Conservation vs Renewable Energy

Recently a consultant group visited our office to talk to us about designing ‘healthy buildings.’ This is an admirable proposition, but largely at odds with current strategies to drive down energy use. That is a conundrum for another post. However, their premise was that cheap, clean energy would be available within the next 10 years and energy consumption would no longer be a driver in the design of new buildings. I found this premise interesting because I have often wondered what would happen if sustainable, pollution free energy was made available to the market place at an affordable and competitive price.

Is this so farfetched to consider? It has been reported that, in some cases, wind and solar energy sources are now economically competitive without subsidies. Elon Musk is coming out with a line of solar shingles for your home with his Powerwall 2 to store energy when the sun is not available. Theoretically, you should be able to run one of his electric cars off the power you get from the solar panels on your garage roof, not to mention the rest of the house. Free clean energy and totally off the grid – assuming you can afford one of his cars and have a roof for those shingles. Maybe this isn’t such a great solution for urban apartment dwellers. But, nonetheless, a great idea for suburban communities in the sunbelt.

If cheap, clean energy were readily available to everyone, what would be the effect? Every time you got in your Tesla would you put it in Ludicrous Drive? Would you turn your electronic gizmos up to ‘eleven’? Would you leave your thermostat at 75 and walk around your house in your shorts? Would you really care about conserving energy if it was cheap and clean?

Once all the architects and engineers design our buildings to be healthy, would we care about sun orientation anymore? Solar heat gain? Percentage of glass in a façade? What would be the driver for the design of new buildings? Would designers finally be free to design whatever the client wanted with little regard to mechanical system controls and super insulated exterior walls? One could argue that early modern architecture turned its back on the environmental lessons of the past – just check out the passive energy conservation design elements in an early salt box houses of the 1700s. The Modernists produced buildings with terrible thermal bridging problems. Who thought exposing the concrete structural frame was a great idea anyway? From this era we saw vast amounts of floor-to-ceiling single pane glass on all sides of the building. There was little to no insulation in the walls or ceilings. I guess they thought carbon sourced energy was going to be cheap forever and who cared about long-term climate change.

But, with cheap, clean energy can we look back to the 30s, 40s and 50s? Viva Corbu with his concrete apartment buildings! Viva Mie’s with office buildings of glass and steel! How about Johnson’s Glass House for everyone — don’t forget the curtains! Maybe yes, probably not, those design aesthetics are dated, but raise an interesting question. What would our design profession look like if energy was not an issue? Surely we would still be interested in green building materials and products, and presumably creature comforts inside the buildings would be paramount. But the overall design of the building could be almost limitless, auto shading curtain wall systems could take care of glare without anyone thinking about it. Occupancy sensors would automatically adjust room temperature and lighting. Buildings you just use without thinking about turning off the lights – would it be a brave new world?

Clean, cheap, limitless energy would certainly change the way we live and design our environment. I, for one, am excited about the possibilities and the challenges. Let’s hope, for the plant’s sake, it’s not much more than ten years away.