This episode is brought to you by Brilliant. Click the link in the description below. A lot of focus is put on generating cleaner energy for a sustainable future. But that's just one piece of the puzzle.
What if we could dramatically reduce our energy consumption just by changing the way we build our office buildings and skyscrapers? Imagine a skyscraper with smart windows and walls made from fungus. Yes, fungus.
Let's explore a green building and the future of construction. And can going net zero really make a difference? I'm Matt Ferrell. Welcome to Undecided.
Building office buildings and skyscrapers with thousands of pounds of concrete, steel, and other materials is a major contributor to pollution and energy use. But it's more than that. Our homes and office buildings'lighting, heating and cooling, poor insulation, and integration into the surrounding environment have a lasting impact on the energy use and costs. They require larger amounts of power and water to keep comfortable, which just keeps going on indefinitely.
Buildings accounted for 28% of energy-related CO2 emissions in 2019. In order to reduce that problem, we need some innovations around how we build our houses, offices, and skyscrapers. And this is where Net Zero and Green Buildings come in. These constructions are designed and built with the goal of creating a positive impact on the environment and climate.
They can combine energy efficiency and renewable energy to reduce power consumption, benefit the environment, and improve the quality of life for the people that live and work in those buildings. The concept of Green Building has been scaling from small houses to big offices and skyscrapers around the globe. Some international certifications have been developed in order to provide clear guidelines on how to do it. The US Green Building Council developed the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design to rate green buildings and provide owners with a framework for cost-saving, high efficiency, and health for design, construction, operations, and maintenance.
Another popular certification is the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method from the UK, also known as BREEAM. or BREEAM? BREEAM?
Who comes up with these acronyms? Anyway, Zero Energy buildings have on-site renewable power sources like solar panels to try to produce as much clean energy as it consumes. You can't always do 100%, but the goal is to get as much as you can. The power generated during the daytime is consumed by the facility itself. If there's energy surplus, the building delivers that into the grid to try to compensate for grid energy consumption at night.
However, to improve efficiency, energy consumption needs need to be reduced. So heating and cooling and lighting needs to be minimized. To achieve that, it's recommended to integrate things like green roofs, energy-efficient windows with triple-plane glass, and good insulation. Net-zero buildings are also considered green if they're constructed with non-toxic, eco-friendly, and sustainable materials.
They should also use less water and have good air quality so it becomes more sustainable. Some of the simplest solutions you may have already seen where you work. A good start to making a building more efficient is using high-efficiency LED and smart lighting. or occupancy sensors that are hooked up to air conditioning or fan systems.
All of those can contribute considerably to reduce energy consumption. But taking things to the next level, engineers and architects can perform advanced analysis through 3D building energy simulation tools to achieve higher efficiencies. Some software like Green Building Studio, EnergyPlus, and IES Energy Modeling enable engineers and architects to improve a green building's design in order to increase their sustainability.
They can perform a climate analysis and HVAC simulations to optimize what materials to use and how to orient the building for best efficiency. They can see exactly how the building will fare throughout the year before it's even built. Examples of green and net zero buildings have been spreading worldwide over the past decade. In London, for example, Siemens has built the Crystal, one of the greenest buildings in the world.
This highly sustainable building is also a unique events venue. It establishes the benchmark for sustainable building design, achieving the Platinum LEED and outstanding BREEAM accreditation, the most rigorous standards for sustainable design. The crystal is 70% illuminated by natural light due to its triple-glazed windows, and the solar panels produce 20% of the electricity it uses.
Rainwater is collected from the roof and stored in an underground tank for use in the building. 100% of the water that's used in the toilets is taken from non-potable sources just like that. Another interesting feature is the 3,500 data points that are used by the Siemens Building Management System to monitor the building's efficiency, which can view water and energy consumption live. The building cost about 30 million pounds in 2012, but saves a lot of money with electricity. Peter Daw, the city's development manager at Siemens, said in terms of CO2 savings, we're saving about 71% compared to an equivalent building.
In terms of energy costs, we're saving about 500,000 pounds a year. In Seattle, the Bullitt Center is considered the greenest commercial building in the world. Its structure is mostly composed of heavy timber and the materials were kept to their natural state to avoid toxins in today's finishes. The wood was sourced locally. The triple-glazed curtain wall system, which creates the airtight seal along with the orientation, provides heat control and improved daytime lighting, so the lights are off most of the year.
In addition, a closed-loop geothermal system meets the heating and cooling load in the office, and an air-to-air heat exchanger provides incoming fresh air from the outside. The Bullitt stores rainwater in a 56,000 gallon cistern in the basement, which is treated and used for non-potable and potable uses, which means they can use it for drinking water. According to Justin Stenkamp, a mechanical engineer with the company that designed the building's control and plumbing systems, these measures alone helped to save approximately 80% of the water use over a regular office building.
All of that is well and good for building new buildings, but what about existing buildings? One embankment place was built in the early 1990s in London for Price Waterhouse Coopers. It's a great example of zero-energy retrofitting and today is one of the greenest buildings in the world. It utilizes a tri-generation combined cooling, heat, and power system that's fueled by recycled waste vegetable oil. It also has several open-plan spaces to harvest daylight, roof gardens and green walls to make the building more ecological, and low-flush toilets to reduce water use.
Currently, the One Embankment Place emits 40% less carbon than a typical building of its size, and 20% of its heat and 60% of its energy needs are produced on-site. PricewaterhouseCoopers has saved £14 million with energy and carbon-related costs. Another retrofitting example is Powerhouse Jorbo, located in Berrum, Norway. I hope I didn't butcher that pronunciation, because I most likely did. These two office buildings from the 80s were retrofitted with efficient ventilation, insulation, and daylight.
In addition to producing renewable energy on site, the energy needs of the buildings have been reduced by more than 86%. As a result, Powerhouse Jorbo received an outstanding classification from BREEAM-NOR. And probably the coolest part, the building produces about 230,000 kWh of energy, but only consumes about 100,000 kWh. With new buildings and retrofitting old buildings, what's the forecast of net-zero adoption? According to one report, the global net-zero energy building market share was valued at $896 million in 2018 and is expected to reach $2.1 billion by 2024. That's some serious growth that's being spurred on by not only policy, but the value that it drives for building owners.
Besides reducing utility bills and zeroing out energy use, It can increase the building's valuation and isolate owners from future energy price variation. On top of that, the benefits also reach out to the people who live and work in the green buildings by experiencing fresh air and enjoying an environment more connected to nature. And there's the positive impact on the environment due to water conservation and energy and material efficiency. So if this is all so great, why is it still a bit unusual to see a green or net-zero energy office building? I worked for one for years here in Boston, but they're still hard to come by.
The cost of building a zero-energy building is higher than constructing a common one because the building materials are usually more expensive. And there still isn't a vast number of designers or builders that are highly skilled and experienced in this type of building. Also, high-rises have many spaces and occupants in a vertical building with limited roof space for solar panels, so it's difficult for all of them to produce the energy they consume.
A study conducted by the United Kingdom Green Building Council analyzed the feasibility of the design, delivery, and cost of new net-zero carbon buildings. In the study, they broke it down into two buckets. For office buildings being built using net zero goals now through 2025, the cost is about 6.2% higher than standard. Looking further out at newer technologies and standards that are expected to be in the norm by 2030, the cost is 8-17% higher than standard.
Some governments are rolling out policies to stimulate net zero or nearly net zero energy buildings. The EU's Energy Performance of Buildings Directive is a good example. It established that all new construction must be nearly net zero from December 31, 2020, so everything from now on needs to meet that criteria.
Energy performance certificates must be issued when construction is rented or sold, and promote smart technologies like building automation and control systems. Then there's the World Green Building Council, which is a group of 70 green building councils from around the world, who have among other initiatives the Net Zero Carbon Buildings commitment. This challenges organizations, businesses, cities, states, and regions to all make assets under their direct control, operate at zero carbon by 2030. There are currently 94 businesses and organizations, 28 cities and 6 states and regions participating, covering nearly 6,000 assets. By sharing knowledge and lessons learned, the initiative aims to remove the barriers to net-zero implementation and inspire others to take action. In addition to green policies, another approach to reduce cost and improve efficiency of net-zero buildings Are newer technologies and techniques currently being researched like fungus?
Yes, fungus. But before I get to that, I'd like to thank Brilliant for sponsoring this video. If you'd like to learn more about the physics behind buildings like skyscrapers, or how solar energy is captured to power them, check out the Physics of Everyday course at Brilliant. It's a fun one that goes through everyday objects and structures. Everything from how toilets flush to why skyscrapers aren't as sturdy as you might think.
It really helped me to look at the world in a different way. Even if physics isn't your thing, Brilliant has over 60 courses on other topics like mathematics, science, and computer science. They teach it in a way that really works for the way I learn. All of the concepts are conveyed through fun and interactive challenges, which helps you to understand the why of something, not just the how.
It really helps to develop your intuition. So go to Brilliant.org slash undecided to sign up for free and the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership. Thanks to Brilliant and to all of you for supporting the channel.
So, fungus. How about walls made of plant materials? This is still in the experimental stage. but it uses mycelium, a kind of fungal spore that can be used to fill a form with an agricultural product. The final result is a solid brick or plate.
This composite has no toxic chemicals and doesn't take a lot of energy to make. The material could be used as insulation between non-biodegradable materials to avoid breaking apart since it is biodegradable. A project using this material was developed by The Living Studio in New York in cooperation with Ecovative Design. The Hi-Fi project was a tower about 12 meters high composed of 10,000 bricks.
bricks, made of mushroom mycelium and shredded corn stalks. When the event ended after three months, the structure was dismantled and the bricks decomposed to compost, exploiting their natural biodegradability. While it's not primarily for net zero reasons, using mycelium to build structures is also being studied by NASA to grow habitats on the Moon and Mars. It has higher bend strength than reinforced concrete, it's a great insulator, and can regrow and repair itself.
If it's good enough for Martians, why not us? A newer technology that deals with solar radiation and its heat is electrochromic glass or smart glass. It utilizes nanotechnology, which is something I covered in a recent video, to produce small electrical signals to slightly charge the windows in order to change the quantity of radiation they reflect.
This technology could help control the heat inside of a building, which could save a lot of money on HVAC costs, mainly in the summer. Usually, smart windows start with a bluish color and after a few minutes, turn transparent when you apply electrical charges. Some companies have been producing and improving this technology. For example, View Inc., an American smart window company, implemented a project for Netflix's office in Los Gatos, California.
They used 56,200 square feet of their smart glass, which uses a predictive automated system that can be customized and controlled through an app. It takes a holistic view of the building, like the arc of the sun or obstructions to dynamically adjust the tint of the windows. As you can see, there are a lot of different options and techniques out there for improving how we build our buildings and use energy to keep them comfortable.
Even though the costs are still not universally affordable for all office and skyscraper owners, the development of new materials, technologies, design improvements, and government incentives can help the growth of this market worldwide. It's pretty easy to imagine high-rise buildings and office parks with green roofs and zero energy. popping up in more and more cities in the next few decades. Much like Apple Park, which is the largest LEED Platinum Certified building. Jump into the comments and let me know what you think.
If you work or know of a net zero building in your area, be sure to comment below. If you liked this video, be sure to check out one of the ones I have linked to right here. And be sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell if you think I've earned it.
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