Alviston Blog

If you didn’t see this week’s Frontline on PBS, you need to. It was impressive. It was about how the world goes about making electricity. The program effectively showed the magnitude of the fossil fuels we are currently burning to make our power. In addition, it showed what was going on in China.

It was like looking in a 40-year-old mirror at ourselves, unbelievable growth, with little concern for what it is doing to the environment. Consumption of coal and gas at incredible rates and plans to expand even faster, which will increase rather than slow down the production of CO2. But I’m not pointing fingers.

In the U.S., it’s already that way, we just aren’t aware of the volumes of coal, oil and gas we burn everyday.

How can we humans still be doing this? Frontline interviewed the CEOs of some of the coal and oil companies in China, India and the U.S. It was as if these people were blind to what is actually taking place in our atmosphere. They said things like, “It’s just not feasible for renewables to produce the amounts of electricity we need.” In comparison, one coal-fired generating plant can produce over 1,300 megawatts. That’s a lot.

Solar panel installations are huge at five megawatts. So right now, the oil and coal companies are right. If we continue to consume and waste at current levels, we can’t do it with renewables alone.

But big oil and coal are missing the point. We are killing the planet. Is their real answer, “We have no choice?”

Well, actually, we do have a choice.

The amount of solar panels installed this year alone in California is mind boggling. The small companies that I’ve worked with have installed more than three megawatts of panels in the last three months. Multiply that by hundreds of other installers and you see real market penetration. And PV isn’t nearly the most cost effective of the renewable energy sources. Wind is coming on strong. It’s free, and there’s a lot of it in this country, and no it isn’t all in Washington D.C.

But probably the biggest untapped source of energy is simply finding ways to use less. Government has to play a big role: cars and trucks that don’t just meet minimum mpg standards, but are rewarded for getting the highest. For those of us old enough to remember the space race, it could be like that.  What if it was “cool” to have the highest mileage car instead of the one that gets the worst.

There are countries where this type of thing is already happening. Countries that are committing to being carbon neutral, not 50 years from now, but by 2010. Currently in the U.S., the electricity we use to light, heat and cool our buildings produces more CO2 than all the cars and trucks combined. We can build way better buildings. We can build buildings that make more power than they consume.

There is so much we can do to drastically reduce the amount of fossil fuels we burn. We just need to make the choice to do it.

–Mark Alvis

One of the things we tell our customers who are considering putting up solar is that it makes way more sense to do things that reduce the amount of electricity your home uses first, rather than just putting up more PV (photo voltaic a.k.a. solar) panels.

Now I know you probably come to Alviston to get the latest on cool stuff like solar panels and insulated concrete forms, but today, we’re going a little more basic.

The refrigerator.

In a typical California home, the fridge consumes 20% of all the electricity the house uses. A new Energy Star unit can use up to 50% less.

How about the dishwasher? Most of the energy used goes to heating the water, so energy-efficient models are designed to use less water. Energy Star dishwashers use 25% less electricity than the federal minimum standard.

And we can’t forget the clothes washer. New energy-efficient top loaders use up to 60% less than 10-year-old models. Energy Star units use 50% less water and 40% less electricity. They also remove more water from the clothes so the dryer doesn’t run nearly as long.

And the list goes on. Making sure you have adequate insulation in your attic can be far more cost effective than buying additional photovoltaic panels. The idea is to do all you can to make your house more energy efficient first. Then you can buy a smaller PV system, which means the payback time will be far shorter.

Just remember, you can save more by using less.

–Mark Alvis

Now that winter is approaching, and fuel bills are on people’s minds, we’re all thinking about efficient ways to heat our homes.

I got a call from a Fresno State student named Erin the other day who wanted to know about radiant floor heating. She’s in an interior design class and had a lot of good questions.

I told her that there are a number of types of radiant floor heating systems, and they are very efficient, comfortable and clean and that the concept had been around for a very long time The Romans had a version of it. But there are a few differences in the way it is done now.

One of them is something called PEX tubing. PEX stands for polyethylene cross-linked tubing and that it’s much easier to install. If you are building a house with a concrete slab, the tubing is placed and the concrete is poured on top of it. The tubing is connected through a manifold to a water heater. Then, hot water is circulated through the tubing which heats up the concrete. So you get a warm and cozy floor that heats the whole house.

There are also systems that can be installed on existing floors and wood floors. When used in conjunction with other energy-efficient building methods, such as insulated concrete forms or structural insulated panels, you get an extremely energy-efficient structure.

I told Erin that it was great to hear that a design student was interested in radiant floor heating and energy efficiency, because even though we don’t usually think about what’s inside the walls or what’s under the floor, we need to design with these new systems in mind.  We have to look at a home as a totally integrated system.  Good design is the first step.

–Mark Alvis

Instead of thinking that recycling is doing something better with our trash, we shouldn’t think of it as trash at all. We should think of it as raw materials for other products.  That’s because there’s a difference between ‘trash’ and ‘waste.’ What we are really after is “zero-waste.”

Admittedly, this would take some doing. Going waste-free would affect nearly everything we do. But many businesses are already making great strides towards this goal, and as resources run ever and ever lower, even the economics will drive this behavior. Just look at the value of recycled metals like copper, aluminum and steel.

This “zero-waste” world would have no land fills, we wouldn’t need them. All of our products would be made in ways that they can be reused or made into something else. All organic materials could be used to produce bio-gas, or bio-fuels, or compost for fertilizing soil.

Many companies already reclaim products such as carpet, glass, tires, metals, etc. Even CO2 gas is now being captured and used. We just have to get it into our heads that everything can be designed for a “zero-waste” system. It’s not that it has to be inconvenient, we just have to rethink the way that we do it.

Mark Alvis