Zero Energy Buildings

If you start adding up all the energy utility bills in the U.S., you quickly get into the hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

Buildings consume about two thirds of that -- commercial buildings alone spend more than 90 billion dollars on energy per year. That cost ends up on the bottom line, reflected in stock prices and in the prices of the goods and services we all consume.

Unprecedented efforts are underway to control that cost. Among them is a little-known initiative at the U.S. Department of Energy to develop marketable net zero energy buildings by 2025. It's not out of concern for what we pay for dog food or legal advice. The DOE can see the day fast approaching when there might not be enough energy supply to meet our growing demand -- and that tends to make populations very unhappy.

But imagine an extremely efficient building that generates on site what little power it needs to run.

Your imagination is likely to be the only place you'll see such a thing. It's possible; it's been done. Just not very much.

There are 8 buildings in the United States that qualify as zero-energy buildings. They're all relatively small -- the largest one is the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies at Oberlin College in Ohio. At 13 thousand square feet, it's pretty small by commercial building standards.

But back when the Lewis Center was built -- it opened in 2000 -- it demonstrated some major advances in how we design really efficient buildings. And that's what Oberlin College wanted to do when it built its Environmental Studies Center -- to design the most efficient building possible, a building with no net energy demand.

The Lewis Center uses passive solar design, natural ventilation, and geothermal heat pumps for heating and cooling, all to reduce its energy demand. Then it uses rooftop solar power for its electricity.

This small-scale matching of supply to demand, of generation to loads, is what makes zero-energy buildings so fascinating. Today the Lewis Center is a net exporter of electricity. It generates more than it needs, and sells the excess power to the local utility through net metering.

It didn't start out that way. The building didn't operate quite as planned -- few buildings do -- but it was part of the design philosophy to anticipate changes, and with some tweaks, the building achieved its goal -- zero net energy.

The man behind the design and construction of this zero-energy marvel is an Oberlin College Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics named David Orr. He enlisted plenty of help from the Rocky Mountain Institute, the famous green architect William McDonough, and even NASA.

Dr. Orr didn't stop with the Lewis Center. He turned his sights to one city block adjacent to the college, in the small town of Oberlin, and started working to make that a zero-energy "green district." His plan is to renovate or construct 13 acres of buildings that will be energy self-sufficient and carbon-neutral.

In addition to teaching and doing green building, Orr has been writing -- he's the author of a half-dozen books on sustainability.

If you start adding up all the energy utility bills in the U.S., you quickly get into the hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

Buildings consume about two thirds of that -- commercial buildings alone spend more than 90 billion dollars on energy per year. That cost ends up on the bottom line, reflected in stock prices and in the prices of the goods and services we all consume.

Unprecedented efforts are underway to control that cost. Among them is a little-known initiative at the U.S. Department of Energy to develop marketable net zero energy buildings by 2025. It's not out of concern for what we pay for dog food or legal advice. The DOE can see the day fast approaching when there might not be enough energy supply to meet our growing demand -- and that tends to make populations very unhappy.

But imagine an extremely efficient building that generates on site what little power it needs to run.

Your imagination is likely to be the only place you'll see such a thing. It's possible; it's been done. Just not very much.

There are 8 buildings in the United States that qualify as zero-energy buildings. They're all relatively small -- the largest one is the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies at Oberlin College in Ohio. At 13 thousand square feet, it's pretty small by commercial building standards.

But back when the Lewis Center was built -- it opened in 2000 -- it demonstrated some major advances in how we design really efficient buildings. And that's what Oberlin College wanted to do when it built its Environmental Studies Center -- to design the most efficient building possible, a building with no net energy demand.

The Lewis Center uses passive solar design, natural ventilation, and geothermal heat pumps for heating and cooling, all to reduce its energy demand. Then it uses rooftop solar power for its electricity.

This small-scale matching of supply to demand, of generation to loads, is what makes zero-energy buildings so fascinating. Today the Lewis Center is a net exporter of electricity. It generates more than it needs, and sells the excess power to the local utility through net metering.

It didn't start out that way. The building didn't operate quite as planned -- few buildings do -- but it was part of the design philosophy to anticipate changes, and with some tweaks, the building achieved its goal -- zero net energy.

The man behind the design and construction of this zero-energy marvel is an Oberlin College Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics named David Orr. He enlisted plenty of help from the Rocky Mountain Institute, the famous green architect William McDonough, and even NASA.

Dr. Orr didn't stop with the Lewis Center. He turned his sights to one city block adjacent to the college, in the small town of Oberlin, and started working to make that a zero-energy "green district." His plan is to renovate or construct 13 acres of buildings that will be energy self-sufficient and carbon-neutral.

In addition to teaching and doing green building, Orr has been writing -- he's the author of a half-dozen books on sustainability.