Housing Energy Awareness Team

1
Housing Energy Awareness Team

• Research Project Winter 2005
• Robin Fenske Mark Retzlaff
• Energy Systems, TESC

2
Introduction What if?

• What if the intrinsic value of the biosphere, its
  operations, and its interactions with human
  health and well-being were recognized by the
  current mode of operation?

3
The current mode of operation

• Natural resources ? energy ? human services
• Energy consumption is the primary way to increase
  human services.
• The result is a reduction in the effectiveness of
  natural processes as resources are depleted.

4
The Environmentalists Response

• Sustainability is the answer curb natural
  resources use.
• A standard definition of sustainability
• meeting the needs of today while allowing future
  generations to meet their own needs

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Our Response

• The environmentalist definition of sustainability
  describes a set of values, but not a framework to
  actualize them.
• Our project is an attempt to surface a framework
  of sustainability.

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Winter question and hypotheses

• What energy consuming technologies and behaviors
  can be modified to increase sustainability of
  on-campus housing at Evergreen?
• The winter portion of our project is an anaylsis,
  not an experiment

7
Spring Question

• What is the most effective and feasible program
  to achieve this increase?
• This question will be explored through a pilot
  program in housing.

8
Winter Methods

• Measure and Organize
• Explore/Map Exchange of Resources
• Identify Feasible Points of Change

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Measure and Organize

• Measuring and calculating individuals energy use
  
• Organize energy use into the following
  catagories
• Electricity
• Air Heating
• Transportation
• Food (in upstream energy cost)

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Explore/Map system of resource exchange

• Develop a qualitative map of the interactions
  between resources for some of the major
  categories of energy uses.

11
What is Capital?

• Capital is a quantitative measurement of
  somethings worth. In our project we will be
  using these four types of capital, described in
  the book Natural Capitalism.

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The Four Capitals

• Human capital labor and intelligence, culture,
  and organization
• Financial capital cash, investments, and
  monetary instruments
• Manufactured capital infrastructure, machines,
  tools, and factories
• Natural capital resources, living systems, and
  ecosystem services

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Capital Exchanges

• Capital (usually natural and financial) ? energy
  ? energy use ? capital (usually human or
  manufactured)
• Sustainability is increasing the effectiveness of
  capital exchange, not efficiency of energy use.

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Points of Ineffectiveness

• Sustainable change is most feasible where
• capital loss is the greatest
• the capital exchange system fails to meet the
  needs of the community
• Peter Senges The Fifth Discipline

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The Move Towards Sustainability

• A program will be designed and implemented in
  Spring quarter using the analysis of capital
  exchanges.