Energy from My Backyard - The Renaissance of Renewable Energy - page 248

This suggests that energy infrastructure matters more than consumer behaviour. One
of the easiest places to start in improving energy efficiency is with buildings. The IEA
estimates that we could improve the energy efficiency of buildings fivefold using existing
techniques; in many cases, using techniques that have been around for centuries. For most
of human civilization, the energy efficiency of housing has been far lower than it could
have been, had the available techniques been applied (Smil 1994 ) . There is no good reason
why, for centuries, most people in cold and temperate zones lived in houses that were
incapable of retaining heat. Growing up in Ireland, I experienced more than my share of
draughts and winter evenings with a fire roasting my chest and an icy chill down my
back. The cost of insulating an Irish house is far lower than the cost of the additional
fuel required over the lifetime of that house. The failure to make insulation a mainstay of
housing construction suggests a mixture of short-term planning and a preference, exhibited
in much consumer behaviour, for the addition of a solution (in this case, fuel) over the
removal of a problem (poor insulation).
This appears to be changing. Recent decades have already seen major improvements in
building insulation standards. This has been most evident in central and northern Europe,
most markedly with the development of the 'passive house' standard. A passive house
is a building that requires no fuel-driven heating or cooling and has the lowest possible
energy footprint for lighting, appliances and other energy needs. By combining passive
solar heating techniques, such as triple glazing and heat recovery ventilation, 16 with active
technologies, such as solar water heating, solar PV power generation and geothermal
heating and cooling through heat pumps, a passive house completely eliminates its external
energy requirements. Since 2007, the German city of Frankfurt has required that all new or
restored public buildings meet passive house standards.
Energy efficiency has been catching on in other places, too. Three of the world's largest
energy consumers - China, Japan and the United States - recently announced new energy
efficiency measures. 17 However, even if these policies are implemented, they still leave
enormous energy efficiency potential untapped (IEA 2012a ). 18
It is clearly important that we change our behaviour in relation to energy use, if only
to prepare ourselves psychologically to accept larger structural changes to the energy
economy (for example, recharging the car overnight rather than filling up with gas on
demand). However, without structural changes, behaviour will have little impact on energy
consumption. The more optimistic future energy scenarios assume that we will replace
our existing infrastructure in the short term. For example, almost four-fifths of permissible
carbon dioxide emissions (if we are to avoid global temperature increase above 2 degrees
Celsius by 2035) are already locked in by existing power plants, factories, buildings