Build it Right: Cleaner Energy for Better Buildings

Ed Cohen-Rosenthal, Mary Schlarb, and Jennifer Thorne
with Adam Serchuk and Don Bradley

®American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) and
Renewable Energy Policy Project: http://www.repp.org

Edward Cohen-Rosenthal directs and Mary Schlarb is a Research Associate on the Work and Environment Initiative (WEI) at Cornell University. Jennifer Thorne is a Research Associate at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). Don Bradley is President of Bradley Builders and Developers, Inc. and of Solar Strategies Development Corp., 215-464-4780. Adam Serchuk, formerly REPP's Research Director, is now a Principal at Primen, Inc. To reach REPP, contact Virinder Singh, Research Director, or Mary Kathryn Campbell, Internet and Publications Director.

Buildings leave an enormous environmental footprint, and they determine our comfort and productivity. Growing the market for clean, affordable buildings will require numerous steps on the part of many actors, but it will have a tremendous payoff.

The Chicago Exposition of 1894 ushered in a new age of technology. Electricity played a leading role in the display: visitors rode electrified Ferris wheels and moving sidewalks, Edison lights twinkled in the exhibitions, and a Hall of Dynamos showed off the grandeur of electricity generation. Yet beyond the glow of the fairgrounds, most Chicago residents lit their homes with kerosene and gas, warmed them with coal and wood furnaces, and cooled them—if at all—with air dragged across ice blocks. The dramatic difference between the exposition and the world around it raised Americans' hopes for the future, but also provoked serious questions: Would the poor be able to afford these new inventions? How could rural America benefit from electric power, which had entered the world as a luxury product for the rich? And how could electricity replace the established system of coal, wood, and gas?

A century later we ask similar questions. Newspaper stories describe myriad new energy technologies, model homes, and demonstration facilities and laboratories. The public can read about fuel cells, solar panels, and the like; a lucky or wealthy few can actually use them. But, as in Chicago a century ago, the gap between technological promise and actual practice seems dauntingly wide. In fact, most Americans at the dawn of the 21st century still receive their power from coal-burning power plants, live in houses that waste energy, and use inefficient appliances and lighting.

The vantage point of the past century, in which city homes relied on coal chutes and woodpiles, provides perspective on the coalescing energy landscape of the new century. Take buildings, the focus of this report. They urge us to look farther ahead than perhaps any other consumer product. Consider these facts:

• Buildings under construction today will likely last 50–100 years.
  
• Energy consumed in U.S. homes will cost $138 billion in 2000, growing to $155 billion by 2020.3 For a typical household, the annual energy bill is more than $1,300.
  
• Over the 30 years of their mortgages, homeowners will pay more than $18,000 for energy to run their homes.
  
• Commercial building owners will spend more than $99 billion on energy in 2000, and almost $107 billion in 2020.
  
• Much of the energy expenditure for buildings is wasted. Current technologies and practices offer cost-effective opportunities to reduce energy use in new and existing buildings by 30–70%.