Imagine the Solutions

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the benefit of design & imagination in construction education recently.

In my opinion the role of an engineering education is not only to teach graduates to think, but to inspire them with the endless possibilities of design. There are many sources of inspiration and whilst students usually reference cultural precedent in their design, resource efficiency is a key issue that can also inspire the imagination. If we equip students with knowledge of the issues and some basic techniques for resource efficient design we can leave it to their imagination to come up with designs that will enable society to solve the problems it faces.

We must however, teach sustainable design in an interdisciplinary manner as no single construction discipline has all the skills necessary to solve all the problems. Designing the buildings of the future will involve all the disciplines from the outset and we need to reflect this in education. I believe that it will become essential for architectural schools to build close relationships with engineering departments. Interdisciplinary teaching with experiential and peer promoted learning will raise the performance of architectural and engineering students alike.

Sustainable design is a philosophy, not a set of rules to stifle individual expression. Sustainability has to be integrated at every level of society from simple changes in individual behaviour to the large scale re-planning of our urban centres to cope with fuel depletion. I am confident that if we inspire future generations of students to think creatively about the problems that confront society, the solutions that they come up with will surprise us all.

Not enough wind for the Olympics

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It is somewhat surprising to read the comment in The Times from Shaun McCarthy, Chair of the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, that the Olympic Park wind turbine is to be scrapped because there is not enough wind on the site.

The Olympic wind turbine was announced in March 2008 in a blaze of glory. Since then has no-one bothered to check the Government’s Wind Energy Database now maintained by the Department of Energy and Climate Change? This clearly indicates that the location for the Olympic turbine is marginal for economic wind generation.

Generating electricity from the wind is critically dependent on the wind speed which is affected by location. Wind speed is dramatically reduced over cities due to friction with buildings dissipating much of the energy as turbulence. It would be unreasonable to expect the Stratford turbine to generate much more than about half that of an identical machine in open country.

Large wind turbines are a significant investment and if the generation potential of a site is poor then wind energy developers will look elsewhere. This may explain why the ODA has failed to find a new developer prepared to step into the breach after the preferred bidder for the turbine withdrew.

There are few other renewable technologies that can match wind power economically. One must hope therefore that the ODA rigorously enforces energy efficiency standards for the new buildings in order to reduce demand. This would be far preferable to wasting public money on expensive renewable technologies to offset 20% of unnecessarily high demand.

Hoorah For Car Scrappage

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The news this week headlined with the end of the Government’s car scrappage scheme. The scheme was set up to prop up the motor industry, and has been very successful at doing so. However, this policy has also been justified by citing the carbon abatement potential of replacing old cars.

BIS said that over 330,000 new cars were purchased under the scheme with average carbon dioxide emissions of 133 g/km, a 27% saving over the emissions of the cars scrapped. That suggests that the average saving from the exchange is 49.2 g/km.

If each of the cars is driven 16,000 km per year then the total reduction in annual carbon dioxide emissions will be just over 260,000 tonnes. An impressive headline figure; but at what cost has this been achieved?

Each new car was subsidised to the tune of £2,000, divided equally between the taxpayer and the motor industry, at a total cost in excess of £660 million. The same investment in renewable energy would yield carbon dioxide reductions of around 3 million tonnes each year.

Furthermore, it has been estimated that more than half of the cars scrapped under the scheme would have been replaced within the next few years anyway. Lets assume that in 10 years all of the scrapped cars would have been off the road in any case. This puts the cost of carbon dioxide abatement from scrappage at over £450 per tonne, 10 times the cost per tonne of carbon capture and storage.

The scrappage scheme did succeed in protecting 4000 jobs and so achieved its primary objective (at public subsidy of £82,500 per job). So hoorah for the scrappage scheme, but it is totally unjustified to celebrate its success on the basis of carbon dioxide abatement.

FIT for Purpose?

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The Feed in Tariffs have been almost universally welcomed, but has no-one identified any flaws in the system? Well here’s an issue that people aren’t discussing:

Feed in Tariffs are a public subsidy for the rich.

Feed in Tariffs replace a capital grant scheme. Under the previous scheme anyone who wanted to install renewable energy could get help with the upfront cost. That means that people who didn’t have enough money or insufficient borrowing power could get help to install renewables. OK the previous levels of grant were pitiful, but if the money promised to Feed in Tariffs were made available as grants instead many more people could afford to install small scale renewables.

Under the Feed in Tariffs, the Government will instead subsidise energy generated from renewables, but not the cost of installation. This means that only those who can already afford the cost of installing renewable energy can benefit from it. The tariffs have clearly been set at a level to tempt those with spare cash or the ability to borrow, as the returns will be above the interest rate for some time to come. Interesting to note that Spain cancelled their Solar Feed in Tariff after investors nearly bankrupted the system using borrowed money to install solar panels in fields all over the country.

Feed in Tariffs will exclude anyone who wants to install renewables, but does not have the cash or borrowing power. In my opinion Feed in Tariffs should be cancelled and the money used to install free solar water heating for every pensioner household in the country.

Don’t Mourn Windsave

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Windsave, manufacturer of domestic wind turbine distributed through B&Q. went bust recently. Their Chief Exec blamed delays in implementing Government Policy, but I wonder…..

In their original marketing Windsave suggested their turbines would generate 1000kWh and provide “up to 30% of the electricity your household needs, based on average wind speeds and suitable locations”. For a £1,500 price tag this looked to a lot of people like a good deal, and many, including some reputable businesses were persuaded to part with cash.

Unfortunately the reality fell far short of the promises. A survey last year by the Energy Savings Trust found no instance of a micro wind turbine in an urban or suburban location which generated more than 200kWh per year. In some cases the control electronics consumed more mains electricity in the course of a year than was generated from the wind.

The failing was not Windsave’s alone; any rooftop turbine in an urban situation is in the boundary layer where airflow is turbulent and most of the energy has been dissipated through friction. It is simply not possible to generate any sensible amount of wind energy under these conditions.

Nevertheless Windsave seriously overstated the performance of their product. The public backlash started early, with numerous blogs by eco-enthusiasts describing woeful generation from their machines. Windsave were forced into serial retractions of their claims for performance and finally removed all performance information from their website.

If we mislead the public by overstating issues, when they discover the truth they will never afford us credibility again. It is crucial that we avoid doing this when it comes to debating renewables in the context of national energy policy.