I think
Vishal is picking up on a good point, that calling buildings "net-zero", for energy or carbon impacts, has never meant having zero net energy or carbon impacts. It's always been an obviously misleading term.
That they neglect to count the energy costs of the building materials and construction process, etc, is only part of the problem, though. In the worst cases net-zero buildings would have even higher impacts than ordinary buildings, in actual fact.
The problem is how energy accounting generally overlooks large amounts of energy and carbon impacts, which are just hidden from view. The main way that happens is when people outsource the services those energy uses provide, and then do not count the energy and carbon content of the supply chain delivering the services. So when we spend money in general,
we erase the appearance of the service obtained costing any energy!
All business services, for example, have long supply chains, and consume quite large amounts of energy, but have ended up being counted as zero by most people. I have an important research paper on the subject coming out with a group of others soon, mine called
Systems Energy Assessment (SEA) This also exposes a defect in what, unfortunately, are widely accepted standard methods of calculating the energy content of things. The widely adopted methods don't count outsouced energy services, except the recorded energy uses of business equipment. So, I think an expensive net-zero building will most likely be an energy and carbon hog, instead of as advertised, just because people so often choose to call things a name that "sounds nice" rather than what it is.
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Philip Henshaw AIA
New York NY
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-25-2011 11:19
From: Premnath Sundharam
Subject: net zero and carbon neutral buildings
Hello Vishal,
Eventually, I believe, carbon footprint considerations will reach resources used in the process and make up of buildings. Reducing operational carbon footprint is more tangible now because of existing widely accepted metrics and methods (even though there is more room for improvement here) and declining operational budgets (at least in the public sector).
With the advent of Architecture 2030 Challenge for Products and collaboration of many industry leaders like Athena Institute, the global warming potential of everything that goes into a building will hopefully be part of the equation soon!
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Premnath Sundharam AIA
Senior Associate
DLR Group, Inc.
Phoenix AZ
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