This was interesting to me. It would be nice to see houses that were designed specifically to be eco-friendly. They have those great energy-saving windows now that save a lot of energy on heating/cooling too, those would be nice to see in there. It would be a far step from the way they currently develop housing. Near my house they tore up some former oil fields, but about 3 feet of topsoil on, and then built houses. When nothing grows in 5 years and everybody wonders why, I bet you could generate a lot of support for eco-friendly housing.

very cool idea, using heat pumps and all, as well as all available eco-friendly ammenities to benifit from. perhaps you could team with for example PG&E since they are regulated by the government so that they can only make a certian profit, thus much of what they would make is given back to communities in the form of low income grants and energy-saving projects. if you could get them to loan funds or perhaps partner with companies selling eco-friendly items and construction materials there could be a discount that would offset the costs of the tech, and in the long run lower bills for the low-income families to inhabit the homes. save money all around and everyone has good karma at the same time. you oculd be consultants.

I was wondering, what the cost will be if all the materials and items in the house are eco-friendly and do not harm the environment. If the materials and furnishings do cost more than normal homes do, have you guys thought of any way to market or advertise to generate support?

green homes would be great but how will you guys get over the initial capital needs to build these homes? making a home green, like adding solar panels etc, costs a lot and won't these costs just be transfered to the homeowner?

this project seems to be very thought out. good job on finding all the info. My concern is the initial investment to construct these communities. What would the cost of one home or one condo be? How will you compete will large, big-name real estate companies and construction companies? Will these communities be available to everyone? what about low-income housing? would it just be a residential area or will it have all the necessities for a safe community? (i.e. fire, police, schools, parks, etc.)

This is a great start of better lives for many people. But to build an entire eco-friendly community, you would need a lot of resources, materials, and many kinds of technological mechanisms. Like some of the other people, I wonder what the cost of this project will add up to.

Comments from Prof:

Social: Nice cut/paste of statistics for magnitude of the problem. However it references some plots I dont see. And your citation didn't make it clear which data came from where. If you reuse a whole quote you should make it clear that you reused verbatim.

Do you actually think you can show fewer sick days and visits to the doctor. I agree this is a long term goal, but can it be measured locally? Similarly for increased productivity. Reduced energy consumption is a good measurable outcome. Can you relate this to total greenhouse gas emissions for the country if your method caught on. Say 10% of new houses for the next ten years were yours. Would this have a 1% impact on greenhouse gas emissions?

Good job finding info on customer base.

Econ: Good job finding out how much green construction adds to price. How did you get from $200/sqft + $25 down to $180/sqft?

Resource: How much up front is needed to do a small community. How much would the condos sell for. Will customers pay the $50-100K premium on their condo price? Is there a way to work it so that the condos aren't more expensive than any other?

This is a large scale project. I don't expect you to make a case that someone should hand you $10 million to do it. Instead I think you should try thinking of this as building a case that existing developers should be doing this. How would you convince an old school builder to change over. Whats the business case. This is identical to the case needed to get someone to give you $10 million of course.

Try selling your idea to an actual construction firm and see what response you get.

I almost believe it. I don't feel like I'm convinced completely that reduction of greenhouse gas is achievable without substantial extra cost.

Lastly, I'm constantly remodeling my house. If you have favorites for actual technologies that are green related to construction, your prof wants to know.

Oops, this was the chart that we had intended to include in our workspace under the magnitude of the problem as a way to demonstrate visually the division of consumption by a household and where people's lifestyles have the largest impact (in this case in the UK).

source: BedZed by Chris Twinn

Whoops, that was my responsibility. It's added to the workspace, along with some of the new comments/critiques.

It seems that building an entire new community to be 'green' is actually much more expensive and maybe even more wasteful than outfitting an existing community of buildings with efficiency technology. Wouldn't it be more environmentally friendly to work with what we have? Buy a square block of downtown and fix it up nice with solar panels and greywater systems and everything you want, and use few new materials and little energy to accomplish a sustainable community. In a city this block would probably be extremely popular and you could make a lot of money.

I love this idea, if it were to happen then great. But what are some of your running rates on these types of houses? Would this be only restriced for low-income people, (strictly denied for people who are well off) or can anyone try to buy this area of a nice and clean environmental community?

This sounds like a great project with a lot of statisical evidence and possible reasonings. It would be great if its implimented.

comments from prof pt 2:

the figure from the UK makes no sense to me. Why does using public transport reduce your milage from 10K to 9K, shouldnt it increase your milage since its typically not point A to point B? Also how do any of their categories relate to buildings?

Evaluation: Is the 85% occupation number a projection or a number from a past project?

Social Return: Please put the 0.7 tons number in context. How much CO2 does an individual put out in a year? Also how was that calculation done, where did the numbers come from?

You have two numbers for BedZED. 55% electricity reduction and 25% electricity reduction. why different? Also this is electricity reduction. No where have you said what amount of total build CO2 is related to electricity, maybe its all from the building process itself or something. ??

Costs: You say that people will pay an extra $70-$120 /sqft. For a smallish 1000 sqft condo we're talking an extra $100K. I believe that you can make a profit, I believe you can charge the price. I don't believe the next statement that the extra will be paid back in energy savings in 3 years. My energy bill is $400/month*12*3=$15,000, so even with full savings, its not close.

(This is a good example of why numbers are helpful since someone can object)

You crack me up, no attempt to start small. Just start with 1.9 million sqft. Awesome. =)

Resource: You said it was selling for $300 sq ft, but then 100sqft costs $475K. Something funny somewhere.

$160million for 3 years. You are by far the biggest project. =)

Summary: A few weird numbers here and there, but overall much better. Congrats on the improvement. I'm almost convinced. If I was doubting things, it would be that the reduction in CO2 is real as opposed to marketing hype. Where does this reduction come from primarily?

James Davis said:

Social Return: Please put the 0.7 tons number in context. How much CO2 does an individual put out in a year? Also how was that calculation done, where did the numbers come from?

You have two numbers for BedZED. 55% electricity reduction and 25% electricity reduction. why different? Also this is electricity reduction. No where have you said what amount of total build CO2 is related to electricity, maybe its all from the building process itself or something. ??

Answer to first question about calculations:

• According to the CarbonFund website, they calculated that in general, an individual (based on 2004 data) "produced 23.8 metric tons of CO2-equivalent per person," which includes all other sources (i.e. transportation). (Their calculation can be found here: http://www.carbonfund.org/site/p ages/carbon_calculators/category /Assumptions/ under "Total US CO2-equivalent Emissions"
• I used the carbon calculator from the CarbonFund website (http://www.carbonfund.org/site/p ages/carbon_calculators/) to calculate how much of a carbon footprint that one individual leaves each year without factoring in transportation. The calcultor provides general assumptions depending on the number of individuals you enter. By entering one individual it provided me the following energy use amounts and carbon footprint for one year:

Home/Office

# of people: 1

Electricity: 4401 kWh/yr.

Natural gas: 311 thems/yr

Heating oil: 0 gal/yr

Outcome: Carbon Footprint = 4.51 tons CO2/year

• I then used UK BedZED model, which showed a 25 % reduction in electricity use per person after their first monitoring period. If we take that same potential and assume that we can cut electricity consumption by at least 25% (assuming natural gas use remains the same).

Home/Office

# of people: 1

Electricity: 3300.75 kWh/yr. (4401 kWh/yr. X 0.25 = 110.25 kWh/yr. => 4401 kWh/yr. -1100.25 kWh/yr. = 3300.75 kWh/yr.)

Natural gas: 311 thems/yr

Heating oil: 0 gal/yr

Outcome: Carbon Footprint = 3.84 tons CO2/year

Thus, (via subtraction 4.51 tons CO2/year - 3.84 tons CO2/year = 0.7 tons CO2/year) about 0.7 tons CO2/year per individual can be saved by just targeting electricity in homes alone with green building methods.

In response to the second question:

I will try and figure out the descrepency between the two websites that featured BedZED. Thanks for pointing that out.

CO2 is related to electricity, because coal is one of the major conventional sources of electricity in the U.S. According to the Environmental Defense Organization, "Conventional electricity sources include coal, nuclear, oil, natural gas, and large hydropower facilities. These sources supply about 99% of the electricity used in the United States today." All but hydropower contributes to major portions of CO2 emission in the U.S. (Exact numbers can be found here: http://www.environmentaldefense. org/article.cfm?contentID=774).

i really like this idea a lot. you cleary have most of the bugs figured out in reguards to money, number, etc. i think if most cities were built this way with markets and work below the peoples homes, traffic, etc would be SO much better and life would be easier for everyone.

I found an article recently that discusses eco-friendly homes that are very inexpensive to build (around $90,000 for an elaborate home)

The article is: http://cooltech.iafrica.com/feat ures/900389.htm

this project is pretty interesting. good job presenting in the page. I'm just wondering how many families in the world can actually buy these house. they looks rather expensive.

James Davis said:

comments from prof pt 2:

Summary: A few weird numbers here and there, but overall much better. Congrats on the improvement. I'm almost convinced. If I was doubting things, it would be that the reduction in CO2 is real as opposed to marketing hype. Where does this reduction come from primarily?

I attended the Green Building Workshop today at the 1st Annual Conference on Global Climate Change (hosted by http://www.globalchillers.org/ of UCSC) and I learned and recieved a lot of resources about current green building technology in lighting and in other areas.

To answer the question above, I received a pamphlet at the workshop by the U.S. Green Building Council (2006) titled "Why Build Green: Immediate Savings, Measureable Results." According to the handout, it stated the following:

Buildings Consume:

• 12% of potable water
• 39% of primary energy
• 40% of raw materials
• 48% of U.S. carbon emissions
• 70% of U.S. electricity

Green Buildings Save:

• 30-50% of energy
• 35% of carbon emissions
• 40% of water
• 70% of solid waste

On a side note, in terms of technology, the founder of LED Green Power (http://www.ledgreenpower.com/) gave a presentation on his development of LED for lighting and his company is actually local based out of Capitola. Not only is LED highly efficient, it can connect directly to solar panels. He says that this eliminates the inefficiency of outside power supply, which "knocks out 15% efficiency."

Moreover, Jeannie Collins provided many sources for information on Green Building, including their website: http://www.greenresourcelibrary. com/.

I really liked going throught you guy's project becuase it was well organized and pretty neat. You guys mentioned that "Some of the technology is still in its infancy." Your proposal seems to be going good but it is still in the developing stage. How will you guys go about without any experience from others or from you guys?

Yay!! I would like to live there!!It was so cool going through your workspace because it looks like you guys know what you're doing. However, it seems its going to be unaffortable for the average person to live there. So how can you fix this problem?? Making your housing available to a pooor, eco-friendly person??8(

I really like the way that you've guys have organized your workspace. It's simple yet to the point, and also visually appealing.

I came across this article on eco-friendly schools the other day and I thought of this project. I think an eco-friendly school within a community like this would be a very interesting idea.

Here's the link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070 528/ap_on_re_us/green_schools_1

WOW!! THe graphics make it look so much cooler! It looks really professional and impressive! The way the social aspects were laid out was really good. I liked the use of alot of numbers to back up your claims. Its also fancy how you linked topics at the top.

Yeah, I want to know how you did the graphics and the table of contents like thing at the beginning. The definitely make your project look more professionals. It seems really well planned out and well researched and overall doable. The only thing I was wondering was whether this could even be something no reserved for the upper-class population. Could this technology ever be used for low-income housing or by the government for state institutions. I am conserned because this seems that it will increase the gap in health between classes that exists because of environmental racism and unequal health care. Just a thought but good job.

I got word of a great program in Cleveland, Ohio that plans to make affordable "green housing". They are planning on constructing two and three bedroom houses that "will be priced from $105,000 to $125,000, are designed to cost less than $400 a year to heat and about $250 a year to light." Hopefully this article could be of some help, it is pretty short but informative:

http://blog.cleveland.com/review s/2007/05/city_state_kick_in_600 000_to_b.html

Thank you, Daniel for the article link. Here's another site/organization that is focused specifically on affordable sustainable housing: http://www.greencommunitiesonlin e.org/. I believe that sustainable building methods can definietly be used for low-income housing. Methods, such as cob building are very low-priced (for our size of project we opted not to use cob for structural support reasons). As for our first project, we're targeting the middle/upper class to insure that we can get financial return. However, in future projects I personally would like to apply what I've learned to design individual sustainable units that can be used in developing areas as a way to provide adequate and healthy shelters for the poor.

In regards to our workspace, Julio is the fabulous one behind its design. =]

This is definitely one of the more clearly thought out ideas being considered; I just wonder how many 'average' people would be up for this. Certainly it'd be a good start (lead by example).