Yesterday the morning plenary session emphasised how politics and EU regulation has helped to promote sustainable building. Today’s plenary session focused on how the economic & market paradigms need to be remodelled to avoid the unintended consequences of the improving energy efficiencies that we can expect in the future with technological innovation. To use the words of Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker;
“Price is a critical aspect of climate control initiatives. Pricing needs to meet the ecological truth”
We were given examples of improved efficiency not delivering the full benefits possible. One of the most obvious being how we travel more when car fuel efficiency increases ! So we were presented with the concept of how energy and raw materials should become more expensive in tandem with their increase in efficiency. Not an easy model to design or implement. However, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker gave a very pracitical example of how Sweden combined regulation with economic instruments to sustain the success of corporations working in Sweden while simultaneously effecting a quantum improvement in air quality. It can be done but innovative thinking and bravery is required.
One great takeaway from Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker speech was that it only takes 1/4 kWh to take a 10 litre bucket of water 8,000m to the top of Mt Everest. In other words, electricity is remarkably cheap when you consider what it can do.
Scott Foster, Director of the Sustainable Energy Division of UNECE, expressed his belief that, despite the shortening window of opportunity to implement the ‘ambitions’ of COP21, he could see the climate change objectives being achieved by 2050. It is the rate to technological and social change over the past 50 years that encourages him in this belief. The world population is forecast to grow to 9 billion by 2020. There will be 235 cities the size of Paris need to house this increase in population. He sees Passive House as a critical solution for this housing need while still satisfying the needs of climate change.
I felt that the standout presentation of day 2 was from Monte Paulsen – delivering affordable housing solutions for remote Canadian communities. Oh, and they just happen to be Passive House certified ! I feel that something like this needs to be adopted to meet the immediate homeless and social housing needs in Ireland. The houses take 3 weeks to build from delivery on site to key handover (6 months from start at factory). They are presently being built for $CAD 170/sq ft. That’s less than €120/sq ft in our money !
I focused my efforts on the retrofit and PV presentations in the afternoon. Art McCormack from Passive House Academy kept the Irish flag flying on day 2. ECD Architects offered a very thought provoking presentation with their high rise EnerPHit project in Portmouth, UK. Long story short, it was cheaper to retrofit than rebuild, huge social stigma with living in sub-standard housing removed, and it is only marginally more expensive to refurbish to the passive house standard (just over 9% with payback within 20 years).
By 4pm on Saturday conference delegates were beginning to wilt under the weight of the extremely busy conference schedule and information rich content of the presentations.
A final plenary session rounded off the conference. There was a consensus that any steps towards the COP21 goals by 2050 need to be underpinned by moral ethics. Dr Feist expressed his feelings that the oligarchies that dominate many industries are not the answer to our problems. Movements such as Passive House promote innovation through non-perscriptive principles based performance standards. The wider Passive House community offers the opportunity for individual expression, collaboration and is focused on societal and environmental good. With information technology this knowledge based movement can spread effortlessly. That’s a pretty inspiring sentiment to come home with !