Alviston Blog

Even though there has been a lot of talk about energy efficiency and building sustainably, there certainly has not been a paradigm shift as of yet. According to Dr. Steven Chu, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, “We need to start shifting away from fossil fuels now.” One of the reasons, he says, is if the frozen tundra in Siberia begins to thaw, all the microbes in it will become active, living off the vegetative matter. This will produce vast amounts of CO2 and methane, more than what we humans have produced by far.

This is an example of a feedback loop. By burning fossil fuels, we add CO2 to the atmosphere. Since CO2 and methane (like water vapor, aka clouds) have the ability to reflect heat, they act like a big blanket for the earth. We need a certain amount of CO2 to keep the planet warm, but now we have too much. That is what Dr. Chu is afraid of, that heating up the atmosphere will result in things that are now frozen, like the tundra, to thaw and create a big feedback loop.

In fact, Dr. Chu is so certain of this danger that he would rather us build nuclear plants than risk “tundra melt,” which is exactly what the President is now proposing.

While nuclear technology has greatly improved, there are two unfortunate parts of this plan. First, it is incredibly expensive and once again, the taxpayers are being asked to pay for it. Second, if we would start investing in energy efficiency and renewables, we could be giving ourselves the money and we would not need to build any nuclear plants. That is what net-zero homes and distributed power are all about. We have a few of these programs in place already, but funding for all of them is nowhere near what one nuclear plant will cost.

Maybe building energy-efficient homes and wind turbines is not as sexy, but it is a lot cheaper and much safer.

–Mark Alvis

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When you live in a place for a long time, you tend to get used to things whether they are good or bad. Seeing the same thing every day over time, even when it is wrong, numbs you.

My good friend William just returned to the Valley after living overseas for more than 25 years. He worked in Beijing and Hong Kong and, for the most part, lived in high-rise apartments. Because of the good public transportation system in Hong Kong, a car was not needed. There was a grocery store on the floor below him; it made sense.

There have been several changes here in the Valley since William left. One of them is the way kids get to and from school. When William and I were growing up in Reedley, kids walked, rode their bikes, or took the bus. Very few parents drove their kids to school. Now, it is pretty much the norm. To those of us who live here, it has been a gradual change and acceptance of things being just the way things are. Because of his experience, William noticed it right away, and to him it seemed incredibly wasteful. There are kids right across the street whose parents drive them to the same school that William drives his kids to. Just a little bit of neighborhood organization could save gas and time, as well as nurturing a community spirit.

However, it was not so much the things that have changed, as the things that have not changed, that William noticed. He cannot believe that we still drive big huge vehicles that run on gasoline, or that so many families live in separate houses, both of which are not only very wasteful, but also very expensive. After living in one of the most densely populated cities in the world, it is not surprising that William sees these types of issues so clearly.

While most of us will never have the benefit of living abroad, we can learn from those who have. By listening carefully to people who have lived in other places we can better assess the way things really are in our own communities, and by doing this, we can learn to see through time.

–Mark Alvis

Last Wednesday I had the great honor of speaking to the USGBC folks down in Visalia. The U.S. Green Building Council is the organization that developed and runs the LEED program, which stands for Leadership in Environmental, Engineering, and Design. USGBC has chapters all over the U.S. and the one in Visalia is both knowledgeable and enthusiastic.

Most of the time, I try to limit my presentations to one or two of our projects, but I knew that this audience was familiar with ICFs, SIPs, PV etc. Therefore, I decided to do an advanced version, covering several of our projects and a few that we had consulted on as well. It turned out to be sort of a crash course in what we have learned about energy-efficient building over the past ten years.

Each project brought new insights, not only about materials, but also about what it actually takes to build “green” here in the San Joaquin Valley. When we first started in 2000, insulated concrete forms had barely been used in California. Structural-insulated panels were a little more common, but it was still difficult to find subs that had the experience of working with these materials. Therefore, we did a lot of the work ourselves with a great deal of hands-on learning. There is just no substitute for that type of experience.  

What we have found is that energy-efficient homes can be built cost effectively, but it requires good planning and cooperation between the designer and the builder, and between the builder and the subs. We have found that the substantial reduction of waste is possible. In fact, building an ICF-SIP hybrid home with virtually zero waste is possible with the proper design, engineering, and manufacturing. This type of design also lowers labor costs by greatly speeding up construction.

Now, ten years after starting our first integrated home, we are hearing about “The New Green Economy” based on energy efficiency and renewable energy. To make this a reality, it is imperative that we understand how to incorporate energy efficiency onto our homes and buildings.

–Mark Alvis

The Detroit auto show was a couple weeks ago and Toyota, once again, showed why they are leading when it comes to high-mileage, low-emission vehicles.

Toyota showed off the FT-CH (the CH stands for compact hybrid), which gets better mileage than the Prius. The FT-CH is smaller and geared more towards younger people. In addition, it will be more affordable than the Prius.

However, the thing that really impressed me was what Jim Lentz of Toyota Motor Sales said at the show. Lentz said that within 20 to 30 years, we will reach peak oil and enter a period where demand for oil will be higher than supply. This means the price of oil will skyrocket. Lentz says we need to “re-invent” the automobile to one that “eliminates or greatly reduces the use of conventional petroleum fuels.”

People have different opinions about when we will reach “peak oil.” Some say we already have. Nevertheless, the critical issue here is that big car companies see the change coming and are now pouring money into hybrid and electric technologies. They want to be prepared when the price of gas rockets up again, because this time, it may not come back down.

Actually, we cannot wait for oil prices to force us to start using these newer, cleaner technologies. That is putting economics in front of the environment, and that is something that simply cannot continue, as we now know.

–Mark Alvis

Jacques Cousteau was my hero. I think that his show, “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau,” changed my life. I learned how to scuba dive the year before I went to college and dove in the Monterey and Carmel area many times. The diversity of life below the surface was incredible. It was as if I had entered a different world, where different laws applied.

To scuba dive, something called a buoyancy compensator is worn. By adjusting the buoyancy, a “neutral” point of neither sinking nor rising can be achieved. It feels like flying. Incredible. You can fly through forests of kelp and see animals flying right beside you.

Even though I have spent a lot of time in the ocean, I did not know much about it until recently. I knew little about the critters, because some of them were very tasty. As I have become more interested in how the different ecosystems of the Earth work, I have learned more about how closely we are tied to the oceans. I have always said, “Everything is connected,” but I never realized the complexity of the connections. For instance, I did not know how much oxygen is produced by the ocean or how much CO2 is absorbed by the ocean.

We have always been aware that the weather affects us, but it is a relatively new concept that it also works the other way. Nature operates in “closed-loop” systems. Nothing is wasted; it just cycles. We need to learn from nature and calibrate our energy use and resource use with it. The oceans can absorb CO2, but if it absorbs too much it becomes acidic and this prevents certain types of animals from forming their shells. Some of these small animals form the basis of the ocean’s food chain, and without them, everything up the chain will be affected.

Even though the ocean may seem like a different world, it is not. It is intimately connected to the atmosphere, the land, and to us. Even though we understand a little about how the ocean works, it is still hard to imagine the importance of the ocean. Unfortunately, most of us do not really know much about the ocean at all, or how critical it is to our very existence. Without this understanding, it is very difficult to motivate people to change.

I bet that if everyone got a chance to fly in the ocean and feel the life surrounding you, we would do everything we had to to save it.

–Mark Alvis

I remember learning about the “population explosion” in elementary school, which was a while ago now. People were worried about how we were going to produce enough food if the population continued to grow at the rate it was.

In talking about climate change, most experts focus on the burning of fossil fuels as the main cause of excess CO2 in the atmosphere. Others, like Dr. Joseph Bookstein from UCSD, say we are missing a very simple point. He says that all the technological fixes are fine, but they will not be enough if we do not do anything to control the exploding population.

Dr. Bookstein says that we will need to get the fertility rate down worldwide, to the point that will cause the global population to decline instead of increase. We are at 6.7 billion now, and predicted to hit 9 billion around 2050. Dr. Bookstein says to curb global warming, we need to get the population down to 4.5 billion by 2050 in addition to all the tech fixes, such as solar and wind power, geothermal, hydroelectric, and other renewables. Moreover, we need to eliminate fossil fuels as an energy source altogether. Otherwise, we will just continue to get warmer as more CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere.

While population control may not be a popular idea, it seems to fit into the “sustainable” model. Many countries have taken steps to control population, by making contraceptives more available, and empowering women to make the choice to have fewer children. Some countries have fertility rates less than one.

As we have said many times, everything is connected, and we need to deal with the hard questions if we are going to solve this. We have realized for many years that climate change was coming, and yet we have gone on putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We have known for a long time that there was a limit to how many people the Earth can sustain. By using the stored carbon in fossil fuels, we have been able to produce enough food. Although we knew there was a limit, we may not have known what would eventually cause the limit. Now we do.

All the countries in the world know about climate change. For twenty years, the world has held conferences to try to reach an agreement as to what to do. As of yet, world leaders have not seen the seriousness of the situation. They are fixated only on money, referring to the negative effect renewable energy usage and population declines would have on the economy. However, it seems obvious that if civilization collapses, the economy will not matter all that much.

–Mark Alvis

Most of the arguments about how to solve the problem of global warming occur because of the misconception that we cannot grow our economies without carbon emissions. In other words, we have to burn fossil fuels. Developed countries, like ours, are afraid of losing money if they reduce their use of fossil fuels. Developing countries say they cannot develop without this cheap source of energy. However, once you get past the “payback” time, solar and wind are not only cheap, they are free.

Therefore, fossil fuels are not our only source of energy and we do not need them to keep our economies going. Nobody actually needs CO2 emissions.

If we look back in recent history, we see that only a few years ago we did not have cars, or planes. We did not use petroleum much at all. We worked with “current sunlight.”

At some point, we decided to use a different type of energy, oil, which is like “fermented sunlight,” you can say. However, this was just a decision that we made. It was not the only possibility then and it is not now. We simply decided to develop our economies based on oil, gas, and coal, and have continued to do so. It made sense when we started. There were a lot fewer people, so there were fewer cars, trucks, planes, buildings, etc. Besides, we did not know what the result of burning so much oil, coal, and gas would do. Now we do. The buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere is causing us to heat up. The more we put in, the faster we heat. Therefore, we need to stop.

At any given point since the beginning of the industrial age, we could have said, “Let’s get serious about cleaning all this up.” In fact, we have designed and built many ways to make power without burning fossil fuels. We have had them for a long time. However, for some reason, we did not develop our economies around them. So it turns out, this really is not an emissions problem; it is a development problem.

What we need to do is quickly transition to an economy that is developed around sustainability. Since the economy revolves around energy, this means making clean energy, which we can do with renewables. The first and cheapest tool we can use is energy efficiency and conservation. We can all do this simply by using less, and by having respect for the planet and compassion for those who will come after us.

Despite what some people think, the United States is an “energy rich” nation, with enough potential wind energy to power the entire country, plus, enough potential solar energy to power the world. We just need to develop them. Where will the money come from? How about from the subsidies that all the oil and coal companies get? That would seem to make sense.

Renewable energy, including solar electric, solar thermal, wind, geo-thermal, hydroelectric and others, together with energy efficiency, can be used to deal with many of the tremendous problems the world faces today. Renewable resources are readily available worldwide, there is lots of sun and wind, and no one is fighting over them.

If the U.S. leads the way in this, new, clean, energy economy, it will create many new jobs, solving the current economic crisis. It will eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, and it will cut our greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80%. Can we do it? Yes, but it will be the people, not the politicians and corporations, that will make it happen.

–Mark Alvis

I was surprised to find out that the city of Los Angeles still gets 40% of its power from coal plants in Arizona and Utah since California prides itself on leading the way when it comes to environmental issues. I had heard a long time ago that most of the power generated in California was natural gas. I had not thought about the power that we import. Portland also gets a large percentage of its power, around 44%, from coal. 

However, both cities are working hard to dump coal entirely. L.A.’s mayor has pledged to increase renewables from 8% to 20% by 2020. Portland plans to phase out coal all together. Energy efficiency measures, such as switching all the street lights to LEDs and making uses of alternative power generation like wind and solar, are already helping to make these goals a reality.

Seattle, blessed with huge water resources, gets most of its power from hydro. San Francisco uses a mix of natural gas, hydro, and nuclear. San Diego uses mostly natural gas.

While these improvements are certainly welcomed, the ultimate goal is not to just get rid of coal, but to convert entirely over to renewables, to decarbonize the grid altogether, by using wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and most importantly, energy efficiency and conservation.

What we do not want to do is simply add the renewables on top of the existing ways of making power. We need to replace fossil fuel generation with renewables, as quickly as possible.

-Mark Alvis

I thought that maybe the conference in Copenhagen would be like the Olympics, where all the countries in the world would get together and have a big energy party. Maybe it would be like a huge teach-in and be covered by all the media, as they did for the Olympics in China. That was something. I am thinking that the fate of the world is at least as important as the pommel horse.

Imagine all the countries learning from one another ways to stop global warming. Denmark could show off its wind turbines. Germany could teach everyone about solar tech, and Japan could show off their hybrid cars. There are houses now, called net-zero houses, that make as much power as they use. What if everyone had one of those?

It was known going in that it would be a struggle to get 192 countries to agree on something as complex as what to do about global warming, but at least it was happening, and all of the countries attending know something has to change, and soon. The countries that make up the Organization of Small Island States were there to plea for the very existence of their land, as rising sea levels will have them underwater very soon.

I thought that bringing people together from all over the world might help the various cultures understand each other better, from rich countries that have only begun to feel the effects, to poor countries who have been feeling the effects of global warming for a long time as their water supplies dry up and their villages flood. I think we are all now feeling the pain of the Earth.

I thought the Copenhagen Conference was going to be a good chance for unity.

However, as it progressed, none of this seemed to be happening. It was as if they were waiting for a leader that never showed up. For the first time, I realized that while we have world leaders, we do not have a leader of the world. Our leaders are not leading the world at all; they are only leading their own countries.

What needs to happen is already happening: the people of the world will have to unite, create the changes needed to survive, despite what their governments are doing. There will be countries that take leadership roles, some have already committed to being carbon-neutral by 2020. We need to look to them for inspiration and examples of how it can be done, instead of pointing fingers at the other countries.

The issue of global warming is overwhelming. However, ignoring the issue will only make things worse.

I suggest we have the Energy Olympics in the same spirit as the regular Olympics. Each country brings their energy-efficient technologies, ideas, and plans. Then, they go in front of the judges to make sure they are viable. Instead of giving out medals, new technologies are given to the countries that need them. And for the countries that have the technologies, the rest of the world can teach them the value of a healthy Earth.

We are not going to solve global warming until we all pitch in to save our common home.

–Mark Alvis