Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

242National Energy Securityby six to eight percent—about twenty-six hundred U.S. dollars or less. At the1980 world oil price, that investment is recovered through fuel savings inabout four years. Moreover, the extra construction cost is falling in real termsas contractors gain experience. Some other designs, though perhaps slightlyless efficient, are much cheaper still. For example, the net extra capital cost ofthe Lo-Cal design is at most fifteen hundred dollars, and in some cases it isreportedly zero or negative: the saving from not having to install a furnacemore than pays for the additional insulation and other heat-saving measures. 17The space-heating fuel needed to maintain comfort in these houses has beenmeasured at two-tenths to eight-tenths of a BTU per square foot-degree dayfor well-built Saskatchewan designs, and one and one-tenth to one and threetenthsfor particular Lo-Cal houses which had zero or negative extra capitalcost. 18These figures are ten to sixty times better than the U.S. average of thirteenBTUs. They are also better than any present or proposed U.S. building standard.Most government codes call for about ten or eleven BTUs, and thismaximum allowable value is often misinterpreted as an optimum. By 1979,many builders were already achieving values below seven BTUs, even thoughthey invested far less in efficiency improvements than would have been economicallyworthwhile. 19 In 1981, Congress—intensively lobbied by utility companieswhich said the standard was impracticable—refused to approve a proposedBuilding Energy Performance Standard (BEPS), proposed in 1979, ofabout four and a half BTUs, let alone a proposed “strict BEPS” of somewhatover two. Yet houses at least twice as efficient as this “strict” version wouldprobably cost less to build than ordinary houses, and at worst would cut totallife-cycle costs (which include both construction and operation) at least inhalf. 20Although these highly efficient designs have most of their window area facingthe Equator, and little or none facing away from it, they are not reallymeant to be good passive solar designs. Passive solar techniques, which areno costlier than superinsulation and may be cheaper, can provide similar orbetter performance while considerably relaxing the insulation requirements.(Newly developed glazing materials, some of which insulate as well as severalinches of plastic foam, should soon make it possible to put substantial windowareas even on the sunless side of the house.)The right combination of thermal efficiency and passive solar gain canreduce net space-heating requirements to essentially zero (less than a tenth ofa BTU per square foot-degree day) in climates worse than that of Chicago. 21The total extra capital cost—at most about two thousand dollars—pays back inunder four years at the 1981 world oil price or in under two years at the 1981