Tokyo Babylon

In the book “Natural Capitalism” there’s a chapter which talks about ‘tunneling through the cost barrier’, which basically looks at all the things that can be improved by taking a systems approach and by doing things in the right order. One of the things they talk about in this respect is how to build structures better.

The prevailing wisdom of our urban landscape is build it fast, build it cheap, throw in lots of machines to make it habitable. They’re efficient in terms of man hours devoted to designing them and building them but after that they require lots of energy to keep them running. Over the lifespan of the building the cost of that energy will more than likely be a multiple of it’s building cost. This amounts to a small down payment to buy your ‘money pit’.

The prevailing wisdom is that if you try to reduce the energy requirements needed to keep the building habitable is that it will cost you big time. However there are some big assumptions at play here. The first is that in order to do this you have to add features to the money pit and this will cost money. They don’t assume taking anything out.

Ok, so let’s say you have a thermal mass that takes sunlight and radiates heat into the building. Let’s also say you have natural ventilation. Let’s also say you have a roof garden for insulation. It makes sense that working in harmony with sunshine and drafts, if properly harnessed by good design, will reduce or obviate completely the need for a furnace and an air conditioning system. A thermal mass is pretty much a concrete wall facing south so that the sun heats it. Putting glass in front of it can prevent it being aircooled. Depending on how you build it it can be used to heat the building, or heat air that draws cool air through the building in a gentle noise free breeze, or both.

So now let’s start taking things out of your building such as the big AC units, the heating equipment, the electrical systems to power both, the large back up generators. Now take that money and use it to purchase additional wall insulation, some solar panels to power it, a terrarium with rubber plants to clean and cool the air; lightshelves, skylights and light pipes to bring in natural sunlight, sensors controlling lights and water plus a roof garden to insulate the roof, protect the surface from UV light and moderate water run off from your building. Chances are it won’t cost much more to build than the first building but running costs will be a fraction of the first. Additionally, there are probably some government grants in there as well, and don’t forget if you have a network of such buildings you can sell your carbon credits on the rapidly expanding global market.

Take things a few steps further and your building could in theory produce more energy than it needs selling the rest or pumping it into your electric vehicles (people are already converting the Prius to fully electric) . You could sell any excess heat into supplying nearby buildings (in Tokyo where buildings almost merge anyway there’s a lot of scope for this) . This is really expanding into the field of industrial ecology though.

We already have the technology to ensure that our homes make money for us and are not just a continual drain on our resources. What would I do with the extra money? Well I’d probably invest in other ways to make my home or business premises pay for themselves and more. Then I’d start thinking about helping others do the same.

A company in Texas called EEstor is talking about a battery ultracapacitor hybrid that if their claims are to be believed make lithium ion batteries resemble something akin to a flint spearhead in that it’s safer, charges faster, delivers more charge, you name it. A battery stores its electricity chemically whereas a capacitor stores its electricity as an electric field. Much more than that I don’t know but the potential of it to store renewable energy holds my interest.

Then there’s ongoing research into using titanium alloys to create films that will liberate hydrogen from water using nothing but sunlight. I first heard about that about 3 years ago and I’ve been hearing it again recently.

Both are interesting to me because they holds out the promise of cheaper localised energy; where the people who own the energy use the energy. I’ll explain why I think that’s important in a bit, but first…

The Economist recently had an article on the possible future creation of a European wide windpower electricity grid that will take advantage of the fact that it’s always blowing a gale somewhere in Europe. As an aside Gale is a girl’s name isn’t it? I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere. Actually, I’d laugh if I wasn’t so appalled. The Economist is a free trade magazine so they want blurred borders and as much international trade as we can swallow without gagging, but has anyone asked them about transmission losses? It doesn’t matter if you’re using AC or DC to push it, the further the juice goes the more you lose, at least until we get superconductors which operate at ambient temperatures.

Which is why it makes so much sense to use electricity as close to where you make it as possible.

But a pan European grid and pan-European control? It sounds expensive doesn’t it? It would probably need a lot of capital investment. But who would invest in something so risky? Well, we all know what happens when a big company says to the government “we won’t invest in this unless you can guarantee our return on investment”. The government turns around and hands them a monopoly, or a guaranteed price that leaves you and I out of pocket. But don’t forget where that money goes. I’ll come back to that as well. Anyway, I remember a story about a man in Scotland who generated electricity using a waterwheel in the stream at the bottom of his garden. He was told he had to pay the utility company for the power his wheel created.

You see, all over the world big companies are trying to see how many of the things we depend on for our very survival they can bring under private ownership. Bechtel, a right nasty bunch from California, sees a future in water; yours, mine. I mean what are you going to do? Not pay?

The supermarket chains see a future in food, while screwing over farmers and rural communities. Pretty soon your choice is buy from that big store or this big store; Walmart being only the most egregious example.

Enron, and companies like it see a future in electricity, and we all know how that turned out for California.

These big business concerns are wiping out small communities all over the world. They look at the way the world is going, with free access everywhere right up to your back door and start singing ‘Tiiime is on my side”.

We should make the chorus “No, it’s not.”

I’m fed up hearing about small farmers getting squeezed by the big food concerns, about family stores closing down because a massive store opened up just outside town. I’m fed up hearing about big multinationals buying the water system or the electricity grid and then raising prices overnight.

People will tell you that private enterprise is more efficient and sometimes it is the case, but then again there’s many types of private enterprise, but the only one you hear about is the corporation. When was the last time you heard cooperative? Yet there are thousands of successful co-ops the world over. Even in the US, that bastion of shameless profiteering, there are thousands of co-ops, including electricity utilities - they supply power more cheaply as well.

Small communities work best when the money generated in them circulates within them. That’s what makes companies like Walmart so reprehensible. There’s nothing wrong with trade but why import something when its local production keeps your neighbor in a job, providing of course he’s not totally woeful.

This technology, and others like it; clever, efficient and with little or no infrastructure development cost, offers up the promise of free democratic sustainable communities, the kind of places that used to be good places to live, but are being abandoned the world over. The alternative, which is the path we’re on now, is seeing the money that should stay in your community being vacuum pumped off to a tax haven in the Cayman Islands.

So hydrogen? Batteries? I don’t care so long as it’s within the reach of small communities to buy, maintain and operate.