Four the Future - September 17

Today, all about making better buildings: healthier, cooler, warmer, and efficient.

• Green buildings may make employees feel better, a study finds
  Source: Los Angeles Times; September 8, 2010
  Summary: Green building isn't merely about environmental concerns, but also with the productivity and well-being of building occupants. The University of Michigan studies two groups of workers who moved into a green office building. It was found that absenteeism due to "asthma, allergies, depression and stress" decreased. Productivity increased. The study appears in the September edition of the American Journal of Public Health.
  Opinion: Green building reduces operating costs, reduces the burden on the environment, and improves worker productivity. More study will have to be done to quantify the effect, but it was already a valuable thing even if you don't care about the quantified increase in worker well-being.
  
• Air Conditioning Using 90 Percent Less Power
  Source: Miller-McCune; September 9, 2010
  Summary: Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have invented a swamp cooler which uses a desiccant (like the little packets found in consumer electronics and some pharmaceuticals that say "do not eat") to reduce the amount of energy necessary to cool a building. In dry climates, the newly developed cooler uses only 10% of the energy of high efficiency compressor systems. In wetter climates, it uses 50% less. Power consumption can be reduced more by using solar heating to drive off the absorbed water. Cooling systems currently use 14% of all energy in the United States. Commercially available units could be on the market in two or three years.
  Opinion: New technologies could make great strides. If this research pans out, this is one solution could vastly reduce the amount of energy a building uses. And, because air conditioners are used during peak energy time of day, it will disproportionately reduce our dependence on carbon emitting energy production from gas and coal.
• Body Heat to Warm Up French Apartments
  Source: TriplePundit; September 10, 2010
  Summary: Subways get hot due, in part, to all the people in them. On average, each passenger generates approximately 100 watts of energy per ride. So, French engineers in Paris are using the principles of geothermal, 17 apartments will be heated using a heat exchange. A link already exists between the subway and the apartment, so it's feasible in this situation, but it’s currently too expensive to retrofit it in other locations. But, other cities are looking at the concept for their systems.
  
  
  
  Opinion: Using cold air from an apartment to cool passengers while using warm air to heat the apartments. Imagine that. Two problems, when seen as part of a system, can become its own solution. This type of systems thinking is what is driving the sustainability movement. Nothing exists isolated from everything else.
  
• Climate-change study: Today's power plants aren't the problem
  Source: Christian Science Monitor; September 9, 2010
  Summary: Current sources of greenhouse gases are bad enough, but pale in comparison to the carbon emitters of the future. Creating sources of energy which prevent the creation of new carbon-emitting plants must be emphasized. We’re not going to start switching out the emitters we already have. Technological innovation is necessary to prevent their spread. If the each plant in the current inventory of emitters is allowed to operate for its full design life, global average temperatures would remain below the 2 C (3.6 F) threshold.
  Opinion: Creating more efficient buildings, and retrofitting current ones with advanced technologies, is necessary to prevent the construction of many more emitting plants when new buildings are being constructed all the time. The new buildings may be necessary, but the emissions from their energy use must be avoided.