"Architecture must go back to being more honest and more direct"

The Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich is rethinking sustainable architecture: the intention in future is to focus on CO2 emissions during construction and operation rather than exclusively on energy consumption. Marc Angélil explains in an interview why the time is ripe for a paradigm shift in architecture.

Marc Angélil, Head of the Department of Architecture, breaks with conventional sustainability standards in construction and lobbies for less consumption of materials and reduced CO2 emissions. (Photo: Hannes Huebner)

Professor Angélil, on Friday your department will present the basic principles of “Towards Zero-Emission Architecture” to experts in construction and architecture. This means that the professors are unanimously demanding a shift away from focusing on energy consumption and thick insulation as advocated by standards such as “Minergy”. Why should emissions become the new target parameter in architecture?
The building stock generates around half of today’s total energy expenditure and CO₂ emissions nationwide. With “Towards Zero-Emission Architecture” we are striving towards the ideal of the 1-ton-CO₂ society, as anchored in the ETH Zurich energy strategy. Everyone should reduce their annual per capita CO₂ emissions to one ton; the amount of energy they consume in doing so is not significant. There is no point in saving energy ad absurdum without taking total emissions into account at the same time. Contributions from all sides, including from architecture, are needed to realise the aims of the 1-ton-CO₂society.

In the past many architects have deplored the stylistic constraint of sustainability standards. Doesn’t your initiative primarily strike a blow for greater design freedom?
Of course, because it is our fight-back against one-sided standards. The architect is in a straitjacket if all buildings must be wrapped up in an outer shell 50 centimetres thick. With thinner walls, based on more intelligent heat flows, we will regain greater freedom in design.

What does low-emission construction actually look like in practice?
With “Towards Zero-Emission”, we also need less material. I can give you an example: I am currently planning to build 60 apartments in Esslingen. A central cluster of ground probes 300 metres deep will be used to air-condition the entire residential development. We store surplus heat in the ground during the summer, and we re-use it for heating in winter. This means the building will produce a heat surplus and we no longer need any thick insulation. Thus we can reduce the wall thicknesses from 50 centimetres, as is usual for the “Minergy” standard, to 30 centimetres. As a result we save 340 square metres of area and 1000 cubic metres of materials across the entire housing development. The construction therefore already entails less grey energy due to transport and material production.

How does the more economical use of materials affect the design?
Optimised material flows call for a change in attitude, a new aesthetic form and a different way of handling materials. We are returning to the basic structure; architecture must go back to being more honest and more direct. As I understand it, this also involves doing without multiple layers; we do not need immaculate claddings and coverings everywhere. It is more important for each component to have multiple uses. A concrete slab can also be a heat store, while at the same time performing fire safety and acoustic functions in the building.

In addition to reduced material flows during the manufacturing and waste disposal processes, the strategy also envisages emission-free running of the building. Where is the energy for this supposed to come from?
There is more than enough emission-free energy, we just need to use it intelligently. For that we must properly understand the energy context of a building and tap into all the emission-free sources. The temperature of human excrement, for example, is approximately 37°C, but we only need 18°C for heating. So it would make good sense to utilise this waste heat – initial test installations for heat recovery are already in operation. The same is true for the heat constantly emitted by our body.

But you cannot heat a ten-storey commercial building with that alone.
No, but a surplus of solar energy is also available, and the technologies at our disposal today to use and store this are much better than those of 15 years ago. We also need an “orchestration of technical systems”. There must be better networking of heat pumps, ventilation and heating systems, and sensors distributed throughout the whole building must ensure that equipment only runs when it is really needed. Nowadays we have small decentralised systems instead of enormous ventilation systems in the basement. The ventilation in a room, for example, does not start up until a carbon dioxide sensor detects that someone has entered it.

That all sounds very high-tech.
No, high tech is used only where it makes sense. A simple sun-shade on the façade is preferable to an elaborate control system indoors. Above all, using ground probes to store heat in the earth and re-using it later via heat pumps requires good networking, not high-tech equipment.

Technical control systems and heat pumps need additional electricity. Although representatives from the world of politics and economics warn of an electricity shortfall, the strategy also expressly excludes nuclear energy as well as fossil energy sources. Why?
The problem of waste from nuclear fission is still unsolved. Waste is a pollutant emission. Atomic energy is therefore incompatible with emission-free architecture.

Don’t you see any contradiction in the fact that nuclear energy research is also taking place at ETH Zurich?
No, there is room for different opinions at our University.

Don’t the demands of “Towards Zero-Emission Architecture” stretch far beyond the expertise of an architect?
At ETH Zurich we always imagine architecture in an urban development context as well. Power structures, conflicts of interest, cash flows and the participation of the residents play a decisive role in this. In this respect, every new building is also a political statement. Thus the part played by “Towards Zero-Emission Architecture” clearly extends into the political and economic spheres as well.

To what extent is your initiative integrated in a larger international trend?
Our strategy is unique and “very Swiss”. Architecture at ETH Zurich, in contrast to many American universities, has never lost its relationship with practice. Our research and education are highly oriented towards practical considerations. Moreover, a university of applied sciences like ETH Zurich has a huge amount of technical expertise available in-house, which is necessary for sustainability in the construction field. The engineers collaborate closely with architects and town planners. It is also a fact that the discussions about sustainability are already much more advanced here in Switzerland than in other places.

This raises the question: even if politicians and architects here in Switzerland support “Towards Zero-Emission Architecture”, wouldn’t that be just a drop in the ocean from a global perspective?
Every year we bid farewell to around 250 students whose education doesn’t mention oil-fired heating systems at all. Many of these students subsequently move to other countries where they put our ideas into practice and integrate them into new contexts. This also creates an understanding of sustainable building in Latin America or Africa from the bottom up in the long term.

Towards Zero-Emission Architecture

In a position paper, the professors in the Department of Architecture unanimously call for a paradigm shift in architecture: away from saving energy and towards freedom from emissions. Zero-emission architecture relates to a building’s entire life cycle – from construction through operation to disposal. The basic principles are just as applicable to new buildings as they are to the redevelopment of the existing building stock. A heat storage system in the form of ground probes, solar technology and heat pumps is an important component in this. Considerable savings are possible compared to conventional building methods as a result of the significantly reduced use of materials and the utilisation of self-produced heat. A large part of the “Science City” campus is being built and redeveloped in accordance with the rules of “Towards Zero-Emission Architecture”. A new building for the Institute of Technology on the “Science City” campus and a new building in the “Future Cities Laboratory” in Singapore are also planned according to the same basic principles.

Reference Link
http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/archive_articles/101118_Interview_Zeroemission_Angelil/index_EN

Courtesy
ETH Zurich

MIT Breakthrough: Thermo-Chemical Solar Power

MIT researchers are hopeful of capturing and releasing solar energy with the help of thermo-chemical technology. Scientists were already working on this technology in seventies but this project was aborted due to its expensiveness and termed as too impractical to achieve. But MIT researchers are now gearing up to take this thermo-chemical technology that is supposed to convert solar energy into electrical energy.

Currently we depend on the photovoltaic cells that transform light energy into electricity. Thermo-chemical technology is a bit different. It traps the solar energy and stores it in the form of heat in molecules of chemicals. This heat energy can be converted and utilized by humans whenever the need arises. What happens in a conventional solar system is that heat gets leached away over time but when, heat is stored using the thermo-chemical fuel it remains stable.

Jeffrey Grossman is the associate Professor of Power Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. According to him this chemical-electrical process makes it possible to produce a “rechargeable heat battery” that can repeatedly store and release heat gathered from sunlight or other sources. In principle, Grossman said, when fuel made from fulvalene diruthenium is stored, heat is released, and it “can get as hot as 200 degrees C, plenty hot enough to heat your home, or even to run an engine to produce electricity.”

One of the major drawbacks of this project is they were depending on a chemical, ruthenium. This is a rare element and the cost is effectively is out of question. But the MIT team is still hopeful and they are saying that they have found out the exact working mechanism of ruthenium and soon they will find out another chemical element that will not be expensive and will be available easily in nature.

Jeffrey Grossman explains that fulvalene diruthenium shows the potential to replace ruthenium. Fulvalene diruthenium can absorb solar energy. After trapping solar energy it can achieve a higher-energy state where it can remain stable ad infinitum. If a stimulus can be given in the form of heat or a catalyst, it reverts to its unique shape, releasing heat in the process.

Professor Grossman states, “It takes many of the advantages of solar-thermal energy, but stores the heat in the form of a fuel. It’s reversible, and it’s stable over a long term. You can use it where you want, on demand. You could put the fuel in the sun, charge it up, then use the heat, and place the same fuel back in the sun to recharge.”

But the path to clean and green energy is not so easy. The MIT team has to tackle the challenges lying ahead. First they have to find out an easy way to synthesize the material in the laboratory that can absorb and trap heat inside it and secondly they have to search for a good catalyst that can release the trapped heat energy without much fuss.

Reference Link
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/mit-thermo-chemical-solar-power/

Courtesy
AE News Network

Solar Power Towers coming to California

The United States of America will now produce clear power that can light up as many as 11000 to 277500 homes in the country. The Sectary of Interior Ken Salazar has given a go ahead to the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating system, a project proposed by BrightSource of Oakland that can produce up to 370 megawatt of clear energy and generate nearly 1100 opportunities for employment. The project, located in San Bernardino Country, California, is the inaugural large-scale solar energy project on US public soil to use the power tower.

Key features of the project.

• The project, which will be in three phases, will finish by the year 2013.
• This know-how takes the help of mirror fields so that solar energy is pointed on the power tower receivers closer to every array. To generate electricity, Steam from the solar boilers in the towers is used to drive a turbine and electricity is produced.

How will it help the Administration.
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating system will be one project that will be a win-win situation for both the administration and BrightSource.

• This will give a boost to administration’s efforts for quick growth of production of renewable energy on public property on a large scale. Whereas the Sectary of Interior had given a green signal to first of such projects on October 5, with Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating system, this figure has reached to 3.
• A day later, Salzar also signed a lease deal with Cape Wind to generate 468 megawatts of clean renewable electricity for Nantucket Sound Communities by purchasing a 130 turbine offshore wind farm.
• This would be the first lease on the Outer Continental Shelf to develop commercial wind energy.
• All these efforts will help USA to build a clean energy economy that could generate 1124 megawatts of clean energy to lit-up between 337000 and 843000 homes.
• It will reduce carbon emission and help the nation as a whole by making USA independent in its energy needs and strengthen its national security.

How will it help BrightSource Energy.

• The decision gives the power to Interior’s Bureau of Land management to give a site in the Southern California’s Mojave Desert, close to the Primm, Nevada border, to BrightSource so that they can use it for 30 years, provided they comply with all conditions including rent.
• BrightSource will be eligible to recover 30 percent of their cost, which the energy developers can recover under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, provided they have started the construction work before or in 2010. The U.S. department of Energy has also awarded them $ 1.37 billion in conditional loan guarantees as per the provisions of Recovery act.
• The project Ivanpah is processed by Bureau of Land Management and the California Energy Commission (CEC) cooperative model established by an October 12, 2009 agreement. It is based on an agreement between Secretary Salazar and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, which tells the Interior and state agencies to take initiative to develop renewable energy in the land of California, which is best suited to the environment.

Environmental hazards And public accountability.
Keeping with the norms of the state- private partnership and the fact that it is working on harnessing alternative means of energy, BrightSource is required to make its share of contribution to protect the environment. BrightSource will be needed to acquire around 7300 mitigation acres. According to a plan of the US Fish and Wildlife services, which BrightSource has to follow, it has to test 3 million Desert Tortoise selected by Bureau of Land Management in California for diseases and then monitor them by locating them to a more suitable place. The company will also have to contribute to the joint compensation fund created by Federal and State agencies and operated by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for the negative effect it causes to various resources including water and wildlife.

As a part of its social duty, BrightSource has allowed its solar energy enhancing projects to go through various public scrutinies for environment hazards. These include:

• Public scoping in 2007
• Draft environment Impact Statement in 2009
• Full public involvement in 2009
• A supplement draft in 2010 before a final environment Impact Statement was prepared.

As noted by Salazar, important changes were made in the project. The size of BrightSource’s project was cut by 15%, from 4,073 acres down to 3,471 acres and the number of heliostats (solar mirrors) from 214,000 to 173,500 by the Bureau of Land Management after this scrutiny.

Reacting to these changes made in the project after public scrutiny, Salazar said, “Since it is essential that we learn from our past experiences to make certain that we wisely develop clean energy at the appropriate places, I am happy that changes have been made to improve the project.”

Reference Link
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/solar-power-towers-california/

Courtesy
AE News Network