Energy Efficiency, Green Building Standards, Get International Notice
, Kansas City Science and Technology Center, Kansas (LEED-certified).jpg)
Interest in energy efficiency, including green buildings, seems to be on the increase as other efforts to combat climate change run up against opposition targeted primarily at their costs.
By contrast, a recently released study from a pro-green building and appliance group, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, suggests that boosting energy efficiency would actually result in a net benefit for the American economy. Yet, the report -- which itself is a review of dozens of other studies -- concluded that energy efficiency is often left out of the discussion:
"Despite very strong evidence of the many cost-effective investments that could enhance further gains in energy productivity, the national energy and climate policy debates too often overlook the energy efficiency resource. The result is an ongoing series of national modeling assessments that tend to overstate the cost of needed changes in the nation's energy and climate change policies."
The document comes out at about the same time that energy officials from the world's most powerful countries agreed to embark on a new high-level approach to energy efficiency by establishing the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency. The declaration adopted by the G8group of nations, plus China, India and South Korea, called improving energy efficiency "one of the quickest, greenest, and most cost-effective way to address energy security, climate change, and ensuring economic growth."
There's evidence that just in the building sector alone there's much work to be done. A recent analysis by the federal government's Energy Information Administration, showed that the residential and commercial sectors accounted for the largest increases in carbon dioxide emissions, among end-users of energy. Industrial and transportation, by contrast, have flattened or actually declined slightly.
Some areas are taking the challenge seriously. The city of Los Angeles a few weeks ago enacted a green building ordinance that the city called "the most far reaching plan" of its type by any big city in the nation. The ordinance, which the city hopes will reduce carbon emissions by 80,000 tons by 2012, among other things requires all new projects larger than 50 units or 50,000 square feet meet the "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design" standards developed by the U.S. Green Building Council.
That group, by the way, estimates that residential and commercial buildings account for 39 percent of United States carbon dioxide emissions, more than any other sector.
All of this comes as countries struggle with trying to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the face of economic pressures such as skyrocketing fuel prices. Opponents of the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill, which would impose a cap-and-trade system to reduce emissions seized on the potential costs of the measure (although backers say it could cost more to do nothing) in their successful attempt to derail the legislation in the U.S. Senate the other day.
However, the private energy efficiency group's report concluded that a 20 percent to 30 percent efficiency gain in the United States economy by 2030 could produce a net increase of between 500,000 to 1.5 million jobs. Based on the studies, policies leading to greater efficiency would likely increase the nation's gross domestic product by 0.1 percent by that year, the report said.
It's not the first time that the organization, which is backed by a large number of public and private entities, including utilities and state and federal agencies, has tried to raise the profile of energy efficiency programs. Last month, it issued another report suggesting that the country could cost-effectively reduce energy consumption by up to 30 percent during the next quarter-century. In a statement accompanying the report, the organization said the "hidden U.S. energy efficiency boom," had already slashed energy consumption to half of what it was in 1970, as measured against dollars of economic output.
In its announcement of the new international energy efficiency effort, the U.S. Department of Energy said the partnership would serve as "a high-level forum for facilitating a broad range of actions." The actual declaration also promoted the idea that participants would exchange information in a number of areas, including building standards and codes, and methods for energy measurement, auditing and verification. It also would have as a goal developing public-private partnerships for improving energy efficiency and "enabling" joint research and development into energy efficient technologies.
(Photo: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Kansas City Science and Technology Center, LEED-certified building; Wikipedia)
