An autonomous building is a building designed to be operated independently from infrastructural support services such as the electric power grid, gas grid, municipal water systems, sewage treatment systems, storm drains, communication services, and in some cases, public roads.But is this really appealing to most people?
The article mentions that food production can be done at home, that “intensive gardening can support an adult from as little as 100 square meters of land per person”.
But does a typical person want to be an amateur farmer?
Likewise, the replacement of sewer systems and storm drains with conventional septic systems and swales might be plausible; but most people probably don’t want to deal with something like composting toilets.
That being said, the value of autonomous buildings is not just environmental. There would be increased security in terms of civil defense (a neighborhood with autonomous buildings would better survive prolonged blackouts, storms, government paralysis, etc.). Also, in the long term, autonomous buildings lower the cost of living (probably especially important for senior citizens on a fixed income).
Advocates of autonomous building describe advantages that include reduced environmental impacts, increased security, and lower costs of ownership. Some cited advantages satisfy tenets of green building, not independence per se (see below). Off-grid buildings often rely very little on civil services and are therefore safer and more comfortable during civil disaster or military attacks. (Off-grid buildings would not lose power or water if public supplies were compromised for some reason.) Most of the research and published articles concerning autonomous building focus on residential homes. British architects Brenda and Robert Vale have said that, as of 2002,Does anyone want to live in a house that is 25% smaller? On the other hand, that might just be an excellent mechanism to get people to downsize.
"It is quite possible in all parts of Australia to construct a 'house with no bills', which would be comfortable without heating and cooling, which would make its own electricity, collect its own water and deal with its own waste...These houses can be built now, using off-the-shelf techniques. It is possible to build a "house with no bills" for the same price as a conventional house, but it would be (25%) smaller."
One might assume that the most flexible and robust building or home would be a hybrid of:
1) a zero-energy building connected to the grid, and drawing some of the resources (water, electricity) from the grid, but also producing and collecting such resources, and
2) an autonomous building capable of detaching from the grid for extended periods, which generally would have its own established waste disposal system (wastewater, garbage, etc.).
Not mentioned in any of these Wikipedia articles is the pyramid scheme-like nature of some land development.
In a Ponzi scheme, investors are rewarded not with dividends, but by the funds of new investors (who will themselves eventually seek payoffs).
Similarly, in order to pay for the maintenance of infrastructure and government services, governments seek to raise revenue by spurring land development – which would only lead to the creation of further infrastructure and government services.
Hemmed in by property tax limitations, cities were compelled to increase revenue by the easiest route: expanding urban boundaries. They let developers plow up walnut groves and vineyards and places that were supposed to be strawberry fields forever to pay for services demanded by new school parents and park users.Autonomous buildings thus might help decrease the burden on public infrastructure and on some government agencies.Again, autonomous buildings would also lead to dramatically reduced resource consumption -- that is, reduced depletion of personal finances as well as environmental resources -- not only in terms of the reduction of grid utilization, but also in the embrace of smaller homes (with fewer items bought to be stored in the home).
But the political and economic system are not oriented toward the building of autonomous buildings. At least not yet.
There are moves toward developing 'zero-energy' houses.
With a combination of rooftop solar panels, smart thermostats, advanced water heaters and other high-efficiency features, the homes are all built with a similar goal: to make at least as much energy as they use over a year.This is akin to an autonomous house. It's also become mandatory in California, and it is becoming more affordable as the price of solar PV continues to plummet.
It’s a concept known as zero net energy, and the cluster of homes here represents one of the nation’s largest experiments to see if zero net energy can be put into wider use.
“It’s not that it cannot be done,” said Ram Narayanamurthy, technical executive at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit utility-funded group that is conducting the study. “The question that we’re trying to answer is, ‘Can it be done for everyone?’”This is not just the distant future of homes, but the new reality that governments and society need to somehow accommodate.
That question has particular urgency in California, whose goal is that all new homes be net-zero or the equivalent by 2020. But as the price of installing and operating once-rarefied technologies has plummeted, builders across the country are increasingly offering homes with the promise of comfort along with low — or almost no — electric bills.
Since 2013, the Energy Department has certified about 700 homes as “zero-energy ready,” meaning that the addition of a renewable energy system, generally solar, would offset most or all of its annual energy consumption.
With thousands more in the pipeline, said Sam Rashkin, chief architect of the building technologies office, the department expects to certify roughly 1,000 this year and 3,000 in 2017.
“We’re on that inflection point on the growth curve,” he said. “We’re proving the business case to a growing number of builders in key pockets of construction around the country. It takes some really good examples by leading builders to showcase just how cost-effective and technically achievable these specifications are.”
Denver is a leading market, with thousands of zero-energy homes on the way in developments like Stapleton and Sterling Ranch, he said, although there are many others in New England, New York and the Carolinas.It represents a great challenge to utilities, accelerating the so-called "death spiral".
The proliferation of zero-energy homes comes as the power industry and its regulators struggle to adapt an old power system — in which large, centralized power plants distribute energy to thousands of homes — to new approaches and technologies. The explosive growth of rooftop solar in states like Hawaii, Arizona and California has upended not only utility business models but also patterns of supply and demand.
Solar power, by its nature, is intermittent, which places strain on utilities and grid operators that need to meet homeowners’ energy demands at night when the sun is not shining, while also taking in the excess energy rooftop solar systems produce during daylight hours.
Although the proportion of homes with solar is not yet high enough in most markets to cause major problems, industry executives and analysts say it is important to begin studying how that and other technologies affect the nation’s power grid now.
“We know very little about how all these devices interact — we have so much to learn,” said Mark Duvall, director of energy utilization at the Electric Power Research Institute. “Hopefully at the end of the day we can contribute to a greater understanding of how these technologies work together and what it really means going forward.”What is appealing to home buyers is that they do not have to alter their behavior to save energy because the house does that automatically for them. "For buyers, part of the appeal of a home built to be zero-energy is that they do not have to change their behavior to save energy."
If homeowners feel any effect, it is in the pocketbook, at least initially. The houses, all with three or four bedrooms, cost more than the $373,990 to $476,990 standard for the subdivision about 20 minutes west of San Bernardino. But because the cost is wrapped into the mortgage, and paid over an extended period of time, it is more easily affordable, and the larger payments are generally offset by the savings on energy bills.
“With this stuff thrown in you can afford a lot more house, and you get a lot more value,” Mr. Genau, 31, said.
Back in the East, where the Genaus’ previous house had a big foyer, their energy bills could go as high as $500 a month. “I’d rather be cold sometimes than see the bill,” Ms. Genau, 29, said. “It was ridiculous.”
Their energy bill now? About $10.
And they feel little effect, living in comfort and controlling the temperature in the different zones of their 2,800-square-foot, three-bedroom home from a smartphone.There is, however, a potential dark side to renewable energy and sustainable development...
...Any money people save on their home energy bill would generally get plowed back into environmentally damaging wasteful spending (e.g., bigger houses). This is the Jevons paradox.
The Jevons paradox
The Jevons paradox, often known as the rebound effect, stipulates
that increases in the efficiency of production lead to increases in product
consumption and thus increases in resource utilization.
In economics,
the Jevons paradox (/ˈdʒɛvənz/;
sometimes Jevons effect) occurs when technological progress increases
the efficiency with
which a resource is used (reducing the amount
necessary for any one use), but the rate of consumption of
that resource rises due to increasing demand.
Jevons could see this phenomena
in his midst during the Industrial Revolution.
In 1865, the
English economist William Stanley Jevons observed
that technological improvements that increased the efficiency of
coal-use led to the increased consumption of coal in a wide range of
industries. He argued that, contrary to common intuition, technological
progress could not be relied upon to reduce fuel consumption.
One would expect that the
greater efficiency of factories and reduced price of the goods they
manufactured would lead to less resource consumption and greater savings for
consumers. Instead, consumer spending on the cheaper goods remains the same as
when the goods were expensive -- the consumer simply buys more items as the
price declines. In fact, consumer spending on such goods might actually increase in
the face of this increased prosperity and consumerism. This counterintuitive
reality is not something that policy makers often take into account.
The Jevons
paradox is perhaps the most widely known paradox in environmental economics. However, governments and environmentalists generally
assume that efficiency gains will lower resource consumption, ignoring the possibility
of the paradox arising.
The issue has
been re-examined by modern economists studying consumption rebound effects from improved energy efficiency. In addition to reducing the
amount needed for a given use, improved efficiency also lowers the relative
cost of using a resource, which increases the quantity demanded. This
counteracts (to some extent) the reduction in use from improved efficiency.
Additionally, improved efficiency accelerates economic
growth, further increasing the demand for resources. The Jevons paradox
occurs when the effect from increased demand predominates, and improved
efficiency increases the speed at which resources are used.
The path to lower consumption
might be a combination of efficiency increases and high prices. One can see
this in Hawaii, where residential energy consumption declined each year from
1998 to 2008, prior to the 2008 Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative. This decline in
energy consumption was due to increases in the efficiency of appliances (e.g.,
an LED consumes one-eighth the electricity as an equivalent incandescent bulb)
combined with not only with the high prices of electricity in Hawaii (the
highest in the US), but also a generally high cost of living.
One can see the effects of the
Jevons paradox in the attempt to raise automobile fuel efficiency.
The Corporate
Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards are regulations in
the United States, first enacted by the United States Congress in 1975,[1] after
the 1973–74 Arab Oil Embargo, to improve the average fuel economy of cars and light
trucks (trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles) produced for sale in
the United States.
Granted, without the CAFE
standards, automobile fuel consumption would be 14% higher. But this reduced
fuel consumption helps to suppress gasoline prices and thus encourages more
driving (a 10% improvement in fuel efficiency leads to an average increase in
travel distance of 1–2%).
To get around the CAFE
standards, automobile companies created SUVs and minivans.
What this article might have
missed is how low mileage standards and lessened fuel consumption might have
fed the popularity of SUVs and trucks -- a popularity that took American
automobile manufacturers by surprise. The most popular vehicle in the US, the
Ford F-150 series of multi-ton trucks, gets an astonishingly high 26 miles per
gallon on the highway. This astoundingly excellent mileage is largely driven by
the technology that was developed in response to the federally imposed CAFE
standards.
The increased efficiency of vehicles ironically contributes to longer drives and bigger vehicles.
It may also contribute to larger home sizes, because the lowered cost of driving that is partly due to greater fuel efficiency means that people can move far from urban areas to places where land is cheap and bigger houses are affordable.
The only way of lowering resource consumption would be the promotion of greater efficiencies coupled with higher cost, which is what compels reduced electricity consumption in Hawaii.
That is precisely what is happening now. Home prices are going up because of less available land, higher construction cost and higher wages for construction workers, and so home sizes are shrinking.
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-new-home-sizes-are-shrinking-2017-10
It may also contribute to larger home sizes, because the lowered cost of driving that is partly due to greater fuel efficiency means that people can move far from urban areas to places where land is cheap and bigger houses are affordable.
The only way of lowering resource consumption would be the promotion of greater efficiencies coupled with higher cost, which is what compels reduced electricity consumption in Hawaii.
That is precisely what is happening now. Home prices are going up because of less available land, higher construction cost and higher wages for construction workers, and so home sizes are shrinking.
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-new-home-sizes-are-shrinking-2017-10
What is interesting is that "shrinking home size" refers to floor area but not to lot size, which began to shrink decades ago.
IIRC, in the 1950s, home sizes (floor area) was half of what it is today and lot sizes were twice of what they are now. (Suburban life was seen as an escape into the countryside.)
The best thing to raise prices might be a carbon tax.
Carbon tax/fee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax
A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon content of fuels.[1] It is a form of carbon pricing. Revenue obtained via the tax is however not always used to compensate the carbon emissions on which the tax is levied (see implementation). Carbon is present in every hydrocarbon fuel (coal, petroleum, and natural gas) and converted to carbon dioxide (CO"Compensation" is a big issue here. Compensation refers to a "carbon offset", which is a reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases that is made in order to compensate for or to offset an emission made elsewhere. (One example would be the planting of forests to soak up CO2.)
2) and other products when combusted. In contrast, non-combustion energy sources—wind, sunlight, geothermal, hydropower, and nuclear—do not convert hydrocarbons to CO
2. CO
2 is a heat-trapping "greenhouse" gas[2] which represents a negative externality on the climate system (see scientific opinion on global warming).[2][3][4] Since GHG emissions caused by the combustion of fossil fuels are closely related to the carbon content of the respective fuels, a tax on these emissions can be levied by taxing the carbon content of fossil fuels at any point in the product cycle of the fuel.
This is an ideologically charged subject. Basically, conservatives insist that carbon tax revenues be used for carbon offsets (reducing carbon in the atmosphere) or to aid victims of climate change (e.g., Pacific Islanders who are losing their countries to rising sea levels). More specifically, the minimalist goal of conservative social reform would be the compensation of those who are victims of "negative externalities", that is, the activity of others (e.g., compensate people who suffer from air pollution caused by factories, but not compensate people who smoke cigarettes). In a sense, conservatives basically see a carbon tax as a user fee. In contrast, liberals would use carbon tax revenues to help people who would be hurt by a carbon tax (inevitably, the lower classes).
There is even a certain schizophrenia in the Wikipedia article as it toggles from a conservative to a liberal perspective. In the following paragraph, the first sentence articulates the common objective of reducing greenhouse gases; the second and third sentences seem more conservative; the fourth and fifth sentences sound liberal.
Carbon taxes offer a potentially cost-effective means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. From an economic perspective, carbon taxes are a type of Pigovian tax. They help to address the problem of emitters of greenhouse gases not facing the full social cost of their actions. Carbon taxes can be a regressive tax, in that they may directly or indirectly affect low-income groups disproportionately. The regressive impact of carbon taxes could be addressed by using tax revenues to favour low-income groups.Thus, there can be no passage of a carbon tax because liberals and conservatives want to help different groups of people with the proceeds of a carbon tax. In fact, at a deeper level, liberals and conservatives seem puzzled by each other's commitment to a carbon tax. And deeper than this difference in ideology and worldview and conception of justice is a difference in temperament and character.
As a thought experiment, what exactly would happen in a liberal version of a carbon tax?
Working-class folks living in relatively big houses in the distant suburbs and commuting to work in big trucks and SUVs would be hurt by a carbon tax (it would impact the lower classes much more than the upper classes). The injury would be real, and there would be no real options. So liberal policy would justly and fairly compensate the working-class commuter for the impact of higher cost of living by distributing the revenues of the carbon tax to the lower classes (and the middle class).
Unfortunately, once compensated, these folks would then not change their behavior. They would still live large and drive long distances in giant vehicles. Ultimately, the cost of driving would have to rise for them to change their ways. This is a paradox to rival Jevons paradox.
In another thought experiment, what would be the result of a conservative version of carbon fees?
A conservative version of carbon fees would not compensate the lower classes for the impact of carbon fees. This would disproportionately hurt the lower classes, but fundamentally succeed at altering their behavior toward energy savings (owning smaller vehicles, living closer to work, living in a smaller abode). The revenues of the carbon fees would go to climate remediation programs like planting forests or helping Pacific Islander immigrants in the US who have lost their countries because of climate change. These benefits would be real. The working class would be hurt, but there would be no paradox of using carbon taxes to pay the working class to conduct business as usual.
If there is one problem with the conservative policy of carbon fees other than hurting the most vulnerable citizens, it might be that the policy might be perceived as too effective. A sense of complacency would sink in, and programs that subsidize the development of renewable energy might not be aggressively pursued (although such programs would not contradict carbon fees). There might be a growing sense that the marketplace, now corrected, would take care of the problem of global warming.
The policy that might bridge the gap between liberal carbon taxes and conservative carbon fees might be to "split the difference" in revenue distribution. Half the revenues could go to the lower classes as a form of remediation that would ameliorate the hardships that they would be expected to endure from carbon taxes. The other half of the revenues would go to compensating victims of climate change and preventing climate change. It would be a mutually dissatisfying policy, but successful policy-making is characterized by compromise.
