I liked Wendy’s comment on my first post so much I decided to respond here rather than in the comment area. (Wendy’s question was: I recently read--wish I could find the citation--that it takes 35 years for newly built "green," "sustainable"--and by that I think the writer did mean zero-carbon footprint--houses to "payback." Now of course without more detail, it's not worth arguing with such a claim. But it does suggest to me important questions about the feasibility--economically at the very least--and desirability (EROI?) of building these sustainable dwelling areas you describe.)
First a comment on EROI. Isn’t it peculiar that many folks demand to know the ROI on investments that are vital to survival on Earth, but utterly ignore the ROI on less crucial purchases? People almost always ask me about the ROI on solar systems. But they never think to ask about the ROI on their new couch, new shoes, or new granite countertops. None of those save them money and produce income after the payback period elapses. Not that there is any payback period.
I used to offer a workshop called “Greening Your Suburban Lifestyle”. After a PowerPoint that detailed the energy consumption of the case study suburban house, I divided the participants into two-person teams, giving each team a workbook. The goal of the exercise was for each team to select, from a menu of energy upgrade options, ones that would reach or approach zero emissions, at a cash cost they would be willing to pay in their own lives. Each upgrade option listed its cash cost to implement and its tonnage reduction in carbon output.
To give the exercise powerful impact, there was a third component in scoring this exercise: EROI. Well, sort of. I didn’t actually calculate the energy to produce each upgrade. What I did was look at energy costs of the case study house in 20 years. How many of us ever give a thought to how much we will have to pay for energy in 20 years? Obviously I had to plug in a rate of inflation. In the PowerPoint I showed the 2030 energy costs--for the case study house—inflated at 5, 10, 15, and 20%. To keep the scoring simple, I wanted to use only one rate of inflation. I would ask the participants if they agreed 15% was reasonable, if not actually conservative. I always got agreement.
The energy cost of the case study house was $26,132 in 2010. This includes space heat, hot water, electricity, food energy, 3 cars, trucking, and roads. Running that out 20 years at 15% inflation yields an energy cost of $371,904 in 2030. That was the “Do Nothing” default in the scoring. By the way, do you think you will be able to pay that kind of energy cost in 20 years? Do you see your income going up at 15% annually?
You might ask about my including food energy. I’ve heard the average food item in the supermarket has traveled 1500 miles. I don’t know if that includes those New Zealand organic apples I love or those toxic strawberries from Mexico that glow in the dark. Can this be sustainable? Enjoy ’em while you can folks, peak oil will soon move them to the luxury gourmet aisle.
Or you might question my including roads and trucking. Think about it. We can't live in suburbia without roads to drive our cars on. Building and maintaining pavement, bridges and so on of the 4 million miles of roads in the US has a high dollar and carbon output cost. And we can't live in suburbia without the national fleet of 2 million 18-wheelers rolling 24/7 delivering goods via those roads. So any analysis of greening your suburban house that excludes all that is required to live there is not the whole picture.
OK. The teams could choose upgrade options that would reduce that cost to almost zero in 2030. How? By selecting to move from that suburban sprawl house to a zero-emissions mixed-use congregate living community in a nearby walkable town. By growing a lot of their own food. By owning no cars, using instead a ZipCar for trips unreachable via public transit. And so on.
Back to EROI. By selling the sprawl house for $350,000 and buying the zero-emissions dwelling for $200,000, they saved $2.7 million over 20 years in energy costs alone, not to mention a lowered mortgage payment, and enjoyed the rewards of an extended family of choice. I don’t know how to calculate that ROI, but I know it’s gigantic!
Here’s a story of what happened at my workshop at a UU church in Duxbury, MA. One of the upgrade options was to grow some percentage of your own food: 25, 50, 75 or 100%. One team selected the 100% option twice. Now, it had never occurred to me that anyone would select an option twice, so there was no rule against it. In the closing discussion I asked them what was up with that? The woman replied, “Oh, we’re going to grow food for our neighbor too.”
In Duxbury, MA, that’s the deeper meaning of sustainability!
Another good one Jim. I especially appreciate the quote from Paul Hawken - I read his book a couple of years ago in which all this appears and found it inspiring; yes, amidst all the depressing facts of our situation, his lifting up of all the folks in groups small and large who are actually doing something is, as he says, ground for hope.
ReplyDeleteYou ask in your email for ideas about what to write about next. Personal is always good - so... perhaps more about your own wrestling the situation in which we find ourselves and ways in which you have changed your ways of living.
Peace and blessings,
Ken
Thanks for your extended answer, Jim. The numbers are compelling, when you include the fossil fuel costs of all the support systems that make suburbia possible. In discussing these costs with your classes, do you mention that through taxes and fees, they are indeed paying for the roads, bridges, etc.?
ReplyDeleteI think your vision of the walkable village and small town is still "ahead of the times" because the prices of gas, heating oil and electricity are still far too low. Until those rise to levels where suburbia is acutely uncomfortable; until they stay at those levels or climb higher, causing real economic dislocation --foreclosures, vehicle repos, job losses-- the vast majority of suburbanites will not give up their "lifestyle" and become willing to move out of their relatively large private homes into considerably smaller, and less private (a.k.a anonymous) dwellings. Give up their cars? Are you kidding? It's not going to happen until people, again the vast majority, are forced by circumstances beyond their control.
I do believe that time will come, probably within this decade. But I wonder if by then there will be the resources and the will to build the kinds of places you imagine. I see the economy going nowhere but down from now on. Yes, there will be some partial recovery periods, but we're past peak and on the bumpy down slope; we'll never again see the levels of economic activity we've been used to. Who is going to have the money to buy the places you want to see built? By the time the need becomes evident, isn't it likely that home values will be crushingly low? Government won't have the money or the intelligence to build such practical responses to Peak Oil and Climate Change. I think we will see mostly haphazard, reactive, scrambling, individual and family-sized attempts to deal with the change that is coming. Undoubtedly there will be exceptions to the gloomy picture I paint. But I think they'll serve only a small and privileged fraction of the suburban and rural populace.
Sorry for my grim outlook, but that's how I see it, at least for now. Still, I support you in *holding* your vision, and working to make it a reality. May the Force be with you!!
W
Jim,
ReplyDeleteYour blog, your vision and this conversation has been brewing in the background of my mind. I currently live in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, just outside the city limits of Staunton, the county seat of Augusta.
I recently learned of the existence of the Valley Conservation Council, a private non-profit dedicated to "promoting land use that sustains the farms, forests, open spaces and cultural heritage of the Shenandoah Valley..."
As they say in their brochure, "To be good stewards of our land and water, we must consider solutions that foster the continued health of the region's economy and quality of life, while solving problems presented by rapid population growth and sprawling suburban development patterns."
Their methods are to educate citizens on the value of open space conservation; on alternative options in land use; on the importance of citizen involvement in local land use decisions; to help private owners put land into conservation easements; and "to work cooperatively with citizens, localities and developers to promote smarter growth and conservation to make our communities more livable without sacrificing the natural and cultural heritage of this unique area."
Among other things, their "Better Development Principles" include to "build livable communities" and to "reduce the impact of the car." ! Exclamation point added.
Not to quote their entire brochure, but this is good stuff: "Growing In, Not Out. To save farmland in a growing region we encourage well-designed, more compact development in the right places. VCC provides workshops, research and publications for land use planners, officials, developers and citizens from across the region, sharing ideas and exploring innovative practices that can lower the impact of growth while conserving what we value."
It seems to me that there must be some among these folks, and those in organizations like this elsewhere, who share your vision, in part or largely. Do they have staff, Board members, donors or sponsors who have your architectural skills and development vision? Are there ways you could "pitch" your ideas to such organizations? Not that you would be likely to be pulled in for a project (although that could happen) or even that your input would have considerable influence; rather, that it would at the very least get these practical, appealing, perhaps achievable ideas into the mix, if they are not already there.
(will have to continue in a following post; limited to 4,096 characters, evidently...)
continuing...
ReplyDeleteThe picture at the top of your blog Home Page is an appealing image, one that I think would inspire. Visuals can be powerful motivators, as American marketers know so well. If I were you, I would create or acquire more such images, showing rooftop gardens, solar thermal, bicycle racks by sidewalk cafes,
a zip car on a village street, common green spaces and gardens in the outer, less dense town perimeters, and so on.
There is an area of the city of Staunton that is planned to be "re-developed." It currently has a number of small homes, and many vacant lots, and is apparently generally rundown and undesirable to live in, although I haven't personally visited the neighborhood. At a well-attended community garden meeting I recently attended, a spokesperson from either a state or federal housing agency, spoke passionately about this long-awaited redevelopment. She emphasized that it was not to be *imposed* upon the residents; rather, the type of redevelopment is to follow the desires of the folks who live there. They (this agency and volunteers) will survey every household to find out what those desires are.
Now it seems to me that here is a perfect opportunity for enabling, not imposing, visionary community development. At the very least, as I said, getting such visions into the mix, put "before the people," as it were. Which is where images come in. And passionate, positive, personable, respectful spokespersons. Such as YOU!
Now of course, it is no small obstacle that you live 8 or 9 hours by car away from here. And I'm not really suggesting that it would be possible for you to contribute something to the process that is gradually emerging here. It's just that I wish you could. And I offer it as a real-world example of a place where there could be a chance of developing a community that could include some of the best of what you envision.
Well, that's all. Phew! Long...
May our culture awaken to the many ways in which we can ease our inevitable transition out of hyper-industrialism, hyper-consumerism, and into a sustainable, vibrant, healthy and prosperous in-the-true-sense-of-the-word, economy and society.
Wendy