Ron Dembo

Italian Examples of Cities Made for People

2013-05-22T15:40:25-04:00

I love the Italian Piazza. You find them in every town, big or small. Rome is full of them. They are gentle and filled with human sounds, blended voices and mainly devoid of cars. People stroll in them, they bump into friends, and they talk. Almost always, they are beautiful. You discover them. They spring up at you as you turn a corner. Yesterday I sat in the main Piazza in Ravello -- a stunning space, framed by beautiful old pine trees. Today, I am in Matera, a city carved out of a rock. The main Piazza is a beautiful odd-shaped space with white stone paving. I couldn't help notice how calming it was as I first entered it - quiet muffled voices, gentle sounds of people walking and the colors and sense of space. It lacked of the intrusion cars bring to cities, adding an even more peaceful tone to the space.

My hometown Toronto lacks such spaces. We have areas filled with cafes and lovely restaurants but there are no places where humans can relax, meet up, discuss work, politics, new ideas - where they can bump into each other "par hazard". We have a Piazza modeled on Times Square but a poor replica. It is noisy, devoid of trees, filled with glaring screens and about as unwelcoming as you can imagine. When I think about our town and Rome or any other Italian town with it's carless Piazzas, its "passegata" every afternoon when the town comes out to walk. Big cities can capture the intimacy of a small city with random carless Piazzas scattered about. They become cities for humans, not cities built on the concept of industrialization. Where are our town planners? What are they thinking when they design and modify our cities? We have moved from the Italian Piazza model to a faceless, high rise, car ridden, noisy environment. We have nowhere to escape, to really hang out. Our kids gravitate to shopping malls, they have nowhere to go except a space designed to get us to consume more than we need.

I have a dream that one day I will take a group of town planners to Italy, from one Piazza to the next. I will feed them well, let them drink good wine, brainwash them, so that when they return to cities like Toronto, they will strive to create the Piazzas for us and turn a heartless, soul-less environment into one where humans will love to be, meet, create, stroll, calm down and enjoy.

Youth, an Unstoppable Force for Change

2013-04-24T08:19:46-04:00

It is an amazing fact that in the next 30 years there will be more youth completing their education than in all of history (Sir Ken Robinson quoting UNESCO at TED2006)! It is so amazing that it is hard to comprehend.

What does this mean for the future of the world? Does it mean that the rate of acceleration of innovation and discovery will increase radically? Or does it mean that we will have a lot of people with a significant education looking for a lot of jobs that are not there?

I personally think it is our biggest hope for solving some of the seemingly intractable problems we face today -- problems like what to do about climate change and an epidemic of obesity.

I imagine a world where these youth -- connected via the Internet, technology savvy, born with a smartphone in their hand, dressed in the same denim, listening to the same music, more connected to each other than to their governments -- as an unstoppable force. I see them able to solve anything especially since they are still evolving their patterns of behavior. And, since our collective behavior seems to be one of the biggest hurdles to solving problems of the magnitude of climate change, influencing their behavior is probably one of our biggest hopes -- for they are next year's majority in an increasingly democratic world.

What also seems to be true is that we do not have to work hard at convincing them of these problems. They already have heard about them and just as we might have fought to eliminate racial prejudice or for women's rights in our time. They are coming to terms with the fact that we have left them a world in which we are gobbling up resources faster than we can replenish them. One that will grow in its use of energy and that, that energy will have to come from cleaner, low-carbon sources. They are starting to learn that the food we have encouraged them to eat and the drinks we offer them in the dispensers in their schools, are by and large no good for them.

That is why we have started to work to mobilize this force for good and in particular to move us to a sustainable world. They are our hope. They will help reshape a world and build political systems that can deal with problems that cross boundaries because they know no boundaries. I see them as carbon savvy warriors. I see them inventing new ways to do things that pollute less. I see them being kinder to our planet than we were. I see them as knowledgeable of the impact they have and conscious of how to keep it low and still live well. I see them united and oblivious of geographies. And, I see them reversing the trend of poor nutrition that we have created.

Our hope is to assist this emerging force by providing them with the tools that help them measure, compare and share their collective impact. I see our mission as changing the incentive systems that guide their behavior. The rest will follow.

Earth Day: Wake Up People, Climate Change Is Kicking Our Butts!

2013-04-15T11:16:44-04:00

While it is only eight years since I started getting actively engaged in trying to make a difference in our collective footprint, I already feel like a grandfather. I have sat on boards of organizations that mobilize efforts to reduce environmental impact. I have been privileged to address a meeting of 19 First Nation Chiefs and to listen to their views.

I have sat with corporate leaders and seen big changes they are making in their companies. I have watched corporate awareness grow and carbon neutral-bank branches appear. I have been on scientific missions to measure acidity in the oceans and have been part of efforts to save the oceans. I have had the privilege to interact virtually with over a quarter of a million students worldwide through our software. I have had endless conversations with our government and often mused how I wish their glacial progress could outmatch the rate at which glaciers are melting.

I have met inspiring people. I have heard inspiring ideas. I have been inspired.

But with all this, it is hard not to feel we are losing the war on climate change. In just these eight years, while all the efforts grow, the world has actually declined dramatically. There is far more carbon in our atmosphere, there are far fewer fish in the oceans. There is far less ice in the Northern passage and glaciers recede at an alarming rate -- you only have to watch James Balog's movies.

So why do I continue? Because I believe that at some tipping point, we will realize that we are in the middle of World War 3 and we will mobilize. Because I believe that we are a creative species and we can solve this problem. Because I believe that we can change our behavior and that technology can play a massive role. Because I believe that one day we will have bold leaders who will see the economic value of good stewardship and will change our laws.

So why don't we all just stop talking and start doing. Just look around you at the wastage and reduce it. Just do one good action for the earth every day, no matter how small. And, inspire others to do so.

The Ocean: A Barometer for Mass Extinction

2011-12-31T10:59:45-05:00

Early in December I was sitting in the middle of Milne Bay, off the coast of Papua New Guinea, eating my breakfast. To my left at the table was Charlie Veron, one of the world's most preeminent scientists on extinction. We were on our way to see ocean vents where pure carbon dioxide is leaking from the ocean floor -- a reminder that we are sitting on the edge of a ring of fire, one of the most active volcanic areas of the world.

It is always true that the future is here for us to see. We only have to look for it.

It is a scientific fact that the oceans are acidifying at an alarming rate and the impact of this will be profound. By looking at ocean vents and seeing what happens to the coral around them, we have a crystal ball for the future. The acidity around ocean vents mimics what will happen to all reefs if the current rate of acidification continues. The ocean is where life began and is the canary in the coalmine for mass extinctions.

Charlie's work has shown that the last four mass extinctions on earth were linked to changes that preceded them in the oceans. By examining the history of oceans we know how mass extinctions occurred and how evolution proceeded. Moreover, we can get clues from the past as to how the earth will evolve.

He paints a picture of reefs covered in algae, of molluscs -- which are one-third of all biomass in the poles -- unable to grow their shells, of monoculture coral reefs, and lots of seagrass everywhere. Not to mention a huge proliferation of jellyfish. He says that we are sitting on top of the "headwaters of biodiversity": From here life flows to the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, the North and South. It is from here that life extinct in one part of the world can be regenerated and flow to the rest of the world.

This might all sound like science fiction, but it is actually objective science. Here are the facts: The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher today than it has been for the last million years. The oceans absorb a large part of the carbon dioxide we generate and most of this occurs in colder water (just think of how the carbon dioxide in your soft drink bubbles off at higher temperatures). This causes ocean acidification and already has resulted in a 30 per cent scientifically measured increase since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Back at the breakfast table, Katharina Fabricius, a world expert on ocean acidification who was sitting to my right, showed us how CO2 bubbling through coral actually eats away at the skeleton of entire reefs. We filled a bunch of bottles covering the breakfast table with samples taken from the area around these vents. There are also tiles, which will be left here to collect coral growth and compare it to reefs close by where there is no carbon bubbling out of the earth.

Up until now, scientists have been bringing samples to their labs and testing their responses to CO2. Today, the organisms will be tested in their own habitat. The indigenous elders say that they remember the vents bubbling when they were young children, so we know that coral in this area has been exposed to CO2 for at least 70 years. This provides researchers with a way of testing their hypotheses over long periods.

Branching coral grows faster than massive coral, but is more sensitive to environmental changes. Very few coral species can handle the growing acidity. There is one species that does, Porites coral, and it will be the winner. We can expect coral monoculture when the oceans get more acidic, as has happened before. And because this species does not provide a good home for other marine life, we will see it disappear. We will also see very healthy seagrass with nothing growing on it, looking like a beautiful golf course in the middle of the ocean.

The moral of the story is there will be winners and losers -- more losers than winners.

Peeking 50 years into the future at our current rate of burning fossil fuels, we see extinction of many species and a few sites in the world where diversity of coral will be preserved. We see a world of vastly reduced biodiversity and man's role in all of this will be uncertain. We are truly gobbling up our children's world at an alarming rate.

These scientists are adamant: Once our atmosphere and oceans are acidified there is no way to reverse it, except over millennia.

We need to do what we can to stop it now.

How to Make Kids Care About Climate Change

2011-11-05T10:24:40-04:00

Climate change is one of the most hotly debated issues of our time, both from an economic and a moral viewpoint. And whenever someone makes a case for action from a moral stance, most often they'll justify it by invoking the future plight of the world and the children that will inherit it. It's a delicate subject, after all, what's more important than our children?

One of the most difficult aspects in inspiring the necessary change in consciousness is that climate change is such a hard idea to engage with. It is so abstract that it doesn't really hit our nerve endings. Energy is invisible and intangible. But the fact of the matter is that most of our daily routine involves some sort of environmental impact. And the truth is most of our lifestyle could be made more efficient. That might sound overwhelming, but the changing of consciousness required to live efficiently does not necessarily require us to give up all the comforts that we take for granted. It's really more about cutting out the waste. For a great glimpse of this kind of efficient future we can look to our children and our schools.

Zerofootprint has partnered with the Halton Catholic District School Board to save energy by cutting out environmental waste. The effort is to bring awareness to young people, not just by educating them about the perils of climate change, but by having them directly engage with the impacts of their everyday activities. The idea behind the program is to give teachers and students feedback on their energy use through visual maps and gauges. This insight will provide them with the information needed to adjust their behaviour accordingly. Schools are outfitted with monitors in the hallway showing energy use data. They then can adjust by doing something like turning off all the computers or, if it is bright outside, turning the lights off and opening the blinds. They also have 'energy free' lunch hours (where the kids play board games instead of computer games). And, schools can challenge each other to a friendly contest on who can reduce their environmental impact the most.

The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive, as the kids themselves have been the driving force of the program. The benchmarking program has spilled into other subjects too. And teachers are matching their students' enthusiasm. The monitors that are up in the hallway influence teachers who are not even directly associated with the program. They try to curb their energy in order to contribute to the dips in usage that the students are looking for. Eco-teams made up of students are now functioning like sports teams -- to give schools another point of pride besides the usual extra-curricular activities.

As inspiring as it is to see students and teachers directly engaging with their environmental impact, the benefits aren't just on the moral side of the equation; there will be a huge payback on the economic side of things. The cost avoidance will be substantial. There is a significant potential for savings for school boards facing budget restrictions and program cuts. Added to the fact that this is the first stage of the program where teachers and students are still learning to behave more efficiently. The future for energy efficiency is extremely promising.

Imagine if this sort of behavioural change was used in our offices and homes -- the savings would be astronomical. With so much debate revolving around our future energy sources, we sometimes forget that simply acting more efficient is the most effective way to both save money on our energy bills and combat climate change. Zerofootprint's energy management software can provide much needed insight into environmental impact and what to do about it. When a student was asked how she felt about the program, she replied, "Proud of myself." Soon we can all feel proud, because our greatest untapped energy resource is the energy we never use.

Towards More Resilient Cities

2011-08-16T10:49:47-04:00

There is no doubt the word "smart" is overplayed and devalued. A good example is smart meters for measuring home electricity. A smart meter is only as smart as the software and feedback loops generated from its data -- without feedback a smart meter is dumb.

In Ontario we have the largest penetration of electrical smart meters in our homes almost anywhere. Yet, very few residents even know they have one. What about the day that all home electricity meters are smart? Do we enter into the world of super smart?

It's all about entering a world where we can "talk" to the objects around us and they can "talk" to us. This is happening regardless of any "smart" initiatives. The big question in my mind is, what should we be doing with this technology to make our cities more resilient (a goal I like more than smart)?

Sensors that can measure the impact of our actions and the things we use are becoming cheaper and more prevalent. For one thing, these ubiquitous sensors can be harnessed to rid us of the myriad of inefficiencies that we can no longer afford in a resource-constrained world. For example, we can reduce electrical consumption without losing the convenience we have become used to. We can use data and benchmarking to reward good behaviour and discourage bad behavior. We can use data to facilitate funding of retrofits in ways that have not been exploited before. We can spot and reduce the enormous amounts of waste in our system -- water leakage, phantom load in our electrical system, fuel in our transportation system. We can improve the air we breathe in our buildings and at home if we finally start measuring and benchmarking it. We can optimize our use of resources by clever application of algorithms that can outperform the humans that currently do these tasks.

Examples are: optimization of building resource use, improving the quality of air we breathe, the water we drink, reducing the fuel we need for transportation, reducing the water we need for agriculture, reducing medical errors in our hospitals, improving the reach of health care. Cell phones are "smart" but I believe that the real value of cell phones is in how they have transformed lives and given users tools to improve their resilience through access to sustainable commerce in ways that were not possible before.

So, in short, I think we should turn our attention away from lionizing "smart" and focusing the data that we are now acquiring, through the ubiquitous use of sensors, toward making a our cities more resilient. A city with huge slums is not resilient. A city with inefficient transportation is not resilient. A city that wastes water and energy is not resilient. A city with a monolithic food distribution system is not resilient. A city with a monolithic energy infrastructure is not resilient. A city that does not foster use of local food production is not resilient. So resilience is the adjective that describes a city that is sustainable. More resilience equals more sustainability. Let's be smart and focus on resilience and sustainability will follow.

We Are an Amazing Species

2011-08-05T13:05:53-04:00

In July I spent four days in Edinburgh at TEDGlobal listening to a broad range of talks by amazing people who are doing amazing things. The creativity of these people is inspiring. What we are capable of is truly awesome. It is awesome in the good it can produce and awesome in the destruction it is causing.

I opened my Blackberry one morning to read about the latest 17-year study on the role forests play in keeping our world in balance and, in short, they are even more powerful agents than we have assumed. Yet we are collectively destroying them at an unprecedented rate -- it's as if we were slowly cutting our lungs out while partying. We have been listening to the "Surgeon General" warning us about the perils of destroying the Amazon rainforests since I was a kid. Yet it goes on.

So, I went for a walk outside in a Scottish forest and spent an hour looking at some of the most magnificent spruce trees I have ever seen. They were surely there years before brilliant Scotsmen sculpted society as we know it today. Did they have any idea that their inventions would bring us to the brink of collapse? Did they know, as they perfected their steam engines, drew up their legal system, evolved democracy, that in only a few hundred years man would have taken this creativity and in the blink of an evolutionary eye produced what we have today? Could they have imagined the amazing things that would have resulted? And, could they have imagined it could all lead to the destruction of the world?

I mused about why Scotland? Why did all this creativity occur in this small, chilly, rainy place? But looking around me it was clear. This must have been heaven a few hundred years ago -- lots of water, beautiful, abundant forests teeming with wildlife, an ocean nearby well stocked with fish -- the perfect place to develop agriculture and have time to think, a Garden of Eden. They invented the stuff that would allow us to build cities in deserts, pump water from aquifers that had been there for thousands of years, cut forests down at an ever-accelerating rate. They started the ball rolling. They took us, at lightning evolutionary speed, to a place with challenges that we are not equipped to solve.

We, as a species, need to collaborate on an unprecedented scale to avoid a catastrophe. It is hard to see how we can get there. We are not wired for this. We need to evolve socially as rapidly as we are evolving technologically. We need to get to a point where we can maintain and share our world's resources for the good of all species and we need to do this in record time. Evolution is too slow. We need social innovation, innovation in world governance that I cannot foresee happening fast enough. We are still cavemen standing guard over the animal we just killed.

It is even more difficult to imagine as I read about the squabbling and petty discussions that are happening leading up to elections in my home province of Ontario where conservation is becoming a dirty word and where electoral rhetoric is about trivia that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. And why should we care? We are fat cats living well in the world with lots of resources at our disposal. We are in the first class cabins on the Titanic. So what about those poor buggers on deck who are screaming just because they saw an iceberg cut a hole in the side of the boat? I want to know why it is taking the waiters so long to bring the champagne.

It Is Time We Know What We Breathe All Day

2011-07-06T16:51:02-04:00

Stop people on the street and ask them if the air quality in their home matters to them. I bet they would say "yes" across the board -- yet, I'm willing to bet that most of us know more about the fuel efficiency of our cars, or the price of the houses in our neighborhood, or the cost of a haircut than we do than about the quality of air in our children's schools. Strange, isn't it? Is it that we don't really care?

It is safe to say we should measure what we care about -- so why don't we? According to Health Canada, the average Canadian spends 90 per cent of their time indoors. We know poor air quality can cause sickness -- think of mould, VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds), flame retardants on our furniture, etc.

What if I told you your house had 10 times the VOCs that are found in your neighbors' houses? What if the boardroom on the fourth floor in your office was 20 times worse than the one on the third floor? Guess where you would hold meetings! And guess how long it would take before the fourth floor boardroom would be fixed.

Or, imagine your son's school with air quality much worse than your daughter's. It wouldn't be long before you would be lobbying for a change.

Poor air quality shortens life expectancy in all Canadians. Health Canada estimates that the government spends several billions of dollars a year dealing with the negative human, financial, and social impacts of outdoor air quality. Outdoor air quality is linked to respiratory problems, lost workdays, increased hospital visits, and even premature death for thousands of Canadians. Poor outdoor air quality also significantly increases the rate of asthma in our children, a costly sickness since it leads to many emergency room visits.

Before buying my own home I once did an air quality test for urea-formaldehyde levels because the home had been insulated with urea-formaldehyde. The net result was great and so I bought the house. Not everyone has this choice, but they can read the Environmental Protection Agency's introduction to indoor air quality to see how to reduce VOC exposure.

So, I propose that we monitor the air in our homes, schools, and offices in addition to our neighbourhoods so that we can see how we stack up with respect to our neighbours and peers. It will save us large amounts of money in the long run. It is technologically feasible and it could make a large dent on the government's bill for health care, something that is getting out of hand.

Smart Meters Are Good for Us

2011-05-27T09:25:19-04:00

Imagine you and your neighbor buy the same car. They're identical in every way, yet there
is one important difference: he paid half as much as you did. How would you feel? The
answer is obvious for most Canadians -- you would feel foolish because you work hard for
your money.

Now, imagine someone on your street living in an identical house paid half as much for
electricity as you do. You would want to know how she did it, right?

These examples are not meant to be exaggerations. Most of us pay an electricity bill, but we
don't have a clue about how much electricity we consume relative to others like us. We can't
see it. We can't feel it. We don't even know what's "normal." Yet we all say it is important.
Strange, eh?

We measure, compare and manage almost everything that is important to us -- our weight,
the fuel economy of our cars, the value of our homes -- but why not the electricity we
consume?

We Canadians care about this issue, but we don't know what to do about it. Not only are
we spending more to live in electricity-guzzling homes, we're contributing to one of the
most significant source of carbon emissions in North America. In Toronto, 63 per cent of all carbon
emissions are attributed to operation of our offices and homes, according to the City of Toronto's Energy Efficiency Office. This also affects the air we
breathe and the societal cost of managing asthma in our kids. By the way, the U.S. Department of Energy says households in the 1950s
used 1/3rd the electricity we use!

And here's where smart meters come in. They can help us get smart about the electricity
we use. Smart meters in our homes are one of the key tools that can help us cut our
electricity costs. Smart meters record the consumption of electricity in our homes in real time
and publish that data back to a government owned database.

They allow for an accurate
calculation of our usage and billing. They allow us to make sure we avoid expensive
electricity and to shift to times when it is cheap. If used well they can make electricity
cheaper. Why would anyone think of reverting back to the 'dumb' meters we grew up with?
Its like asking cell phone users to stop texting and start using smoke signals!

The Province of Ontario has already spent over $1billion installing smart meters -- we have
one of the largest penetrations of smart meters anywhere in the world -- almost 100 per cent of
Ontario homes and small businesses have smart meters installed. That's the good news.
The bad news is we have not enabled consumers with the tools to use them well -- but that is
coming soon.

Dr. Ron Dembo is the founder and CEO of Zerofootprint, an organization that advocates for a mass reduction in global environmental impact through software and services to individuals, governments and corporations that measures and manages their carbon footprint.

Eco-Schmeco: A More Sane Way to Rate Eco-Resorts

2010-12-14T15:29:17-05:00

Just as anyone with access to hot running water and a massage bench can declare they have a spa, almost any resort that uses recycled toilet paper and serves shade grown, organic, fair trade coffee can call itself an eco-resort.

There is no reasonable rating system that exists for eco-resorts. Yes, there are various labels that you can request by filling out a form with your green qualities (scout's honor) and sending it to some N.G.O. But even assuming everyone is perfectly truthful, what's to stop you from jacking up the heat or air-conditioning with the doors open, or heating the outdoor pool to 90 degrees in winter once you have the rating safely ensconced on your website? Not much.

There is also little information that allows for accurate comparison between these resorts. How do we know if your eco-resort is better than my eco-resort? How would you feel if your eco-resort and mine had the same rating, but you used one-fifth the electricity I did for the same volume of guests?

I recently visited a beautiful eco-resort in Costa Rica that attracts the likes of Al Gore and Sheryl Crow, where the owners clearly took the meaning of sustainability to heart and had constructed a resort that appeared to have low energy needs. As it turns out, his competition came for a visit and when they compared notes their energy bills differed by a factor of four! One resort has air-conditioning whereas the other has structures designed for great natural ventilation and light and used ceiling fans when it was too hot. Yet the consumer searching for a holiday in a resort that is eco-friendly would be hard-pressed to know the difference; they are rated as equally green by their eco-label. Two resorts can earn the same rating, even if one resort espouses a culture of wastefulness and the other a culture of conservation. The same issue arises with LEED certification on buildings; once you have it, it is yours to tout no matter the culture of energy use of occupants. Energy hogs, too, can be LEED certified.

Clearly, our rating systems reflect a static picture rather than a fluid reality. The problem is simple; we don't measure the operational footprint of these resorts on an on-going basis and, if they fall out of line, remove or change their rating. We don't even have norms for the on-going operation of an eco-resort after it's labeled. Based on what we have seen at Zerofootprint when we benchmark buildings, schools, or businesses, it is not infrequent that two buildings in close proximity can have vastly different environmental impact and differ, literally, by many orders of magnitude.

So, what's the solution?

To start, measure the ongoing, verifiable use of energy and water and benchmark resorts against each other in a normalized fashion.

This is easier than it sounds. These resorts pay utility bills so we have an objective, trusted source of data on which to base benchmarks. Moreover, this information is easily audited - just look at the bills. A very high proportion of operational footprint comes from the utilities a building consumes and so a ranking based on this consumption is likely to be very accurate. As more and more resorts do this, the benchmarks for what constitutes a "good" or "poor" performing resort will soon become apparent. The bar might shift from year to year, but that is good if the stakes for being wasteful get higher.

I suggest starting with the following:

Measure the footprint per guest-days; this is based on utilities actually consumed over the last year and the total number of guest-days billed.

Divide the distribution into terciles (equal groups each containing a third of the resorts) and award a rating of green to the third with the lowest footprint.

Redo the ranking every year. In this way, we would have an objective measure that is meaningful, easy to compute, easy to audit, and moreover, easy and cost-effective to apply on a large scale.

If we did this, not only to eco-resorts but to all hotels, we would almost surely find that some eco-resorts are actually not very eco-friendly at all, and that some unlabeled resorts are actually more green than eco-labeled ones. It would certainly be clearer for the consumer: a true eco-resort is one in the lowest third of the energy footprint scale in its peer group.

It is true that to get a holistic picture of an eco-resort we would have to look at more data, such as the food consumed and its sourcing, for example. But it's important to start somewhere. To drive change, it is more important for a rating system to gain legitimacy and universal application than it is to be pedantic about the potentially infinite list of criteria. The more criteria needed to establish a rating, the more barriers there are to widespread acceptance and the more difficult the verification process; too many criteria can make it easier to game the system by increasing the difficulty of verification. To get this going, let's focus on utilities and set the true green eco-resorts apart from the rest.

At Last, a Model for Retrofit Funding With the Right Design

2010-11-24T17:20:21-05:00

For some time, Zerofootprint and many others have been highlighting the need to focus on the energy inefficiency of buildings, particularly if we are to make serious inroads into reducing global carbon emissions. We have looked at the issue of how to fund energy efficiency measures, and argued that the most effective way to use government funding would be to design programs for financial market support rather than to spend funds directly on retrofitting. We have also argued that we urgently need to gather benchmark data on energy efficiency and the impact of retrofits if investors are to have confidence in a market in retrofit funding. Now, at last, we have a government program that aims to do precisely these things.

On November 9, 2010, the US Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) launched a pilot program to offer creditworthy borrowers low-cost loans to make energy-saving improvements to their homes. Instead of lending money directly to homeowners, the program will use government funds to underwrite loans provided by financial institutions. By leveraging the funds in this way, the program estimates that it will achieve around ten times more retrofitting than by lending the money directly.

Upfront costs have proved one of the main barriers to homeowners undertaking energy retrofits. The new program -- created under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, administered by Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and called FHA PowerSaver -- aims to overcome this barrier while creating a new model for mainstream mortgage financing of energy retrofits.

If you look at the costs of retrofitting and the potential reduction in energy bills, it's clear we could make major cuts in energy consumption in a payback period that is economically attractive. Energy retrofits not only help homeowners save money; they improve the comfort of homes and add to their equity. Retrofitting programs will also create desperately needed jobs. Last, but by no means least, they cut carbon emissions. The nation's 130 million homes generate more than 20 percent of its carbon. Retrofits can cut energy use, and therefore emissions, by up to 40 percent. Energy-saving retrofitting makes so much sense, that you would think we would be rolling programs all over the country. So why aren't we doing it?

Creating Incentive for Investment

Two reasons -- first, the cost. Retrofitting a single-family home costs onwards of around $10,000 to $15,000. That's more than many families can afford. Likewise, the total cost of retrofitting all 130 million homes could amount to almost $2 trillion, way more than any government could afford, especially during an economic downturn. If retrofitting is viewed as an investment with an attractive return, however, then it should interest the financial markets.

If financial institutions are able to package up loans as secure investments with a decent return, then the markets will provide the funding. But the process needs to be properly designed - and that's where the loan insurance comes in. By underwriting the homeowner loans, the government gives financial institutions the incentive they need to start lending. That is, the government acts as a credit enhancer and not a funder of capital. The FHA PowerSaver program aims to demonstrate how to "highly leverage grant funding in order to significantly enhance the resources available for supporting the program."

FHA PowerSaver will direct up to $25 million towards insuring up to 24,000 loans over a two-year period, with an expected average loan size of $12,500. Using the insurance mechanism to leverage the funding, "the program is therefore expected to result in the extension of $300 million in FHA-insured energy efficiency property improvement loans over the 2-year period," says HUD.

(To ensure the integrity of the program, homeowners will have to have a FICO credit score of 660 or above and a debt-to-income ratio of less than 45 percent. Furthermore, FHA PowerSaver leaves some risk with the lenders to encourage proper standards of underwriting. The program restricts the government insurance to 90 percent of any single loan and 10 percent of a lenders' loan pool total.)

Benchmarks Are Necessary to Financial Markets

The second reason that retrofitting programs haven't taken off is a lack of benchmark data. We have very little hard data on the energy consumption of our buildings despite their contribution to global carbon emissions. If you add commercial, government and other buildings to homes, then buildings contribute around 40 percent of U.S. carbon emissions, and nearly 80 percent in cities such as New York.

As we see with the HUD program, the government can't afford to tackle this problem on its own, so it needs to bring in the financial markets. But markets need data and benchmarks in order to give confidence to investors, and that's precisely what we don't have at present. HUD says that one of the principal purposes of the pilot program, "is to generate data on key questions that can help make the case for additional mainstream mortgage products to support home energy retrofits, including first mortgage options."

FHA plans to undertake a rigorous evaluation of the program. It will measure the reduction in energy consumption and energy bills after retrofits and whether the value of homes is affected. "Data from the PowerSaver Pilot Program... will help fill a major void and start to establish a basis for analyzing other financing options," says FHA, adding, "otherwise, FHA is concerned that continued progress on mainstream mortgage financing options for home energy retrofits will be frustrated."

Zerofootprint welcomes the FHA PowerSaver initiative and its attempt to create a new model for retrofit funding. To find out more about Zerofootprint's ideas on retrofit funding and the benchmarking of building energy efficiency see our papers, "How Governments Should Fund Retrofits" and "What the Environmental World Needs is Universal Benchmarking in the Fight Against Global Warming" available at: www.zerofootprintfoundation.org.

Universal Benchmarking Is Essential in the Fight Against Global Warming

2010-08-31T09:45:38-04:00

Benchmarking is the process of comparing your performance metrics to industry best practice and/or best practices of other industries. The primary goal is to make improvements that lead to doing things better, faster and cheaper.

Benchmarking involves identifying the best performers and comparing your results to theirs in order to learn how well the best in class perform and, more importantly, how they do it. Almost every commercial firm routinely uses benchmarking to guide its practice.

Most governments today agree that global warming is a huge challenge, with a potential for disastrous consequences if we don't act. They also agree that our use of water and energy needs to be more efficient and needs to have less of an environmental impact. Our homes and city buildings are a big part of the problem -- they are responsible for over 70% of some cities' environmental footprints -- and yet we don't know how they compare individually with one another. There are no benchmarks.

Do you know if you use a 'normal' or 'large' amount of electricity in your daily life? What is a normal amount? What is normal in the U.S.? What is normal in Europe? How big is the difference? Why is there a difference? Do you use more water than the average in person your city? Do you throw out much more garbage? Does your home or office require more energy than its neighbours to operate?

These are the first questions a business would ask if it were given the task of becoming more environmentally efficient. Yet, with all the discussion on global warming, we have no benchmarks to guide us to a more efficient lifestyle.

To take an example, Zerofootprint studied a university campus and found a student residence within a stone's throw of others - buildings all used for the same purpose of housing students - that was using five times more electricity per student. Guess what a manager in a Fortune 500 company would do with such information?

When we benchmarked schools, we found some with energy footprints per square metre that were 30 times worse than others in the same district. We have also seen new buildings that have a LEED Gold environmental building certification underperform buildings that are older and have no such rating.

If we are to deal effectively with energy and water and their environmental impact on global warming then we need universal benchmarking to give people the tools they need to guide their efforts.

The Power of Universal Benchmarking

Why universal? Because much of the footprint of our cities comes from the collective operation of all our schools, offices, shops and houses. And it is the sum total of the changes in each and every one of them that we will need.

We need the benchmark numbers to motivate change. Without them, how will we measure progress? How will we create the most effective policies and incentives?

We can draw an interesting parallel with what we have already done with cars and fuel consumption.

In the U.S. until 1970, gasoline was extremely cheap and abundant and so almost no attention was paid to the efficiency of cars. People simply didn't care. And then along came OPEC and the oil crisis and a rude awakening. Gas was suddenly more expensive and the security issues around energy dependence came to the fore. How did we deal with this? Guess what -- we used benchmarking!

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a requirement for all cars to be benchmarked using a standard methodology. Yes, we all know that there are approximations in the standard way of measuring a car's performance. But we also know that the EPA benchmark stickers we see on all new cars are meant for comparative purposes. They are also useful for policy purposes because we can use them to define norms. By measuring the performance of all cars in this way, the U.S. Government could simply state a policy that required auto manufacturers to achieve an average fleet consumption of 25 miles per gallon by a certain date. And, when President Obama recently wanted to raise the bar for the energy efficiency of U.S cars all he had to do was change one number -- the benchmark. As a result, by 2015 all manufacturers will be required to have a fleet average of 35 miles per gallon or more.

So benchmarking has become a valuable tool in combating fuel inefficiency. We need to apply this same kind of thinking to our buildings and the environment.

Start With Buildings

We propose starting with buildings for two reasons -- the wealth of utility/energy data available and the fact that they are such a big part of the problem. And we propose taking an 80/20 approach. Let's get 80% of the way there on all buildings rather than 100% of the way on just a few buildings. This will enable us to achieve massive coverage quickly and cheaply and dive into greater detail (the last 20%) when and where it is warranted.

Calculating the footprint of a building is like going to the doctor for an examination. When we visit the doctor, they usually check our key health indicators -- temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, etc. -- before deciding if we need an MRI scan. The scan will give a lot more detail of our internal condition, but it would also cost a whole lot more. Meanwhile, the key health indicators can identify a large proportion of the cases where there is a medical condition that needs attention. Utility bills are like key health indicators. We get large amounts of useful information quickly and cheaply. By setting our sights on covering 100% of buildings (where we do a partial calculation of each building's individual footprint) rather than 10% of buildings (where we do a full calculation of their footprint) we give ourselves are far better chance of making a real impact on carbon emissions and water use.

Zerofootprint has embarked on an effort of universal benchmarking of buildings based on utility information that is mostly readily available and audited. It is a simple idea -- first we measure, which enables us to compare, which ultimately leads to change.

What We're Doing For Schools
We use simple graphics to create norms. A gauge is divided into three zones. The green zone is where the top third of schools lie, the yellow zone is the middle third, and the red zone is the schools with the worst performance. Clearly, children, teachers and administrators at your child's school will feel pressure to move out of the red zone. We also use other simple graphics to show how schools compare. Larger bubbles correspond to higher footprints. Or, we show the top 20 schools in a leader board. To see an instance of this for schools in Toronto look at: http://zerochallenge.zerofootprint.net.

We also allow for a few different metrics -- such as footprint per student or footprint per unit area -- that expose different information. When used in conjunction, they paint an accurate picture of how close to or far from the norm a school might be.

It becomes immediately and patently clear which schools are underperforming and which are outperforming the norm. (The norm, or median, is also easy to calculate.)

Armed with these tools, schools can make changes and measure their effect. This gives added motivation for change. The easy-to-calculate and highly visible measures also allow for competitions between schools to improve their performance. We also recognize the fact that a school that is a poor performer might not have had much say in how it got there. In that case, we can measure success on the percentage change achieved and not on the absolute rank.

Universal Appeal
These exact same tools and ideas may be used for other types of buildings -- homes, hospitals, universities and commercial buildings of different grades. Imagine a simple gauge, such as the one below, indicating the energy efficiency ranking of a house or a commercial building.

Something as simple as universal benchmarking could have a major effect on behaviour. And since reducing energy consumption is synonymous with reducing cost, it could have a major effect on cost as well.

Living Well On a Low Footprint

2010-06-09T12:31:23-04:00

Global warming, apocalyptic movies about the future and discussions about the environment can sometimes be a drag. It often seems so dire that one wants to try and ignore the facts and carry on in our unsustainable ways, leaving the problem to future generations.

It doesn't have to be so - and there is no better way to believe this than to experience it first hand.

Well, here I am in Tuscany at La Petraia, a farm that has been inhabited since the Etruscans called it home 2700 years ago. It's current re-incarnation - the work of a dedicated, talented, Canadian couple with a vision - is an amazingly beautiful 175 acres in the heart of Tuscany's Chianti Classico wine district. Their vision is to create a farm that is truly sustainable and they grow 90% of their food, make their own wine, bake their bread in a wood fired-oven (the flour when they run out of their own comes from the Veneto region just 70 kilometers north) and source almost everything from locals. This is not the 100 mile diet - it is the 100 meter diet!
The bed frames and linens are made by a local families that have been in the businesses since the 19th century; the mattresses are stuffed with sheep's wool sourced from the nearby Casentino Mountains. The candle holders come from "far" away - Milan.

They grow their own organic fruits and vegetables, watered with drip irrigation methods that waste little. They raise animals to feed their guests. This is not a vegetarian haven and you don't have to wear Birkenstocks to enter. Women guests are admitted even with makeup in heels and shaved underarms.

One of the most interesting things I saw yesterday was the production of pork and how low a footprint it can have in this blessed part of the world.

The property sits on a hill with a view that is virtually identical to what it was 500 years ago - you can see Siena in the distance. The hills are covered with dense forests of oak and chestnut trees. To raise the pigs they have circled a large area of forest with a fence and the pigs roam the forests. 70% of their diet comes from what they can forage. There are relatively few pigs so it is all very happy here. The meat is produced with relatively low footprint in a sustainable fashion. They also have happy chickens that wander around outside and eat organic feed - same for the ducks, geese and rabbits. This makes everybody happy - the guests, the animals and the environment. I saw the chickens all voluntarily cuddling on their perch at bedtime.

The food is spectacular, the creation of Susan, the visionary and chef. She has a dedicated staff of apprentices from North America, learning how food should be sourced, prepared and eaten. Michael, the other half of the vision, takes care of managing the farm, deciding on where each fruit tree, vine, vegetable and stone should be placed - even where the winery should go. In his spare time he runs a hedge fund. And both have impeccable taste.

Clearly this is an expensive experiment. I see them as pioneers learning how to adapt our modern life-style and desire for conveniences, to one that has all the benefits but none of the extreme downside we are producing today. It is a pilot project, a work of love, but one that proves that sustainable living can be amazing. It is a model that one can learn from and adapt elsewhere. It shatters the myth that high-end needs to mean high footprint. And it doesn't have to be only for the rich. The locals who work for Michael and Susan live simple versions of this same lifestyle.

This is what good sustainable living should be all about - beautiful, tasty and light on the world.

Can Biochar Help Save the World?

2010-04-26T11:25:34-04:00

On Earth Day, we looked back on a year in which James Cameron's Avatar, a film about environmental crisis and restoration, swept box offices around the globe. What if there were a real-life answer to help solve the real world problems of climate change, peak oil, and global food security? Would you want the leaders of the G8 and the G20 to know about it and endorse it? This Earth Day, The Huntsville Project launched to inform the global public about biochar, one of the most promising developments in our fight against climate change. At the new website, http://www.newcarboneconomy.info, you can find out about biochar and sign the petition.

The Huntsville Project is asking global leaders to support this important new clean technology.
On June 25. the G8 will meet in Huntsville Ontario. Then the G20 will meet in Toronto on June 26 and 27. Sign the Huntsville Petition and help put biochar on the global agenda!

Biochar Explained
Biochar is the modern version of an ancient Pre-Columbian technology invented by native Amazonian peoples to enhance soil fertility. A form of charcoal, it is created by pyrolysis - the burning of biomass, such as agricultural waste or wood, in low oxygen. The ancient source of biochar is called terra preta (prepared earth) in Brazil.

The first thing to know about biochar is that it is a way of removing CO2 greenhouse gas from the atmosphere for a very long time. The carbon from biomass, when pyrolyzed, can remain in the soil for hundreds or thousands of years. We know this because some of the terra preta soils of the Amazon are 2000 years old. And these ancient soils are still so fertile after all this time that there is an industry in Brazil to collect these soils and put them in bags to sell as potting soil.

Biochar is one of the few technologies that can take carbon out of the atmosphere. 'Green' technologies like solar and wind power reduce the amount of CO2 that goes in to the atmosphere, but do nothing to remove the carbon build up. Biochar takes carbon that has been captured from the atmosphere during the growing process of plants and trees and converts it into a soil additive, thereby storing the carbon in the earth. It has a number of advantages over other carbon removal technologies, such as geoengineering or coal power generation carbon capture and storage, in that it is proven, relatively cheap and can be widely applied. Biochar could potentially play a significant role combating climate change.

In addition, biochar has a number of other potential benefits.

Soil fertility
Field tests by Biochar Fund in Cameroon (http://www.biocharfund.org) have demonstrated up to 220% yield increase in maize crops in degraded soil in one season with addition of biochar to the soil. Although it works in many different soil conditions, and possibly all, biochar works especially well in degraded soils, and in the tropics. Following the promising results in Cameroon, Biochar Fund recently received a $300,000 grant from Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement for biochar projects in Kenya.

Farms and gardens
Biochar has an exceptional ability to hold nitrogen and water in the soil. This means that farmers can use less water and less fertilizer. They can make biochar from their own wastes and use it in their fields, avoiding the carbon emissions associated with the manufacture and transport of fertilizer. Different biochar technologies are being developed that are optimized for different agricultural inputs, like rice husks, coconut shells, etc.

Pollution prevention
Biochar lessens the run-off of nitrogen into waterways, which can cause serious health problems. These include 'blue baby' deaths from high nitrate contamination of ground water. Biochar could also prevent the growth of 'dead zones' where nitrogen-induced algae blooms in the ocean. Biochar may also be able to remediate other soil contaminants.
Invasive species control - A potential remedy for invasive species is to turn them into the raw material for biochar. Kudzu vine in the southern US, cat tails and striga in Africa, and water hyacinth in Africa and India are among the invasive species that could be treated in this way.
Reforestation - Biochar could be used to improve soils for reforestation programs. It could prove particularly valuable in places such as Haiti where severe deforestation leads to contaminated waters supplies and other problems.

Stoves
The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 1.6 million people, mostly women and young children, die every year from smoke inhalation from traditional cooking stoves. Stoves which use the biochar process are emission-free while creating a soil additive to improve the fertility of kitchen gardens. Some biochar stoves can even create electricity for home lighting or cellphone charging.

Biochar-making equipment is available in many different types and sizes, from the small and very cheap ($6-8 dollars), all the way to municipal-scale plants. Equipment can in some cases be made with scrap metals.

This is why people in the Biochar Offsets group are so passionate about this emerging technology and why we started the Huntsville Project and Biochar Haiti. Biochar can play a key role in the sanitation, health, and food security needs of people in developing countries, and globally, while at the same time contributing to the mitigation of climate change. We want to help bring a new biochar industry to Haiti to help restore the forests and make the soil fruitful for the people of Haiti, while creating jobs and income. We can take this model and apply it in any developing country.

You can find out more at the website of the International Biochar Initiative:
http://www.biochar-international.org/

Re-Skinning Competition -- Environmentally Smart Buildings and Cities

2010-01-15T12:24:36-05:00

Ask anyone about the big causes of global warming and odds are that gas-guzzling SUVs will be a common reply. What those respondents do not understand is that SUVs are responsible for a percent or two of North America's carbon footprint. The big carbon culprits are our cities or, more precisely, the buildings in them.

Many of us already know that our cities are environmental troublemakers. Few, though, comprehend just how bad the problem is. That is because cities are so ubiquitous they are almost invisible. It is a case of not seeing the forest for the trees.

The existing buildings in New York, for example, produce more than 60 percent of that city's total carbon footprint. This dwarfs the output from all other contenders for worst environmental enemy of the year. It is hard to make SUVs look like model citizens, but buildings manage to do it.

It does not have to be this way. A little capital investment along with good design will solve our buildings' energy problem. Governments can put up small amounts of money to guarantee renovation loans to building owners. Owners can pay off those loans over ten to twenty years just on energy savings. What could be simpler?

In addition to capital, the other side of the solution is developing the technology needed to re-skin existing buildings so they are energy savers rather than energy wasters. Countries like Germany, Sweden and Canada are already coming up with commercial solutions to the building footprint problem. They employ thousands in new, green jobs while saving energy, money and the environment.

Zerofootprint™ is also advancing the cause of efficient buildings. We advocate a system where buildings, like cars, would have an energy performance rating. How many pounds of carbon does your building generate per square meter of floor space? Everyone would be able to look at a sticker on the front door to find out.

This year we are holding the first international Zerofootprint™ Re-Skinning Competition. We want to inspire designers and developers everywhere to create exceptionally beautiful, energy-efficient buildings. Winners of the competition will be announced to a global audience at the World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro this March.

The Re-Skinning Award entry deadline is February 22, 2010.

Zerofootprint™ is also offering the ZEROprize™ to the design team who can take an older concrete high-rise structure and, using re-skinning along with other retrofitting technologies, reduce its carbon, water and energy footprint to net zero while also maintaining the highest architectural design standards. To secure the ZEROprize,™ a candidate building will be required to have a net zero footprint for one year.

Together, these competitions will promote solutions to the long-standing problem of energy-inefficient cities. They are part of Zerofootprint's commitment to reducing the world's environmental footprint.

To find out more about the Re-Skinning Award, please go to www.thezeroprize.com
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