News Source : Telegraph

Many nuclear and coal-fired power stations are reaching the end of their effective lives. North Sea gas is beginning to run out. At the same time, both government and industry are making ever more ambitious commitments to reduce carbon emissions. It all adds up to a wholesale transformation of the energy generating system in the UK.

It also gives us an energy trilemma, because whatever we replace the current generating capacity with has to provide affordable, reliable and low-carbon energy.

While building new power plants costs money which will have to be funded through energy bills, energy efficiency is where low carbon emissions and lower fuel bills go hand-in-hand.

“Energy efficiency touches on all three trilemma aspects,” says John Fawcitt, E.ON’s manager for energy efficiency operations. “It can reduce consumption, which inherently reduces consumers’ bills and carbon emissions.

“And by reducing the demand for imported fuels, it increases the reliability of our supply.”

The Carbon Trust estimates that investing in energy efficiency measures yields a return of between 15 and 17 per cent and nowhere is that investment more required than in buildings – commercial, public and domestic.

Buildings in the UK account for about 44 per cent of our carbon emissions, says the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. Building improvements would save an equivalent of 36 million tCO2e (tons of CO2 equivalent) per year, and enhancing the efficiency of lighting and appliances could save 31 million tCO2e, according to McKinsey, a consultancy.

“Energy efficiency must not be regarded as some kind of soft option or nice to have, but rather as a rigorous and vigorous action programme to reduce substantially the country’s demand for energy,” wrote former energy minister and MP for Croydon North Malcolm Wicks in his report Energy Security: A National Challenge in a Changing World, published last summer.

While new-build projects present the biggest opportunity to reduce emissions per building, in the UK 60 per cent of the premises we will still be using in 2050 are already built, according to the Carbon Trust. Heating and lighting domestic buildings account for about two-thirds of our emissions from buildings, so clearly this is where one solution lies to save money and carbon.

National Energy Action, a charity that campaigns for the eradication of fuel poverty (defined as households spending more than 10 per cent of their income on fuel), believes the Government should initiate a comprehensive retrofit of UK housing.

“Improving the thermal efficiency of the housing stock is the core intervention that can be made in the eradication of fuel poverty,” says Jenny Saunders, chief executive of NEA.

There is already an established measure of a building’s thermal efficiency — the Energy Performance Certificate, which is mandatory for houses sold after October 2008. An average 80-year-old terraced home with 100m2 floor space has an energy efficiency of only about 50 per cent.

This can be increased up to 80 per cent by conventional retrofit measures, such as loft and cavity wall insulation, double glazing and low-energy lighting. Saunders argues that every UK home needs to be upgraded to at least this level, and preferably to be 81-91 per cent energy efficient.

Although there are various government schemes, such as Act on CO2 and Warm Front, aimed at reducing emissions, they lack coordination.

“There has never been a coordinated approach to insulating our homes,” says Robin Webster, energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “You have to tackle the social and cultural issues. The Government is scared of sending round the insulation police.”

E.ON’s Fawcitt agrees. “As we move towards more invasive and costly measures, for example internal or external solid wall insulation , there are cultural issues over implementation, so it’s important that we get the right information to people at the right time. In terms of behavioural change, you have to make people aware of the implications of their choices of energy usage.”

Customer engagement and loyalty is therefore a key tool for power companies which, through initiatives such as the Carbon Emission Reduction Targets and Community Energy Saving Programme, are raising their profile as a trusted source of information concerning energy efficiency.

patches after wall insulation

Now it’s a good time to get that insulation project done, walls and attic, to keep your house warmer during the coming winter and save on your heating bill.

The Gas Company is offering a rebate until December 31 of 15-cent per square foot.  The federal government will give you a 30% tax credit (up to $ 1,500) on the cost of energy-efficient windows, doors, roofing, wall and attic insulation, furnaces, air-conditioning systems and heat pumps.

We were hesitant to break up the walls of our home, but we did it and already  we feel warmer at night.  All you need is to paint over the patched up holes.

You may look up the various processes, the materials used (in our case blown cellulose) and other choices on these websites.
www.everguardinsulation.com
www.WhatADifference.com (they’ll even repaint the walls for you)

Call the Gas Company for more details: 888-431 2226.
Check out their website www.socalgas.com
They also offer rebates on Energy Star qualified appliances: cloth washers, dishwashers and water heaters.

In existing homes, where wall cavities are closed up with siding on the outside, and drywall, plaster, or some other finish on the inside, good insulation becomes problematic.  How do you fill the whole cavity when the cavitiy is already closed?

A great way is with “dense packed” cellulose insulation.  Cellulose insulation is essentially ground up paper (e.g., newspaper) with fire retardants added.  We like 100% borate retardant–low toxicity and critters don’t like it.  

Dense packed cellulose stays in place even if drywall is later pulled down (we don't recommend pulling the drywall down to check, though!)

In yesteryear, cellulose was essentially poured (loosely blow) into wall cavities.  The challange with this was that the cellulose settled over time, leaving a gap with no insulation at the top.  Dense packing overcomes this and is a great way to insulate walls in existing homes.  First, the loose fill insulation fill nooks and crannies and does a great job filling cavities, providing the type of coverage you need for insulation to be effective.  Second, dense packing actually pumps insulation into a cavity a higher density than it would settle to.  Thus, over time we don’t see additional settling.  In fact, the insulation is in there so tight, it generally doesn’t fall out even when you take the wall covering down.  In the picture, you see the wall I just removed this weekend as part of a major bathroom remodel.   And you see how the cellulose completely filled the wall cavity (less a few holes from my hammer as a pulled the plasterboard down).  And the insulation is packed so well, that is stays in place even without the plasterboard covering it.  [Good job, Tom, Joe, and Jason.]

Good stuff.  Works great!  A practical solution for those wanting to make their homes more efficient.  (I’m still amazed how many homes have little or no insulation in their walls.)  And this insulation qualifies for the $1,500 tax credit currently avaiable for energy-efficiency retrofits.

Thanks,
Mike

Reusing an existing building saves 35 tons of CO2 production – www.emptyhomes.com

“We can’t consume our way to sustainability” – Carl Elefante, AIA

“Confronting energy reduction with technology in lieu of conservation is short-sighted-
-the problem is conservation is not very sexy and difficult to package and sell. “
Neal Vogel, Restoric LLC

Neal is a longtime friend and colleague and one of several experts who have seen the limitations of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), which was introduced this century by the U.S. Green Building Council and has made new buildings more energy efficient. The problem is that LEED at the beginning virtually ignored old buildings, despite the fact that an old building’s carbon footprint is always less than a new one. Much of the “Green Building” industry was driven by marketing efforts to push new products.

Of course this makes sense, because you can get sponsors for LEED if it is focused on flogging new products. What the marketing needs to do is distract your attention from the fact that each green product must be manufactured, packaged, stored and transported by fossil fuels. But the market for those products was enough to drive not simply an industry but a professional training and rating system that certifies both professionals and buildings. LEED has become shorthand for Green in a nation where Green has gone all trendy.

Historic buildings are full of components that don’t require energy for manufacture and distribution but initially LEED gave a mere 3 points out of 69 for inherent conservation. The number for a green neighborhood starts even lower.

Thanks to the efforts of professionals like Barbara Campagna of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Mike Jackson of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, they are coming around to the obvious: it takes less energy to leave something where it is. The greenest building is the one already built. Soon, we hope, LEED will reflect that fact, despite marketing efforts to hide it.

There is a lot of concern nowadays about insulating older buildings as part of the economic stimulus. As I noted a few posts ago, once you insulate your ceilings, you have achieved 4/5 of all the energy savings you are going to achieve. Because heat rises. That is simple and straightforward, but a good marketing effort can still confuse the issue.

A lot of people are looking at insulating walls. Again, there is nothing wrong with the impulse, and in some situations it makes sense. But mostly -like window replacement – it confuses the issue and gets people to focus on 20 percent of the problem. Let me quote Neal at length here:

“You will need to be careful with studying wall assemblies–construction has evolved to compensate for our on-tap energy addiction. I think a good starting point would be load-bearing masonry construction versus veneer construction today. Look at assemblies that are considered too expensive to build today, or only for the very, very affluent. If you look at energy as a stand alone criteria, a historic frame house does not stand a chance against a modern wall assembly in pure R-value. You have to consider the broader perspective, like the fact that plaster can retain 70% of its volume in moisture without being destroyed while drywall can only handle 5%. Issues related to indoor air quality, the growing epidemic of asthma, energy required for packaging, transporting, storing new materials, energy required for demolition and processing debris, etc. As it stands, I try to downplay LEED every chance I get because their narrow view of energy and what’s beneficial for the future essentially requires impractical alterations and replacement of historic materials.

I don’t know of anyone who has gathered enough data of residential building types for comparison. My thought on this at one time was to approach the Historic Bungalow Initiative of Chicago–a building type that I think would perform very favorably with relative minor and practical retrofits–to produce energy data on enough houses to be statistically defendable. I think they compared energy improvements to a few houses over a year but I would like to see them expand the study into a much larger group and then compare the data with a typical modest house built today for the same money and in the same climate. Seems like the Trust could get a lot of good PR in our heavy heating dominant climate with this kind of partnership.”

Rock on, brother. I had an 1872 frame house for a dozen years that performed remarkably well in winter and summer because it had real plaster walls. My current house has real brick walls which kick the crud out of the fanciest fiberglass at Home Depot. But Neal’s point is important: If you only measure one variable, a product manufactured with that one variable in mind (and ignoring all the variables of its manufacture and distribution) will outperform the older technology. But looking at one variable is liking buying a new green product that has to be shipped 13,000 miles: you are ignoring other important variables.

You don’t learn to run fast simply by buying a great running shoe.

You need to look at the entire system by doing an energy audit. You don’t answer the question of how green your building is by adding up all the green stuff you bought and stuck in it. You determine how your building is functioning and how you can continually make it more sustainable.

If the USGBC existed from 1880 to 1930 and watched the construction of Victorian and Progressive Era America they would have been passing out medals with a crop duster to keep up with the brick cavity walls, plaster, dutch biscuits and storm windows. Commercial buildings built before 1920 used 80,127 BTUs per square foot. That number climbed steadily to over 100,000 in the 1980s. Only after 2000 did it come down to the level it was at in 1920.

Neal is right – that quality of construction is cost prohibitive today. But you have to remember that the carbon emissions that came with that construction were released into the atmosphere before the Model T.
Without time travel, a new building can’t compete with that.

NEXT DAY UPDATE: Hey I just got my heating bill – I was on the budget plan based on previous owner – $442 a month. Now? $158. Did I replace my windows? No. I closed them. And I insulated the attic. 110 year old windows with triple tracks. Real brick house with real plaster walls. Historic buildings ROCK!

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The roof of  most homes is designed to protect the structure of the building from the elements. It is like a “carport” for the home because it is not heated and the air is allowed to flow though. To protect the home from both heat loss and heat gain most homeowners use insulation between the ceiling joists.  In many southern areas of the country where it is hot for most of the year an attic can be as hot enough to melt wax, 160 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit. For homes in these parts of the country an insulated attic is a relief but more help is needed.

For heat relief in the attic many homeowners will put in an attic fan. This also keeps the air flow moving in the space but in northern areas it may forcibly cool down the attic and, in turn, the home. A better way to either keep heat away from your attic, or keep the heat in your home, is through a radiant barrier.

Radiant barriers use layers of aluminum foil sandwiched between thin plastic to reduce radiant heat coming into the attic. By attaching the barrier to the underside of the roof deck the reflective properties of the barrier will repel up to 97% of the heat which can decrease the temperature below over 30% and save up to 12% in air conditioning energy.

For keeping heat in a home the radiant barrier is placed right on top of the existing insulation. However, it is best to use a foil product with perforations so that moisture will not get trapped below and cause other problems such as mold. For attics without a lot of insulation there are products where the foil is backed with an insulating product like fiberglass or bubble-pack. These products come in rolls and are easy to install.

In other applications foil barriers can be used as a vapor barrier on a newly-studded wall. Not only does it do the job of a vapor barrier it will reflect heat back into the room or, in an air conditioned home, keep it cool.

Up until the post World War II era it was widely believed that a dead air space between the exterior and interior walls would sufficiently protect the home from outside cold in winter. As air is a good insulator this was thought to be a sound idea. However, air can also be a good agent for transferring heat from the inside to the outdoors.

Today heating and air conditioning accounts for between 50% to 70% of the energy cost of a home (Department of Energy statistic). With the cost of heating almost doubling in the past few years this makes protecting the energy a primary concern. So that heritage home from 1910 may be an energy black hole.

Heat has three main ways of getting around: radiation, conduction and convection. Radiation is how the heat travels through the air like the sun’s heat or the heat from a register. Conduction is how a pot is heated. the energy travels via solid molecules. Convection is the cycle of heat moving from warm to cold and this is the most important factor in home energy.

In the winter heat will move inside the home in a convection cycle, from the the warm areas to the cold. For example, heat will go from the living room to the attic and outside or from the kitchen to the garage and out. In most homes the heat will go up and find cold spots on the ceiling or walls. So if there is no insulation in the walls it will penetrate the wall through conduction. Once inside the wall the temperature from the cold exterior wall will create an air current with the warm air called convection. This speeds up the heat transfer to the outdoors. In the summer this cycle is reversed promoting the use of an air conditioning unit.

The immediate need is to stop this cycle with insulation. In a newer home fiberglass batts fill these spaces so not only is the air movement curtailed but the transfer by conduction is slowed. This impediment for heat loss is called the R-value of the wall. A low R-value means there is more heat loss so most new walls have an R-value of 19 whereas the old homes with no insulation were at about 3.

To fix an old home the attic should be brought up to R-40+ with fiberglass batts or blown-in cellulose insulation. However, unless the interior walls are taken off it is difficult to use fiberglass batts. This would mean removing the old lath and plaster. These homes can be insulated from the exterior by using the blown-in insulation.

1. Find the Spaces: At the top of the out side wall a shingle is lifted and a 3″ hole drilled (door knob bit). If it is clapboard then the hole will have to be drilled through the board and the plug replaced. To find the voids look at the old nail heads. They will show where studs are located.

2. Drill Holes: With a plumb bob or heavy metal object tied on a heavy string lower this down through the hole until it touches bottom. This will show that the void goes the full vertical length of the wall. If not, another hole will have to be drilled below the place where it stopped. This can be measured by marking the string at the hole and measuring from the mark to the plumb bob.

3. Calculate the Amount of Cellulose: When all the holes have been drilled rent the cellulose blower. The cellulose comes in compressed blocks that cost around $10 each. Many companies will charge a bare minimum for the machine if the cellulose is bought there. Take the measurement (square feet) of the walls and add them together for the total amount of cellulose blocks to buy.

4. Installing: A person should handle the sprayer while a helper is needed to feed the blocks into the machine. Both should where a particle mask and goggles because the fines from the cellulose can be hard on the lings and eyes. The helper breaks up the blocks and feeds them into an agitator. The installer has a remote switch to turn on and shut off the flow. When each wall void is filled the cellulose will shoot out of the hole. The installer shuts off the flow and moves on to the next hole.

5. Replacing the Plugs: The round wooden plugs can be replaced by caulking the edges with a latex sealer. Glue will work but since the plug is slightly smaller than the hole caulking has the bulk to seal it. The shingle is put back or, if clapboard, the plug edges are smoothed over with caulking and then touched up with paint.

Cavity wall insulation works by injecting a substance into the space between the inner and outer levels of brickwork in the external walls of your home. There are many different types of substance that can be used to do this, but they all work by combining with the captive air in the wall cavity and becoming a filling to decrease the amount of heat escaping from your home.

Cavity wall insulation is a good way to significantly reduce the amount of energy you need to heat your home, and reduce carbon emissions.

The average house could reduce heating costs by 15%. In fact, between 2002 and 2005 around 800,000 households installed cavity wall insulation.

It is estimated that this will have saved nearly 400,000 tonnes of CO2, enough to fill the new Wembley Stadium 47 times.

If all the houses with unfilled cavity walls had them filled, the energy saved could heat 1.7 million homes each year.

Around a third of all the heat lost in an un-insulated home is lost through the walls. If you have cavity walls, insulating them will significantly improve the thermal efficiency of your home and it could save you –around £90 a year on your fuel bills.

The cost of cavity wall insulation has never been lower as it is subsidised by the Government. For an average house the cost of installation is about £500- . Making the return on investment around only 5 years. Saving 750KGs CO2 per year.

Cavity wall insulation is injected into the cavity from outside the home, it takes typically two to three hours to insulate a three bed semi and typically costs under £500.