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But there are glimmers of hope, including recent developments in energy efficiency and renewable sources. The three fastest growing sources of energy in the world today are wind (25 percent per year), photovoltaic (PV) solar cells (20 percent per year), and biofuels (15 percent per year). But that high percentage is applied to a small amount of energy production, so these sources are still a drop in the bucket. Yet their industries are advancing.
To solve our energy dilemma, we need to coordinate technology development, innovative public policy, and enlightened consumer choice. Technology must advance clean coal and carbon sequestration, nuclear safety and waste management, vehicle technology, and biofuels and other renewable energy. Public policies must fuel research, regulate efficiency, reduce environmental impact, facilitate distributed generation, manage land use and transportation, and provide incentives that can reduce oil use, carbon emissions, and energy demand. And the consuming public must make decisions informed by facts and the realization that we are all in this together.
Developments in three important energy consuming sectors – buildings, electricity, and transportation – are converging to provide a scenario of hope. The building thermal envelope has been the basis for energy codes since the 1970s. Recently, the importance of electrical appliances and lighting has been recognized and “green building” guidelines have begun to take a Whole Building approach. What is emerging in some guidelines is what I call Whole Building Life-Cycle with the added consideration of occupant health, embodied energy, and life-cycle environment impacts.
But this evolution will not be complete until codes and guidelines broaden the considerations of the role that buildings play in a community’s energy and environment. This Whole Community approach adds consideration of on-site distributed energy, site and neighborhood design, and regional connectivity. This extends the energy considerations of the building itself to its role in community energy, including distributed energy, transportation energy, and land use.
The articles in this issue elaborate on these themes of building efficiency, on-site generation, and distributed energy. The Virginia Tech solar house provides a great example of energy efficiency, aesthetic design, livability, and on-site power generation. It is also capable of providing power to the grid. With public policies for “net metering” now readily available in more than 40 states including Virginia, excess power to the grid spins the electric meter backwards, essentially providing economic return to on-site generation at retail electricity rates.
The Consortium for Energy Restructuring describes how residential rooftop PV and other clean distributed generation in communities, like wind, microturbines, combined heat and power systems, and fuel cells, can add resilience to our power network and reduce long-range transmission losses.
But the Whole Community energy concept goes further than building efficiency and distributed energy. Buildings are part of the fabric of the community. Their location, site characteristics, and density define our neighborhoods, our land use, and our transportation energy, which is 96 percent dependent on oil and consumes 68 percent of the oil we use. Our sprawling land development patterns dictate heavy use of auto transport and preclude more efficient rail and non-motorized commutes. Green building and development guidelines that recognize the opportunities for improved land use and transportation efficiency will soon appear in building codes and “form-based” zoning.
And new personal vehicles can be a part of our Whole Community, distributed energy future. In addition to hybrid-electric vehicles (HEV) and flex-fuel hybrids that can use 86 percent ethanol (E85), plug-in hybrids (PHEV) can use distributed generation energy sources, such as a PV array on a south facing garage. On those sunny afternoons when the car is not in the garage, the array could feed the grid. Vehicles fully charged with off-peak power overnight can be plugged in at home or in parking garages during the day to feed the grid during periods of peak demand. This vehicles-to-grid (V2G) system can provide electrical storage for intermittent distributed generation like wind and solar power, which cannot be controlled to match peak demand.
This vision for Whole Community energy integrates 1) energy-efficient, green buildings, planned and developed in mixed-use, compact, and transit-oriented developments; 2) on-site an distributed electricity generation to add resilience and efficiency to the local power system; and 3) electrified transportation vehicles with V2G storage capacity.
Pie in the sky? Hundreds of researchers and students worldwide don’t think so, and you may not think so either after reading this issue of Virginia Tech Research.
— John Randolph, director
School of Public and International Affairs
Randolph won the 2006 William R. and June Dale Prize for Excellence in Urban and Regional Planning, for “Fostering a Regional Approach to Environmental Planning.”
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