Ed Mazria slices up the energy pie.
***image1***
SFR: You've been a noted architect for decades but I understand your crusade for sustainability in architectural practice began with a pie chart created by the Department of Energy?
EM: It's called the Energy Information Administration. It puts out statistics, zillions of statistics. How many gallons of gasoline, how much electricity we use, year by year. It usually divides statistics into four categories: industry, transportation, residential and commercial. It's basically saying 'this is who's doing the polluting.' Those are the four sectors. So how you categorize the inventory will determine, to a large extent, how you attack the problem.
And a pie chart of your own is your method for figuring out what to tackle?
I created a sector called buildings. Right? I look at the electricity slice and break it down: Twenty percent of this slice goes to residential buildings, 40 percent goes to commercial buildings, 5 percent goes to industrial buildings. Then there's the fossil fuel industry: Some of it goes to buildings because most of the electricity we generate is this [points to overhead bulb]. Heating, cooling, lighting, pumps, fans, computers, sundry appliances. So we create the building sector and lo and behold-every time you stick a footing in the ground and build a building it adds a little piece of consumption to the grid. You have to light it, you have to heat it, you have to cool it. So every time you build a building you add to the demand.
Is this really so urgent? What happens if we keep building at the rate we have been?
The climate is about .7 degrees centigrade warmer-globally-since the Industrial Revolution. At 2 degrees centigrade, conditions become disastrous. The Greenland ice sheet will have begun to melt and millions of people will be displaced. Twenty-five percent of all plant and animal species on Earth? Gone. Ninety-seven percent of the world's coral reefs will be bleached and dead. Global food production, after an initial boost due to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, begins to decline after the soil dries out. At 3 degrees centigrade, things become catastrophic. But the timetable for 2 degrees centigrade, on our present course, is 2050. That's your lifetime. That's coming right up.
Can you compare the energy consumption of, say, a Toyota 4Runner with the energy consumption of a residential home?
Let me give you an example. You have a car. It's about a fifth the size of this room you're sitting in. You operate it, on average, an hour-and-a-half a day. You also fly twice a year-that's some fuel. Food is transported to grocery stores in trucks, you own a little piece of that, too. Now let me tell you about buildings. You're sitting in your house, which is about 1,500 or 2,000 square feet. It's running 24 hours a day. It doesn't sleep. It's cold out so it's heating itself; it's hot out so it's cooling itself; the refrigerator's always going; the lights are on. Not only do you consume that, but a piece of the Genoveva Chavez Center is yours, a piece of your church is yours, a piece of Wild Oats is yours, a piece of city hall is yours, a piece of the airport is yours. They're running 24/7 too.
But don't cars consume fossil fuels at a much higher rate than buildings?
Buildings consume so much more. Look at these lights here. The electricity that powers them comes from the grid. Where's that made? Four Corners. What are they burning right now so this light runs? Coal. For every unit of electricity we get in our homes, we burn three units of coal. It's very inefficient. Whereas in your car, you use almost all of it.
So buildings without sustainable design are like cars running 24 hours a day.
Yes. And, a car lasts 12 years. You think there's a turnover for buildings, a more efficient model, every twelve years? They just sit there and suck off the grid day after day, night after night, for decades.
You mentioned the Chavez Center, which you designed-was it done with sustainability in mind?
Well, yes. We [Mazria Inc. Odems Dzurec] incorporated a lot of daylighting to counter the need for electric light. We haven't monitored it so I have no idea how that's doing. It's probably a 30 or 40 percent savings. I don't know. What we need to do is get the governor to adopt a mandatory 50 percent energy reduction in all state-funded buildings and he can do that with an executive order.
And you'd like to see a 50 percent energy reduction in the design of Santa Fe's new convention center?
We'd like to see that right away. The more buildings we construct, the more we add to the demand. We could add so much demand that we can't catch up by moving to renewable sources like wind and solar energy. We need to incorporate these technologies quickly, but we really need to mandate that buildings use much much less energy.
But aren't all architects aware of how much energy buildings consume and designing accordingly?
Most architects are not aware. If you give 20 architects the same budget, the same square footage, the same plot of land, you'll get 20 different designs. Some will be super-efficient, some will be energy hogs. We have to do this now, no ifs, ands or buts. Or you're going to live in a world that's uninhabitable.
