needed for chemicals and again by the gas needed for transport; this is just one more reason why our agricultural system needs to change). If gas prices remain high then some form of subsidy could be granted to farmers in order to keep food prices low.

Unfortunately, what most likely will not happen is a comprehensive approach to dampen our country’s dependence on oil despite the fact that it is wiser and easier than the impossible task of keeping gasoline perpetually cheap.

Image Credit: immobilienblasen.blogspot.com , dcstreetsblog.org

The first blow came from the EPA initiating new pollution standards for power plants. Any standard that strives to decrease pollution will naturally come down hardest on the plants that pollute the most—an honor routinely held by our coal burning infrastructure. Of the +/-600  coal plants that we have in the country, the median construction date is 1966 with approximately 1/3 being built before 1960. While a new combined cycle natural gas plant could operate at 60-66% efficiency (perhaps more with co-generation) some of these ancient coal plants peeter by at about 30%, which means we’re getting more pollution for the same amount of net power.

While it may be too soon to make long term predictions, the first responses have been positive—just not for coal. Utilities have begun the closings of older coal facilities around the country. Examples like Chicago are heartening where the new regulations were paired with local constituents and bold politicians to expedite the scheduled closing of two local power plants. They will not be the last to shut their doors. Pollution standards are proving to be the weight that helps tip the scales for the costs of keeping older plants open.

While the industry was still reeling from the first round, the second hit was announced last week when Lisa Jackson confirmed that the EPA will release new regulations for limiting the carbon emissions of new power plants. The new standards will require new power plants to emit less than 1,000 lbs of CO2 per megawatt-hour. As Time Magazine’s Bryan Walsh points out, the number is not a shot in the dark. New natural gas plants are clocking in at just under that level while coal plants can operate at upwards of 1,800 lbs/MWh. The new law will effectively prohibit new coal power plants without the use of carbon capture or sequestration technology (in the unlikely event that said technology proves to work).

For the goal of a more sustainable society, coal represents one of the highest priorities for change. Though it’s true that coal produces a staggering amount of CO2, Intercon readers may notice that I don’t often linger very long on climate change. The reason is because climate change is only one of many reasons that display the outmoded nature of coal and the dangers it poses on our society. Less coal plants would mean cleaner air, cleaner water, a decrease in asthma related illness, fewer compromised mountaintops and ecosystems. Coal power deserves a warning label on your power bill.

Aligned with a Valuable Ally

Despite all of the political baggage that comes with regulations coming down from the EPA, their assertive stance on our national energy portfolio is not to blame for the recent decline in coal power production. We have a much larger (and arguably stronger) force to thank for that: the free market, notably natural gas. The evolution of technology allowing for the harvesting of more fuel from shale gas formations has driven the price of natural gas to historic lows, making it the fuel of choice for new power plant construction. Walsh points out that even before the EPA regulations were in place, construction has started on only new coal power plant throughout the Obama administration and it is an experimental plant testing a carbon sequestration system.

After peaking in 2007, coal demand in the U.S. has been declining for years according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Further predictions point to a 5% decline in coal usage in 2012 from 2011 to a total of 884 million short tons, levels not seen since 1995. Conversely, demand of natural gas in the power sector is pegged to grow 9% and provide nearly 25% of the country’s power. The EIA had predicted a slight rise in 2013, but that was before the release of the new EPA standards. The strength of natural gas is driving the retreat of coal. The EPA is only fanning the flames.

Is the Downtrend Here to Stay?

We can only hope. Is the coal industry up against the ropes? Maybe not yet, but they are certainly being herded towards the corner. Aside from a continued low price of natural gas (all but essential for coal’s demand to continue to wane) the defining factor could be the result of the upcoming elections in November and the state of the EPA afterwards. If President Obama is reelected, the coal industry could continue to be pressured for four more years. On the other hand, a Republican President could swiftly strip the teeth from the EPA and undo all it has managed to accomplish over the past three years.

As many green building proponents point out, our built environment accounts for around 35% of our country’s energy use and 65% of our electricity consumption. Every effort that to make both our new buildings and our existing buildings more efficient can help us depress the energy demand and help buy time for renewables to gain ground in cost competitiveness.

Image Credit: northjersey.com , eia.gov

The span of the room is traversed by a series of oak beams, 18 inches deep and 20 feet long. For those unfamiliar with construction or design, each one of these is a considerable piece of lumber. A typical LVL ridge beam could be 12″ deep and 2 inches wide and 16 feet long before it is laminated together with other lengths–and that is engineered lumber not solid oak. Even in older construction where larger wood dimensions were the norm, these still represent a formidable building component. Around one century ago, it was discovered that the beams in College Hall had fallen prey to Powder Post beetles. These tiny insects love to burrow into wood and digest the wood from the inside out. Their small size (about a pin head) and their resilience to extermination can make them a bit of a foregone conclusion for this type of large, tasty timber. After inspection, it was clear that the lifespan of these majestic beams was limited. Naturally, the question that followed was what to do about it and how to replace these beams.

These days, we don’t build with this kind of dimensioned lumber not only for cost reasons, but due to the fact that old growth wood is much harder to come by. Newer wood comes from trees harvested when they are younger so wood in the heart of the tree is not allowed as long to mature. Taller oak trees are even harder to find in the UK where forests have been largely thinned over the years for construction and ship building. A clear choice would be to switch to an engineered equivalent, most likely “glulam” which uses a series of smaller pieces that are laminated together. However, for the preservationists–of which I imagine there are plenty at Oxford–this could compromise the visual integrity of the older room.

Reportedly, when the college inquired with the foresters of the university (I don’t think my Alma Mater had any foresters) the dilemma was not the problem that many had originally thought it to be. Apparently, the college had fostered groves of Ash, Hazel and Oak trees on their land for building projects such as this. The trees were allowed to mature before being harvested and replanted over time, providing for the equivalent of a “cradle-to-cradle” process for maintaining such a building. In this case, the positive qualities of the wood (it’s inherent strength & beauty) were taken into account as much as its shortcomings (its inevitable susceptibility to becoming a beetle feast).

When I came across the story I couldn’t help but admire its foundation in sustainability that is as simple as it is rare. The details of the story have been blurred over time, but the entire recounting exemplifies the notion of sustainability in design, construction and supply chains. In this case, the powers that were involved with either the design, construction or maintenance of the space identified that one of its defining features was made from a commodity in limited supply. Just as important was admitting that despite the fact that it would last longer than the lives of its constructors, the material still had a finite lifespan of usefulness. The response was to provide a solution to a problem before it came to pass. This represents a true lifecycle analysis.

Today this concept is distressingly foreign to us. Despite the fact that we are still surrounded by things that are made from materials with a finite lifespan, the notion of ever reaching that point is rarely considered due to the fact that not only do we build things that last for less time, but even then we discard them before they wear themselves out. Buildings acutely participate in this mantra of shortsightedness. Few buildings that are constructed today, even the ones touted as “green”, are built to last the hundreds of years that College Hall has withstood. Most of our new building systems carry warranties of 30 to 40 years at most. Compounded with this is the fact that no one seems to worry about it;  the unspoken agreement is that the task of addressing or even assessing these structures 50 years from now will be someone else’s problem.

All aspects of society have a lot to learn from College Hall’s model. We spend a lot of time focusing on the strengths of new products and materials but less time accounting for their shortcomings. We spend a great deal of time, effort and money trying to assess and control problems that have arisen around us rather than plan for contingencies in advance. Some of these questions can be as simple as how we plan to provide fresh water or food to a rising population? For everything that we create there are inevitable results that we can plan for, many of which revolve around waste. More of our products could be designed to come apart, design to be recycled, or better yet upcycled (what is the difference?). If we want our homes to only last 30 to 40 years then we should be building them with an idea of how they can get dismantled. If we want them to last for 100, then we need to be building them better.

The repercussions of our actions do not end when we do, so our responsibility for them should respond in kind.

Image Credit: flickr: Holly Hayes

Though it is occurring at some scale on any dark-colored, man-made surface, the effects are most strongly felt in urban conditions where streets and the tops of buildings make up most of the net surface area facing the sky. In a city like New York, the result can be a local air temperature 5 to 10 degrees higher than surrounding townships in the depths of summer. Keep in mind, Manhattan is also on the coast which means that this temperature rise is happening despite the cooler normally found from coastal winds.

So it’s Hotter, Who Cares?

A common first question is: why is this an issue? There are a number of negative effects of heat islands, each causing problems at different scales. The easiest reason to change is for convenience. Adding five degrees to the air temperature when it is 70 degrees outside could be negligible, but adding it to 90 degrees is downright uncomfortable. When it comes to New York, there are plenty of days every summer where everyone would appreciate walking out into a day that was 5 degrees cooler. Studies show that the effect can actually be more pronounced at night when the thermal mass of materials that have been gaining heat all day still radiate warmth after the sun has set. While this may be the easiest reason to change, it is not the most important.

The repercussions go beyond the level of comfort on a sidewalk stroll. As exterior temperatures rise, the cooling systems of our buildings need to work harder to keep the indoor environment in the manner that we have grown accustomed. Summer months bring the peak daytime electricity load of New York City to its highest points of the year, at times pushing the grid to capacity. In these stretched situations, emergency power at the fringes of installed capacity can come from the power plants that are used the least—which often tend to be the oldest, dirtiest and least efficient–and brought online when we are out of other options to pull from. We consume needless amounts of energy getting rid of the heat that our buildings are designed to inherently attract. To add insult to injury, in order to produce more power we need burn more coal or natural gas, only releasing more heat (and tons of other great stuff) into the local atmosphere. According to the Department of Energy, space cooling uses an average of 9% of energy consumption in the average American household.

The final layer is the effect that higher temperatures have on natural ecosystems. Hotter air and building surfaces can burn past the range that is palatable of plants and animals. Though most cities are not teeming with natural life, there are opportunities to increase levels of biodiversity through the creation of microclimates. These seemingly small ecosystems help clean our air, retain our stormwater and pick up our waste. Cities may never be the capitol of the animal kingdom, but there is plenty of potential for them to support a complex ecology of species that extends far beyond humanity.

How Can We Fix It?

There are plenty of our societal norms that require large and complex changes in order to render a sustainable replacement, but this is not one of them. The problem of heat islands is extremely easy to address. Quite simply: light colored roofs. There is no longer any inherent reason of functionality or constructability that forces roofs to be black. We have evolved past the era where hot tar and asphalt have to be the go-to solutions for facilitating drainage.

the installation of a white EPDM roof at a residential project in the northeast

When it comes to low-sloped roofs, a white EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer) membrane offers a great solution with no extra work compared to its black counterpart. EPDM is basically a rubber roof membrane adhered either to insulation or a roofing substrate. We have recently specified a new Eco-White product on three separate projects, the first of which I got to go see installed last week. This is a product yielding no compromise in drainage performance at virtually the same price while saving the customer money on cooling costs. There is no reason this should not be the industry standard.

A recent study of temperature performance for roofing material conducted at Columbia University yielded powerful results to the dialogue of prompting more building owners and developers to make the switch. According to the results of the test, the dark, sunlight-absorbing surfaces of some New York City roofs reached 170 degrees Fahrenheit on July 22, 2011, a day that set a city record for electricity usage during the peak of a heat wave (which means that the air was full of the emissions of metro area coal plants). But in the largest discrepancy of that day, a white roofing material was measured at about 42 degrees cooler!

Temperature variations reported for black and white roofs under the same conditions for a study conducted at Columbia University

Green roofs go a step further. Instead of reflecting that energy upward, plants harness it to purify the air and consume carbon dioxide. The combination of  roots and soil not only provide an insulating barrier for the building below, but the process of transpiration (plants releasing water into the air in the form of vapor) removes heat from the soil to leave the roof surface even cooler in the summer months. Green roofs may be a more expensive option, but the results yield more dividends including the retention of storm water as well as fostering the very urban microclimates that heat islands deteriorate in the first place.

More on green and blue roofs: One Roof, Two Roofs, Green Roofs, Blue Roofs

For weekend warriors or the cash-strapped population, there are still easy options to be deployed on a budget. Roofing grade white or reflective paints can turn an existing black roof into one with a high albedo. Though the effectiveness of a painted roof deteriorates by 50% after 2 years, it is still much better than nothing. “It’s the lowest hanging fruit. It’s very cheap to do; it’s a retro-fit. You don’t need a skilled labor force. And you don’t have to wait for a roof to be retired,” said Stuart Gaffin, leading scientist of the Columbia University study. “So if you really talk about ways in which you brighten urban albedo, this is the fastest, cheapest way to do it.”

There is no reason why this should not be the new standard for how we construct and renovate our buildings. The challenge is straightforward, the problems are clear and the solutions are plentiful.

Image Credit: thinkprogress.org , dnainfo.com

But the construction market is strapped now? Precisely.

The bursting of the housing bubble and the onset of the Great Recession has brought plenty of unwanted side effects, but when it comes to the prospect of making our building stock more sustainable there may be a silver lining. Tight times have a way of bringing out the glow in efficiency for consumers–whether it be in lighting, appliances, materials or even cutting down on unneeded space. But more importantly, green building activity has room to capture a larger percentage of the marketplace given that construction spending has contracted so much from pre-recession highs. As the construction industry rebuilds itself we have the chance for it to be rebuilt in a more sustainable image.

Economic indicators have yet to forecast robust growth in the U.S. construction market, but it seems as thoughthe bleeding may have stopped. In any case, we have a long road ahead to a healthy construction market. According to the Department of Commerce, construction spending in December 2011 was $62.3 million for a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $816 billion. The industry is far from down and out, but compared to the December of 2007 that boasted numbers of $87.1 million and $1.14 billion respectively, we are a ways from boom time. Therein lies the opportunity.

In 2008, green building comprised an estimated $17 billion of a $212 billion housing market (or 8%) according to McGraw Hill. It would be one thing if the green building market contracted proportionally with the rest of the construction industry, but the data indicates otherwise. While the housing market contracted to a $98 billion in 2011 (a 54% decrease), green building remained steady at $17 billion, now comprising 17% of the market. Some industry experts expect the trend to continue. McGraw Hill’s own estimates point to a green building making up 29-38% of the housing market by 2015, as much as a 5-fold increase from 2011.

The time to ask for a greener project is now when contractors are hungry for work. We have, at our disposal, a talented work force that remains relatively inactive and likely willing to branch out into different means and methods if it leads to more work. Every building professional that is walked through a greener project makes it that much easier to build sustainably on the next one–even stalwart professionals can be turned into believers after experiencing the process. The result is a more educated work force that can better response to the inquiries and demands of a more interested pool of consumers.

Each project that gets completed in a more sustainable way is doing more than just producing a home–it’s building the base of industry evolution; giving orders to new companies for new products, securing production line quotas, establishing the baseline for a new generation of demand, building support for the evolution of building codes. Much like our energy grid, contributing to the marketplace in a green but intermittent fashion can sometimes cause more problems than it solves. Consistency is what businesses and companies are searching for.

Image Credit: http: whygreenbuildings.com ,

Dubbed “Harlem Harvest”, this theoretical project was charged with exploring a new life for an existing waste transfer station in New York City. The design combines a new bike storage facility, a new kindergarten school and a vertical farming greenhouse, garnished by new floating community garden plots lining the coast. As our proficiency with mixed-use buildings develops we are becoming more aware that the ecology of programs (architect for “uses”) integrated together in a building is just as important as the series of systems needed to make the building function.

More on Vertical Farms: A New Wave of Agriculture: Vertical Farming 101

Building 3rd Floor Plan (click to enlarge)

Given that New York is without space to locally dispose of its own waste, every piece of trash produced on the island has to be carted off to a new resting place. Waste transfer stations placed along the city’s coastline provide docking points for large barges to take trash out of sight and out of mind. Garbage trucks can arrive and slide into place before dumping their collected contents on the waiting ships below. (These sophisticated methods of waste management are still in use today)

This particular station sits just offshore, held aloft over the Hudson River on a series of wooden pilings and connected back to land by a large concrete ramp. A steel structure sits on top of the wooden base with its columns and beams encased in concrete for floor plates that can support fully-loaded trucks. In the vein of true low-cost, municipal construction, the exterior and roof was clad in light-weight corrugated metal. After years of loyal service the building was decommissioned and has laid dormant ever since.

Structure:

Despite being vacant and lonely, the “bones” of the building still had plenty to offer. Having been built to support a tremendous structural load, the network of steel could serve as a base for whatever new uses the site could foster. Concrete and steel are also very energy intensive to manufacture and erect with the concrete industry being one of the largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the country. Any existing structural material that can be reused in its current form is not only saving demolition energy and landfill space, but avoids the new energy that needs to be poured into reproducing these materials from scratch.

As a result, the project retained the wooden piers, the concrete slab and most of the steel structure—the pitched roof and some of the wall columns were removed. The slab at the top of the access ramp was originally equipped with a series of large holes that facilitated the pouring of trash down to the waiting barges below. Now the existing punctures could also serve as the perfect opportunity to pierce service cores (fire stairs, elevator, mechanical systems) through the building. Altogether the proposal retains tens of thousands pounds of material.

A Living System of Services:

Even if the building could perform all of the aforementioned tasks flawlessly, it could still be acting as a net drain of resources requiring only more infrastructure to be built in order to facilitate it. Instead, this building strove to be resource-positive in every aspect possible. The project creates an integrated ecology of systems that help maximize efficiency and minimize the need for incoming energy.

The main service core of the building sits embedded in the vertical farm. Spanning through all stories, the core is slid through the existing openings in the slab in order to provide the vertical connections needed for circulation, fire safety, and mechanical needs without the need for excessive demolition and restructuring. Outside of the necessary conveyance systems of stairs and elevators, the core holds a series of systems that work together to provide power, heat, fresh air, and clean water.

Starting on the bottom floor, the system actually begins where the food process ends, utilizing 3 anaerobic food digestors to consume organic waste and turn it into fuel stock. Inside the large chambers, food waste is broken down by organisms to leave behind water, organic sludge (used as a natural fertilizer component) and methane gas that is extracted and piped up to a 1MW cogeneration fuel cell on the floor above. The power comes with virtually no emissions and is coupled with the 102 kw of photovoltaic capacity (arranged over structural slabs on the southern face of the green house) to onsite battery storage capable of holding 4 MW of capacity. Power storage is vital to balance out the intermittent nature of many renewable power sources.

The heat from the fuel cell is combined with the 15.3 million BTUs of heat that can come from a roof covered with evacuated solar tubes to help temper the entire facility.  The top floor hosts its own living machine (separate from the one in the school) to refine water from both rain and the digestors (no human waste water) so that it can be used for farming, avoiding any draw from the city’s potable water supply. Hydroponic farming systems alone can use 80% less water than conventional farming.

Building the Food Cycle:

New York City perpetually battles with bringing food onto the island given that almost no food is produced there. Harlem Harvest tries to tackle both sides of this issue by making it easier for imported food to enter the city while also creating a testing bed for more locally grown produce.

As one of the densest cities in the world, New York carries a large demand for food, all of which has to negotiate the rivers, bridges and tunnels to get onto the island. Nearly every bit of the $36 billion that city residents annually spend on food is imported. As the population grows, more land is allocated outside of the city limits to sustain the appetite of the metropolis. Unsurprisingly, food is only one of nearly every resource for which New York takes more than it gives back. With the influx of food comes the costs in dollars, time and energy needed to bring everything into the Big Apple. Yet at the same time, New York is not far from local farmland.

The Hudson River allows for direct access to over 200,000 acres of farmland that can be linked to a new landing point, specifically targeting the upper half of the Manhattan and helping to address the estimated $660 million of unmet demand for local food in NYC. 17% of the Hudson River Valley is dedicated to farmland, producing $5.5 billion annually in food products. At the same time, transportation, distribution and uncoordinated direct points of sale constrict local farmers, ultimately helping to send over half of the produce from New York farms outside of the state.

The design offers a docking point for nearby Hudson farmers to offload their food for distribution into Manhattan. The open plaza of the main level can also easily serve as the grounds for a farmer’s market—a social event very popular throughout the city. Even then, New York suffers from the heavy carbon footprint on its food resulting from having it all imported. Our current agricultural system owes a great deal of its existence to petroleum so any efforts to bring the point of production closer to the point of consumption are paramount to a more sustainable development model.

For Harlem Harvest, connecting to the sources of food up the river is paired with creating a source of food onsite. A four story vertical farm of metal and glass defines the southern edge of the building, serving as a living billboard of sustainable farming practices to the not only the tens of thousands of cars that pass by on the Henry Hudson parkway, but also the residents along the uptown coastline.

With adjustable levels of hydroponic farming, the greenhouse could generate an estimated 182 tons of food a year, providing a stable source of fresh produce to Harlem year round. Along the water’s edge, the scheme calls for a series of floating farming “plots” for a new, scalable way of adding community garden space to the island. With land demand always increasing, the space for community gardens is highly coveted. These floating planting beds allows for additional acreage to be developed by residents in a system that could be expanded over time, respond to changes in sea level and be deployed virtually anywhere along the island’s perimeter.

Food & Education:

It is easy to point out that even operating at its best, this one project would have a miniscule affect on the total food consumption of New York’s millions of residents, but the building could have a larger affect on bolstering the discussions about improving the food system on the infrastructural level. It is one thing to prove that a advantageous technology (like vertical farming) is viable, but this alone leaves the mission incomplete. The second part, and arguably just as important, is educating others on why the system works and how it can be deployed.

Ascending the ramp from the shore, arrivals see the tall, glass structure of the farm paired with the more tactile box of wood that they must pass beneath to enter the plaza. Held aloft above the open square, the wooden form is a school targeting the beginning years of formal education. While the school itself uses things like a green roof playscape and an in-house living machine to bolster the sustainability component of its curriculum, its location and direct access to the vertical farm is the kindergarten’s greatest asset. Here, children can see and experience the process of sustainable farming in a prime location to learn of how complex the food cycle truly is. From there, the information can migrate outwards into the city that growing kids will continue to occupy in countless ways.

Ironically, the site sits right beside Riverbank State Park, which is a crafty name for the turf-laden space that covers the sewage treatment plant built at water level to help the island deal with its large wastewater problem—stemming in no small part from its Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) system that combines stormwater with municipal wastewater. The Gowanus Canal suffers from similar ailments that could be addressed with new urban models for development and remediation. The unlikely pairing becomes a side-by-side comparison of the commonly accepted notion of infrastructure and what a new generation of combined systems can do to help improve the function of a city. One facility is tasked with taking a harmful, sometimes toxic substance resulting from a dated series of cultural norms and tries to mitigate its caustic properties enough to be released into the natural environment. The other collects natural resources and uses them to produce more of them for the city that it services. One is trying to minimize the damage that we inflict while the other is actively improving how we live and how that lifestyle impacts the environment.

[Harlem Harvest was an entry for the E.N.Y.A. Harlem Edge Competition. Submitted by Tyler Caine (myself), Ryan Doyle and Guido Eluneta, the submission won 3^rd Prize in the competition.]

[AlI Images are the property of the competition team]