A recent report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (part of the Department of Energy) shows that a medium sized retail building could cut its energy use in half using existing technology.  Here is the ABSTRACT from the report.
“The recommendations are not exhaustive, but we do try to emphasize the benefits of integrated building design, that is, a design approach that analyzes a building as a whole system, rather than as a disconnected collection of individually engineered subsystems.”

-Technical Support Document: Development of the Advanced Energy Design Guide for Medium Box Retail—50% Energy Savings
E.T. Hale, D.L. Macumber, N.L. Long, B.T. Griffith, K.S. Benne, S.D. Pless, and P.A. Torcellini

Despite the protestations to the contrary about the report not being exhaustive, it is 218 pages long with charts, graphs, spread sheets, etc.  This is a government version of not exhaustive.

http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/news/progress_alerts.cfm/pa_id=126

One of the experts that Endependence relies on for sound advice about building energy efficiency, Rick Chitwood of Chitwood Energy Management, has been pointing out the failings of the hodgepodge design of buildings for years.  Here he discusses the easy energy efficiency gains that can be achieved in a residence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENHciW-fK5Q

The energy used by buildings is the largest contributor to greenhouse gases.

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-5-v-38.html

The low hanging fruit of building energy efficiency is there for the taking.  No breakthroughs are needed, just a better use of existing technology and design.

Energy challenges break into two categories, stationary and mobile. Let’s talk about Stationary Energy Challenges.

When we are talking stationary, we are talking about buildings. Buildings use energy in two ways, electricity and burning natural gas, propane or oil.

According to Kent Peterson, past president of ASHRAE (which is the group of engineers that design the mechanical systems in buildings) buildings use 71% of energy and produce the largest percentage of greenhouse gases. This is due to the fact that what engineers call the built environment (buildings) use electricity mostly generated by coal.

Have you heard the statistic which shows that much of today’s smog pollution in Los Angeles is caused by coal fired power plants in China?

Check out this site which shows you how dirty (or clean) your local energy producer is:

http://carma.org/region/detail/644

Check out Peterson’s assessment of the built environment’s energy appetite on this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOvBbBkwR5g

How do we solve our Stationary Energy Challenges?

Politicians say: clean coal, nuclear energy, green energy.

Endependence says:

Clean Coal: there is no such thing. Maybe there will be someday. But think about it, mineworkers risk their lives to remove coal from the ground. We burn that coal to make electricity which releases carbon dioxide. It is acknowledged by almost everyone that we need to stop releasing so much carbon dioxide. So we will clean the coal by “capturing” {how?} the carbon dioxide and then “sequestering” {shove it in a hole where it will never bother us again} the carbon dioxide.

This hole has to be somewhere that will never be shaken up enough by normal geologic processes (earthquakes, volcanoes and the like) to release the carbon dioxide. Have you heard about the controversy in Nevada over Yucca Mountain, the place the government chose to store all the nuclear waste?

In the case of clean coal, it seems you would have to create a Yucca Mountain type carbon storage “hole” under every coal powered power plant. Or truck the captured carbon dioxide to a centralized place like Yucca Mountain. Seems pretty far fetched, pretty far off in the future and very expensive.

Nuclear Energy: same kind of problem as clean coal, what do you do with the nuclear waste? Here are some sites to find out about the controversy over Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the place that the federal government has decided is the best place to store our nuclear waste permanently.

Check out these sites to find out about nuclear waste storage issues: http://library.thinkquest.org/17940/texts/nuclear_waste_storage/nuclear_waste_storage.html

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/waste.html

Right now in the United States, almost all of the nuclear waste ever generated at every nuclear plant in the country (about 20% of our electricity comes from nuclear power) is in a giant boric acid pool next to the nuclear plant.

Other big problems with a nuclear solution to our stationary energy challenges are that it takes years to build a nuclear power plant, they are very expensive to build, and the “decommissioning” of the plant often costs more than the original building cost.

This site from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency says decommissioning costs at least $300,000,000.00.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/decommissioning.html

Green Energy: when politicians talk about Green Energy, they are usually talking about renewable energy such as solar power, wind power, geothermal power, tidal power and energy made from biomass (organic materials, like plants and animal waste).

Of these technologies, both solar power and wind power are proven power generators which could be expanded easily, but with a cost.

The reason that currently we only get 2% of our energy in the U.S. from renewable sources is simple: cost.

Fossil fuels are cheap compared to renewable sources, especially coal. The problem is that the dollar cost of coal doesn’t take “externalities” (an economist’s term) like the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by coal burning into account.

To be truly energy independent, we need to use renewable energy instead finite energy sources (coal, oil, nuclear).

Net Zero Energy Buildings: back to Kent Peterson from the building mechanical engineers group. He says the solution to the Stationary Energy Challenge is two fold: buildings that don’t take in any more energy than they put out and a move to renewable energy sources. If you watch this video from Peterson, you will see that his organization, ASHRAE, has set a goal of Net Zero Energy Buildings by the year 2030.

It doesn’t require huge breakthroughs in technology, just a refinement of the design of buildings and the mechanical systems we are using now, and the will of society to make the choice to invest in a movement toward true Stationary energy independence. (combine energy and independence to get endependence)

Check out Peterson’s Net Zero Building views on this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y3YuxbCcDM