Think efficiency first with new projects

Imagine living in a home that uses no fossil energy — in Fairbanks!

A beautiful, comfortable home using solar power and a highly efficient wood-burning masonry stove for all the heat it needs for the entire year. No ever-increasing heating oil bill, just the sun and a bit over a cord of wood for the entire winter — even with temperatures plunging to 60 below.

Now imagine you’re planning a new library, visitor center, shelter or school. Do you want your hard-earned dollars to go toward your programs and constituents, or to utility bills?

These pages have recently featured several exciting new projects that demonstrate how the Mat-Su continues to develop as a wonderful community. The people of Wasilla voted to support a new library, the Mat-Su Health Foundation is helping to fund library and shelter projects and the Mat-Su Convention and Visitor’s Bureau is moving forward with a beautiful new visitors center.

Now is the time for these building champions to plan for “radical” energy efficiency as a core concept of their building designs. Buildings last a long time, and studies show the costs of operation (including utility bills) greatly eclipse the initial cost of construction over the building’s life. More importantly, careful attention to energy efficiency is key to a building being comfortable, healthy and durable.

Recently in Wasilla, the Alaska Center for Appropriate Technology hosted Fairbanks builder Thorsten Chlupp, who designed, built and lives in that “net-zero energy” home described above. Chlupp, originally from Germany, builds to what is called the passive house standard, a rigorous energy-saving standard developed years ago in northern Europe, where energy costs have been high for some time. Given rapidly escalating energy costs in the Fairbanks area, he’s been very busy building other super-insulated homes and recently helped design a library for the community of Ester.

I’m not suggesting all new projects should be net-zero energy, though that would say wonderful things about our community. But they can be designed to use far less energy than “normal.” Examples in northern Europe and Canada have shown building energy use can be reduced 70 percent to 90 percent. Think of what that can do for long-term program sustainability!

Now here’s the catch. Building owners, project champions and funders have to be willing to spend more up front to have low (or no) utility bills for the life of the building. It has been shown repeatedly that greater energy efficiency has a short payback, but too often owners (and funders) look only at minimizing the initial cost, while ignoring what we call “life-cycle” costs.

A good example of designing for efficiency first is the borough’s new community recycling center. In the early design stages, staff with Valley Community for Recycling Solutions made it clear they wanted a more efficient building to help reduce long-term operating costs. The facility ended up costing about 5.5 percent more than a typical building of its type, but it uses less than half the energy of a similar building. That’s a good deal for taxpayers, and we should insist on that in any new construction or major renovation.

To paraphrase the folks at the Cold Climate Housing Research Center, promoting efficiency first is like wrapping the house in a thick, warm coat with no leaks. Architects can easily design for this. It requires fastidious air sealing, good ventilation for healthy indoor air quality, good windows and doors, and thick walls with good insulation (for example, R-60 and not the standard R-21).

But we have to be willing to pay for these initial costs. It’s far more cost-effective to build efficiency into the original building envelope than to add it later — especially underneath the building (duh!).

Within the building community it’s understood that recognizing energy efficiency as an energy source is the most economical strategy to reduce utility costs. Energy costs in the Mat-Su are not what they are in Fairbanks, but we have many buildings that do not heat with natural gas. According to a recent state report, heating oil costs increase about 4 percent per year. In Cook Inlet, the price of natural gas increased 100 percent between 2004 and 2012 (and it won’t get cheaper, either with more Cook Inlet or North Slope gas, but that’s another issue).

If the design of the new Talkeetna Library mandated super-low energy use, the building heat could easily be supplied by an efficient wood-fired boiler system. This would mean the dollars spent on space heat would remain in the community creating local jobs, and the system would be completely based on sustainable use of a local, renewable resource. The location of the new Wasilla library looks ripe for use of passive solar energy, but effective use of passive solar requires — you guessed it — efficiency first!

If you’re a project champion or future owners of any new building, it’s time to speak up for super-low energy use by both design and a willingness to pay up front. Let’s begin a Valley reputation as that part of the state pushing for clean energy solutions. The transition to clean energy starts with efficiency first!

Mark Masteller is director of the Sustainable Energy program at Mat-Su College and a board member of the Alaska Center for Appropriate Technology.