Green Tech Update - August 21, 2024
Passive cooling, cross-breezes, Communist-era apartment blocks, ceiling fans, and the 1970 “air-conditioned census.”
Researchers at Columbia University are experimenting with a zigzag surface pattern on buildings to reduce the need for air conditioning, according to an article on Friday in the Guardian. The building design uses “radiative cooling,” reflecting sunlight back out of the Earth’s atmosphere as long-wave infrared radiation. This method is a type of “passive” cooling because instead of requiring an energy source, cooling happens as a result of the surface quality simply deflecting the warming effects of sunlight.
In April, Laura Cole–a features correspondent for the BBC–reported on Eastern Europe’s push to renovate old Communist-style apartment blocks to use current, energy-efficient strategies. In a 16-story apartment building in Gabrovo city, Bulgaria, some energy bills have been cut in half due to the “energy retrofit” approach. Demolition and rebuilding can be prohibitively costly, according to Cole. Updates such as adding insulation to the outside of common Modernist-style concrete or brick buildings from the Communist era, are more achievable in the near term.
There have been challenges, however. Cole describes how applications for renovations often out-pace government funding, and often 100% resident agreement is needed for a building to be approved for the energy retrofit renovations. Some discussed solutions are lowering the amount of resident “buy-in” required for approval and “prefabricated technologies,” insulated building facades that can be assembled off-site in a factory setting and installed with large cranes.
Vernacular architecture is “a type of local or regional construction, using traditional materials and resources from the area where the building is located” (definition from ArchDaily). In a Washington Post article that wraps environmental strategies in an engaging travelogue, the art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott writes that he “traveled in the hottest months to the hottest places, looking for ways to stay cool.” He learned about older construction methods and layouts that keep buildings cool, traditions that fell out of style in favor of modern constructions that rely heavily on air conditioning.
Kennicott arrived in New Gourna, Egypt with a question: Can the “three basic elements of passive cooling — earth, water and wind” truly cool buildings in hot climates enough? He explored what remains of a 1945 social housing experiment designed by Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy. Fathy sought to bring back traditional cooling strategies using local materials and knowledge.
The main challenge of reviving older passive cooling methods, according to Kennicott is two-fold. There is “skepticism” and a loss of knowledge about “the wisdom of vernacular systems.” The full story is worth reading, and Sima Diab’s accompanying photographs are a rich and beautiful documentation of passive cooling strategies from the past in New Gourna and Cairo in Egypt and Diyarbakir in Turkey.
Writer Samanth Subramanian shared his perspective in a Washington Post essay on the benefits of using a simple but effective ceiling fan instead of air conditioning. Ceiling fans as a primary cooling strategy has faded in the United States, where the technology was invented in 1887. Yet, ceiling fans remain a popular cooling method in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. “By 2009, 87 percent of U.S. households had AC.”
Subramanian makes the case for ceiling fans, pointing to downsides such as emissions, heat islands, and 30 times the energy use in some cases. But he also sings the ceiling fan’s praises for the quality of life benefits it offers. “You’ll have an appliance that makes less noise, and that doesn’t leach your skin of moisture, leaving it parched or ashy.” He continues, “You’ll spend your days in more humane temperatures, and in rooms that are never overchilled.”
In The Daily, a podcast from the New York Times, Michael Barbaro interviewed his colleague Emily Badger about the rise of air conditioning and what he called, “the increasingly dangerous paradox of trying to control the temperature.” The hotter the climate gets, the more air conditioning is employed to keep indoor temperatures the same.
Badger writes about cities and urban policy. She has dug deep into America’s air conditioning history, and its contribution to population expansion into the hotter parts of the country. 1970 was called “The Air-Conditioned Census” in an editorial piece at the time. That author commented, “The humble air-conditioner has been a powerful influence in circulating people as well as air in this country.” Other factors, such as young people seeking year-round outdoor recreation and a longer-living elderly population attracted to warmer weather were also mentioned.
Regarding air conditioning’s effects on the environment, Badger cites what are referred to as direct and indirect emissions. “Our buildings in the United States are responsible for about 30 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions.” She continues, “And that refers to the fossil fuels that we burn directly to heat and cool buildings, and to cook in them, but also to generate the electricity that then allows us to do things, plug in our window units.”
Ultimately, Badger sees it as an opportunity to shift the idea of personal “comfort” to one that is less individual and more socially connected. She closes the interview with this perspective: “What if more people came to accept the idea that going and sitting out on my front porch in the evening is where I get comfort from? And it’s also, by the way, how I interact with my neighbors.”
Green Tech Update provides context about news in green technology innovations and public policy changes related to the environment and climate change.
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Notes:
Zigzag patterns
Apartment blocks
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240403-the-race-to-retrofit-europes-ex-communist-housing
Egypt and Turkey
https://www.archdaily.com/951667/what-is-vernacular-architecture
Ceiling fans
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/08/18/ceiling-fan-vs-ac/
How Air-Conditioning Conquered America
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/16/podcasts/the-daily/air-conditioning-climate-warming.html
Air-Conditioned Census
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1970/09/06/355813402.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0