Energy Efficiency and Multi-family Housing

If you rent an apartment or buy a condo, you have little ability to anticipate how much your utility bills will be, and little confidence whether the structure is energy-efficient.

Conversely, if you build multifamily housing, you may have little incentive to build with energy-efficiency in mind because someone else will be paying the bills.

A new law in California addresses this very issue.  The legislation, signed into law earlier this month, will set energy benchmarks for multifamily housing, and will require multifamily housing projects to report annual energy usage, making the information available to the public.

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Bill Gates on Solar Energy

In an interview with The Atlantic magazine, Bill Gates had some pointed words for solar energy advocates:

They have this statement that the cost of solar photovoltaic is the same as hydrocarbon’s. And that’s one of those misleadingly meaningless statements. What they mean is that at noon in Arizona, the cost of that kilowatt-hour is the same as a hydrocarbon kilowatt-hour. But it doesn’t come at night, it doesn’t come after the sun hasn’t shone, so the fact that in that one moment you reach parity, so what? The reading public, when they see things like that, they underestimate how hard this thing is.

What is a Zero-Energy Building?

The simple question What is a Zero-Energy Building? occasionally triggers some controversy.  It's good to have common definitions.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has a new 22-page report entitled A Common Definition for Zero Energy Buildings.

They define a Zero Energy Building (ZEB) as:
"An energy-efficient building where, on a source energy basis, the actual annual delivered energy is less than or equal to the on-site renewable exported energy."

Of note:

• The term "energy-efficient building" is not defined. 
• Wood and wood pellets are considered delivered energy, and therefore treated like gas or oil (unless harvested on-site).
• The report endorses Conversion Factors.  For example, you can overproduce electricity to get credit for delivered natural gas consumption at a rate of about 3-to-1.

The controversies will certainly continue.  Allison Bailes provides some commentary on the report here.

Related: Mother Earth News article, "What Is a Net-Zero Home?"