Summary: Contemporary capitalism and culture is wedded to expanding production and consumption and so typical eco-initiatives rely on this faulty paradigm. Conventional approaches to energy efficiency are a great example of how this addiction to solving problems by just producing and consuming differently, not less, is counterproductive.



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Every so often a new report or book briefly captures some attention and shines a light on these phoney solutions. But the dominant paradigm always reasserts itself. Yet, because you can't actually escape the "price tag proxy," the middle class is gradually going to be crushed by continual escalation in the total costs of living. Simplifiers will be the only ones who can largely escape these burdens and offer an alternate solution that actually works. Hence, we'll keep pointing out these flaws from the comfort of the cheap seats.

The most recent research that I became aware of is a study about energy-efficient housing and the reasons why total energy use is often higher:

Energy efficient houses are often thought to be a promising way to reduce our environmental footprint by using less energy and producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, surprisingly, if you consider the whole life cycle of a house, it turns out that sometimes a new home designed to save energy can end up using more than an average house.

Our study, published in the December edition of the journal Applied Energy, found that current building regulations are failing to adequately address the broad scope of energy use associated with buildings. We need to start thinking about building materials, size, location and lifestyles - not just heating and cooling.

A closer look shows that the low-energy house requires much more embodied energy than a standard house because of the additional insulation and triple glazed windows it uses. So even though the low-energy house has much lower energy bills for heating (and cooling), that’s offset by a similar increase in embodied energy, negating any benefits offered by the additional materials.

With all three of our case study homes, more than 50% of the energy demand associated with the house is the embodied energy and energy for transport. What this highlights is that our current energy efficiency schemes and regulations are failing to comprehensively address the broad range of energy demands for building and living in our homes and cities.

In fact, the space heating and cooling demand - which is the focus of most regulations and schemes - represents merely 3%, 9% and 29% of the total energy use for the low-energy house, the standard house and city apartment, respectively... The current preoccupation with improving energy efficiency for heating and cooling means that the significant indirect energy requirements of houses are often overlooked.
The Conversation: Why energy-saving homes often use more energy

Essentially, there are no free lunches for those trying to optimise energy efficiency through technology. Whether pursuing a fully passive house or just better materials and construction for energy efficiency, the high-cost solutions are using more energy not less once you consider total usage (embodied energy, full lifecycle, transport). Even worse, the most egregious of these housing decisions are made by wealthier, status-conscious people who use narrow improvements like heating/cooling efficiency to justify their extravagant usage of space, windows, technology and materials. Meanwhile simple, low-cost solutions are still mostly ignored as there is little profit or status to be gained. In the end, though, the true, total costs will assert themselves.


Further Info:
Keen For Green: White Roofs and Surfaces Overlooked Key to Reducing Global Warming

The Conversation: If everyone lived in an ‘ecovillage’, the Earth would still be in trouble