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ALBION DISTRICT LIBRARY BY PERKINS + WILL IS A 2018 COTE TOP TEN RECIPIENT. IMAGE: DOUBLESPACE PHOTOGRAPHY

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The Committee on the Environment (COTE®) is an AIA Knowledge Community working for architects, allied professionals, and the public to achieve climate action and climate justice through design. We believe that design excellence is the foundation of a healthy, sustainable, and equitable future. Our work promotes design strategies that empower all AIA members to realize the best social and environmental outcomes with the clients and the communities they serve.

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  • 1.  Scott Shell op-ed on phasing out gas

    Posted 11-16-2020 09:16 AM

    a strong op-ed from EHDD's Scott Shell in The Architect's Newspaper: 

    "A wave of state-wide policy decisions over the last two years has signaled that lawmakers are waking up to the dangers associated with building with gas-and the future of gas appliances in homes and buildings is likely limited. Four states-Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, and California-have opened up investigations into phasing out their gas distribution systems, and nearly 40 cities in California have passed policies to phase-out gas in new construction. A statewide all-electric building code in California may also be imminent.

    By continuing to build with gas, despite clear indications that policymakers are moving to eliminate fossil fuels in homes, we are setting up our clients for expensive retrofits to remove these gas appliances before the end of their service life. While retrofitting homes to remove fossil fuel appliances is costly, building homes that are all-electric from the get-go is actually less expensive and can even lower utility bills for households.

    Understanding the benefits of all-electric construction, it's imperative that as architects, we lead the way towards a healthier, more sustainable future by educating our clients about the climate dangers associated with gas."

    https://www.archpaper.com/2020/11/op-ed-climate-change-why-are-we-still-bui…

    #leadership #climateaction #designthefuture



    ------------------------------
    Kira Gould
    Principal
    Kira Gould CONNECT
    Oakland CA
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: Scott Shell op-ed on phasing out gas

    Posted 11-18-2020 08:42 AM
    I do not see how we can convert all of our buildings to electricity for all energy needs at this time. There is currently not enough electrical energy to supply even the existing infrastructure with the electricity it needs. California was going through brownouts on a regular basis and New York is shutting down the Indian Point Nuclear Generators next year. It is impossible to replace the amount of electricity these 2 plants generate by the time they are scheduled to close. We need to phase in new facilities to produce the current capacity before we can add to the demand. Sooner or later people will realize that without the added capacity it does no good to our clients to be dependent on electricity that the system is not able to produce.

    ------------------------------
    Edwin Elliott AIA
    Principal
    Edwin O. Elliott, Jr., AIA - Architect
    Pleasantville NY
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: Scott Shell op-ed on phasing out gas

    Posted 11-19-2020 08:14 AM

    Thank you for responding! I touched base with Scott Shell to help me respond more fully / accurately, and here's the skinny:

    These are good questions that we hear a lot.

     

    In California we use a lot more electricity during summer due to AC than we do during the winter.  Building electrification will primarily increase winter loads by shifting heating and hot water from gas to electricity, and only increase summer loads by a tiny amount as shown in the graphic attached.


    This will actually level out grid usage over the year and should bring costs down.  Rather than building powerplants for just a few hours of summer peak, they can be used throughout the year.

     

    The worst power outages we've had in California have been due to the wild fires, and these have been getting much worse as warmer temperatures dry out the vegetation.  Building electrification is one of many steps to reduce the warming that is exacerbating these fires.

     

    The bigger grid impacts are going to come from electric vehicles rather than building electrification.  For both buildings and vehicles, figuring out how to be flexible with WHEN we use electricity can be a huge help.  The electric grid tends to be very lightly used in the middle of the night, and in many places there is so much solar on the grid that using electricity in the middle of the day is a big benefit.  

     

    I wouldn't have believed it two years ago, but utility scale batteries are growing very fast.  Two years ago the Hornsdale Australia installed by far the largest battery in the world-100 megawatts--next to a solar facility.  But now PG&E is installing one ten times as large down near Monterey.  Renewable energy + batteries are getting built in a fraction of the time that it takes for a traditional power plant.

     

    One more question we get a lot is about not being able to run buildings during a power outage if they are all electric.  These ordinance only apply to new buildings, and all new appliances are required to have electronic ignition, in addition to fans, motors, and controls.  Gas appliances will not work in a power outage.  The one exception is a stove top which can be lit with a match, an oven cannot.  In California the Utilities estimate restoring gas service after an earthquake will take months, while restoring electricity will take hours.

     

    We have a lot of work to do, but it is also moving much faster than even the advocates predicted.


    --

    Kira Gould CONNECT

    415 690 0182

    kiragould@kiragould.com


    listen to Women in Sustainability Design the Future here (or on your favorite podcast platform)


    learn how to design, build, plan, manufacture a CarbonPositive future: tap recordings from the recent CarbonPositive RESET! 1.5ºC Global Teach-In.


    consider I grew up on the land of the Kiikaapoi, the Osage, the Kaw, and the Ochethi Sakowin; I now live on the land of the Ohlone and the Chochenyo. https://native-land.ca/






  • 4.  RE: Scott Shell op-ed on phasing out gas

    Posted 11-23-2020 09:50 AM
    Edwin, I think the solution is 3-fold, in which we retrofit buildings to reduce demand; use efficient electrical appliances (heat pumps for heating, cooling, water heating, induction cooking); and produce more solar and other renewables, both utility-scale and distributed. In the Chicago climate, a heat pump is about 3 times more efficient than electric resistance heat, so for sure we can't use inefficient methods and expect to electrify in short order. 

    There's another issue here, though--while retrofitting is a crucial step, it's often expensive and disruptive, and with our cheap energy, doesn't pay for itself quickly enough for most homeowners or landlords to want to consider it. I'm curious if this community can quantify this issue for policymakers to use--I'm hoping 2030 and RMI are up to this already and will seek out their latest news. Ultimately I believe this is a regional issue, as our Chicago retrofit solutions will not make sense in Florida or Arizona. 

    --
    Tom Bassett-Dilley AIA CPHC
    708.434.0381






  • 5.  RE: Scott Shell op-ed on phasing out gas

    Posted 11-23-2020 09:50 AM
    Kira's points and the data supporting them are well taken. There is however, a concern about redundancy. If we rely on only one source of energy there would nowhere to turn to in the event of failure. This is where distributed energy comes in. If the grid fails, neighborhoods and large facilities need to have a reliable fallback in local generation whether it be sourced from solar, wind or fuel cell. 
    Another factor is the depletion of natural resources, especially rare earths, well documented in the work of Antonio Capilla and Alicia Delgado in their book Thanatia. As matters stand we (the human inhabitants of planet earth) are consuming natural resources at 1.7 times the rate of replenishment. In some cases of course there is a finite supply of materials so there is no question of replenishment.
    As critical as these technologies are, much more critical is the political and economic task of slowing growth while at the same time ensuring economic equity. Tim Jackson's Prosperity Without Growth and Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics are excellent guides to what we have to do. This is not a trivial task and architects tinkering with windmills and such will not get us to where we need to be. To channel another thinker (from his 1848 work) "...philosophers have only interpreted the world...the point, however, is to change it".



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    Hubert Murray FAIA
    Cambridge MA
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  • 6.  RE: Scott Shell op-ed on phasing out gas

    Posted 11-24-2020 12:06 PM
    I completely agree that a deeper shift is required (and I think Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics is an excellent guide). But given where things stand now on all fronts, we are going to have to do all the work at once -- the structural work on our systems (including remembering what those systems are FOR: they are meant to support human life, not prop up profits from an extractive industry) and the other hard work, which includes getting our communities off fossil fuels and on to support systems we can sustain and that will sustain us (in all ways) and which consider resiliency and redundance.

    ------------------------------
    Kira Gould
    Principal
    Kira Gould CONNECT
    Oakland CA
    ------------------------------



  • 7.  RE: Scott Shell op-ed on phasing out gas

    Posted 11-30-2020 10:01 AM
    Well said, Kira. My view is that the deeper, structural work is actually in good alignment with the technical work. As Amory Lovins brilliantly described decades ago in Soft Energy Paths, more distributed, decentralized systems are potentially more democratic, and require less centralization of capital, power, and wealth. (That "potentially" represents a lot of work, I know.)

    I wonder if another way we as architects can begin to address these structural issues is through material choices. Our buildings today are made of materials produced by an industrial, profit-maximizing, short-term focused system we recognize to be unsustainable. What if our material choices could support an alternative (no-growth or steady state) economy? Such an economy would need to prioritize investment in human labor over capital -- i.e. paying people well rather than using capital-intensive technologies to maximize short-term profit. Could we look at the "embodied capital bias" of materials? -- i.e., the fraction of a material's cost that is tied up in capital or energy (vs labor)? Or perhaps the "embodied centralization" -- the extent to which its production requires large-scale investment, which creates a barrier to entry for small players and therefore tends toward centralization? Or "embodied ownership" -- the percent made by cooperative or social enterprises? Just some initial thoughts -- but I would love to render some of these things visible so we can begin to design the economy we want with each building.

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    Carl Sterner AIA
    Director of Design & Sustainability
    SOL Developments LLC
    Cincinnati OH
    ------------------------------



  • 8.  RE: Scott Shell op-ed on phasing out gas

    Posted 12-07-2020 11:07 AM
    Carl, 
    Thank you for your thoughtful response ... I am captivated by the notion of rendering some of this visible so that we can start designing the economy we want with each building. 

    The economic system that shapes so much of how we live and what we build is not set up to support human or ecological health, quality of life, or even the possibility of our species surviving long term on this planet. It is long past time to reject the constructs that do not support our goals.

    Let's find a way and a time in early 2021 to get some brains on a zoom to brainsail this a bit. 

    Kira 

    --

    Kira Gould CONNECT

    415 690 0182

    kiragould@kiragould.com


    listen to our podcast on how we will Design the Future with Women in Sustainability

    learn how to design/ build/ make a CarbonPositive future: CarbonPositive RESET! 1.5ºC Global Teach-In

    consider I grew up on land of the Kiikaapoi, the Osage, the Kaw, and the Ochethi Sakowin; I now live on land of the Ohlone and the Chochenyo https://native-land.ca/