Net-Zero Energy Skyscrapers: A Tall Order

Lauren Vocalbon, and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we wanted to talk a bit about really energy efficient buildings, Buildings that are so energy efficient that they actually don't either they do not draw any energy from the power grid at all, zero net zero, or they maybe they draw energy from the power grid, but they also put energy back in still being net zero, or they're just very very low energy so they draw a little bit from the grid but not a lot, or they're even energy positive,

which means they just feed energy back into the power grid. And uh, we wanted to talk about what it takes to make a building do that, and what it would take to make a really big building do that, because it's one thing to design a residential home that can be uh net zero energy uh compliant, Right, That's that's one thing. But to design a skyscraper that can do it, that has a completely different set of challenges that get

much more complex. And so we wanted to kind of talk about this whole idea and why we should even consider it in the first place. Uh. So, really, the net zero thing is is pretty self explanatory. I mean, you could at least imagine one in theory, you could imagine that. Let's say that you have a farmhouse that's on a essentially a plane, right, and you get lots of sunlight generally speaking, throughout the year, and you also have some you know, you have some good winds that

go through the area. So maybe with wind turbines and solar panels and with a very good design of your house, you might collect this on light appropriately at different times the day. Right, And we'll get into all of that in a minute. Uh, that sort of stuff might allow you to be self sufficient. In fact, you could theoretically have a building that's so self sufficient it doesn't even connect to a power grid and off the grid. Yes, you're off the grid. Uh granted you're you're still being

tracked because someone's always looking for you. Just kidding, just kidding. Well, so we we've heard of houses like this. At your house, it it has a nuclear reactor inside, or it has whatever, it hasnsters running in wheels, whatever it is that makes this house self sufficient. But you mentioned bigger buildings. Have we ever heard of a truly truly energy self sufficient, a net zero high rise, the large kind of building you'd see in a city. There's, Um, there's supposedly some

I say supposedly because it's it's difficult to to actually confirm. Well, let supposed a right. So so there's there's a building called the Pearl River Tower in guang Sho, China, and uh, and this tower is seventy one stories tall, So I think that that counts a skyscraper. Seventy one stories tall? Does that count of skyscraper? I believe you would think that it would have to. I mean that it's it's at least a high rise. Yes, at the least it's at seventy stories I think, I think, I'm I'm willing

to call it a skyscraper. Of course, I live in Atlanta, where a seventy story building would be enormous. In fact, we only have a couple that reached that high. UM anyway, it's it's it's like the the fourth largest or fourth tallest building in Guangzho and the some somewhere in the twenties for all of China. UM it's two point three million square feet of space, and it's an office building. So there's no residential in here as far as I can tell. It's all offices. Uh, and it was, it's

it's supposedly net zero. I say supposedly because I don't I haven't checked it out personally. Well, yeah, I don't have any way of specifically going there and seeing it and making sure that in fact, and the numbers on it. You know, the engineers have have an interest in making it sound as good as possible. Of course, Well, we don't want to cast out, but they're fine, upstanding citizens.

But well, they do have an interest, right, right, The point being that we cannot confirm, right, We can only take in the data that is available from the people who built the thing. And and there's no way that you can say that that's unbiased. I mean, by by its very nature it's biased. It may still be correct, but it is biased. Right. But wait a second here, So a seventy plus story building that doesn't use any

more energy than it makes? How is that possible? All right? Now, assuming that in fact that claim is true, here's how they did it. First of all, it was it was designed by by two American architects, Gordon Gill and Adrian D. Smith. Actually, I'm assuming they are American. I know that they designed it in Chicago. Uh. The the building itself was completed in late early and Uh. The way that they generate energy is through several different methods. They use something called

uh passive solar power. Actually they call it sunlight harvesting. That's how they refer to it and there on their website. But they also use wind turbines. They have two large sections of the building where it's designed to channel wind through these sections and wind turbines are in them. So it's like like a jet engine for your building kind of. Yeah, if you were to look at the building face on, you would see that there were two levels within this building.

So it's like the buildings in three big sections, right. So you see floors where obviously office space exists, and there's a chunk floors, and then there's this weird level, and then there's another chunk of floors and the weird level, and then the third chunk of floors. Those two weird levels are actually the wind turbine levels, and they're channeling

the wind through. So if you the other thing is, if you were to look at the building in profile, the the the the the outward facing walls would look kind of curved from floor to floor because it's actually channeling the wind through those turbines. Um they also had photo voltaic cells also known as solar panels, and they use stuff like a raised floor ventilation and radiant heating and cooling ceilings to help control the temperature inside the building to reduce the need for using energy to to

run the HVAC system. So that's how this building supposedly operates. It also makes it really uh easy to get all that sunlight because from the pictures I saw, it's the only really tall building in its area, there aren't any other neighboring skyscrapers butting up against this thing, right, which has to make it immenseally easier to to a catch that wind and betch the sunlight. Right. Harvesting the sunlight is a lot easier when you don't have another normous

building casting a shadow on you. So that's that's generally how it's done, and of course that's uh kind of how all net zero buildings work in some to some extent. There there's an effort of actual energy production as well as energy conservation that's going on, so well, let's look at some of those features individually and see what they take. And now, I imagine everybody's heard of solar panels and

wind turbines. Probably a lot of people aren't familiar with passive solar, right, yes, So, so like a solar panel would be an active solar system because you're actually actively grabbing that solar energy and converting it into electricity. What is passive solar? Passive solar is uh it's a design issue. It's hard to just added onto a building the way you might be able to. So take your average skyscraper that already exists, all right, you could stick solar panels

all over it if that's a feasible upgrade. The passive solar is a design issue from the ground floor, and it means that essentially the building is constructed in a way to make perfect use of natural sunlight. Um And a lot of this just comes down to heating and cooling. Uh. I looked up the U. S Department of Energy says that the average home's utility bill in America, fifty four

per cent of that is just heating and cooling. Heating and cooling is a huge amount of the power we use in our buildings and infrastructure because we like to be comfortable, right, Um, But like I like my I like my building cave cold, right well, you know, so we can you know, wave our hands at that. But I don't know, I don't know if I could sit in an office sweaty and like get my work I have, I don't. I don't recommend it. It's yeah, it's it's definitely,

you know. So we we like to be comfortable. We keep our buildings at a nice temperature. Um. But this is really really costly if you're constantly pumping in cold air, pumping in hot air in order to do it. Passive solar design allows you to do this with natural angles of light from the sun. So what it has to do with is um how you orient the building. For one thing, the building is built in such a way with the passage of the sun in different seasons in mind.

So it's built with side facing windows that are designed to allow sunlight in in the winter to naturally heat all the rooms, and designed so as to block the sun in the summer. And this is because the sun itself passes in a different arc depending upon the season, because the tilt of the earth. Keeping in mind, of course, we're talking about rotation of the earth and untilt of the earth, not the actual passage of the sun. But

it doesn't important point. It does mean, however, or that you know, there are times, like you've probably noticed this, where there's certain times the year where at a particular time of day, sunlight just streams in through a window and blinds you, and you just you can't get anything done, so they have to move to some other part of the play house or or close a blind or something like that. But other parts of the year, during that same time of day, everything's fine. You don't have sunlight

coming in through that window. Same sort of thing, except you're designing an entire building around that so that in the winter, the sunlight comes in, it hits surfaces. They're designed to absorb as much heat as possible and radiate that heat out throughout the day, so that way on during the winter months when it's cooler, the sunlight's actually warming the interior of your house, and it's staying warm longer than it would if it were made out of

some other material. So the material itself has to be good at at absorbing that energy and then radiating it out over time. Another issue is just simple insulation. Sure, anybody who who if you've own to home or anything like that, you know that installation makes a huge difference in your energy costs, right, yeah, yeah, you know it's all the glass panels, the floor to ceiling kind of glass panels that we have on our current building actually

that we're sitting in right now are gorgeous. But how energy efficient are they? Right? I don't know. They probably lose a lot of heat. You definitely want your building to be weather tight. That's kind of the way that that it's industry talks about it, and that will allow you to save a lot on your energy bills. So that's a lot of these things we're talking about are things that that, at least to some extent, existing buildings

can do. But you, like you were saying, Joe, you can't take full advantage of it unless you're planning it from the very beginning. And it's harder to rotate a building after we've already set it up. Yeah, we put it up on stilts. Sadly, it's not not quite like some city where you just you know, pick this up

and move it over here. Um. Yeah. And also the it's easier to do on a smaller scale than on a large scale like a like a skyscraper, especially if you're talking about the dense urban population where you've got lots of skyscrapers together, that might mean that you don't get even if you were to build it from the ground up, you might not get full sunlight all day

long because of the way the other buildings are. You might only be able to have you know, one of these and every you know, three or four city blocks or something for them all to be as efficient as possible. Right, Well, you mentioned the Pearl River Tower. You said it was the only building around that according to the pictures I've seen, Yeah, there are no other skyscrapers that are immediately adjacent to it, so it doesn't it looks like it gets the full

benefit of sunlight from where it is right now. So that would automatically kind of cut back on some of the advantages if you couldn't build it close to other buildings. And another challenge that we can think about UM with with net zero or at least low energy skyscrapers or high rises is um you've got to offset those costs you you do incur, right, so you can use passive solar to control your climate. But you still gotta turn on the toaster and you know, run you plug in

your laptop and stuff like that. Where does that energy come? Right? So, so you need to have some sort of energy Uh, creation like generator is what you need. You need some form of generation to create the electricity you need for the to run the stuff in your building. So if even if you don't have a fusion reactor in your building, right, you're going to have Yeah, if you if you do have a fusion reactor in your building, please let us know because I would love to see that, but chances

are you don't. So how do you generate that electricity? And uh, and really you're talking one of the other goals. We didn't really mention it, but one of the other goals for a net zero energy building is also to reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, which means that you know, you can't just fill up generators full of gasoline and crank them up and use that as the way to generate electricity. You need to find a way to generate it.

That's that's clean and so uh, the that's where the photo voltaic cells and the wind turbines come into play, uh, to to harness the natural energies as much as possible. But again, when you're talking about a building that's challenging, right right, there's only so much you can do with wind turbines. And and study in two thousand nine found that by far, wind turbines are more efficient, uh costwise

than than photovoltaics for doing this kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, they compared for for a mixed use community of about people. This was a study done by the Pacific Northwest National lab UM. They compared five different scenarios for this, and they found that that even in even in a city like Phoenix that has a relatively low amount of wind in a relatively high amount of sunlight, that um that yeah,

wind farm would win. And and also you know, Joe you were pointing out earlier when we were talking before the podcast that uh that it really depends upon the ratio between the sides of the building that faced the sun and the top of the building. All right, well, I mean both of these things, whether it's wind or solar, they need some sort of freedom of access, right Like especially solar needs a direct access to the sunline. Wind

I'd imagine. I actually don't know, and this would be interesting to find out, But do you get more uh wind if there's less other skyscraper around you, or if you're within a city skyline? Is that cut down on your access to it? Actually just depends upon the geography, because you can you can have what becomes a wind tunnel depending But there are certain parts of Atlanta, by the way, this is incredibly obvious. You might you might walk down one street and you think that's a nice breeze.

You walk between the buildings on Peachtree Street near the Fox Theater, and then suddenly you are folding on for dear life. Oh yeah, sometimes I'm driving home and I think I'm gonna sucked up in a cyclone and my car shakes, right, and then there's the ruby slippers that you wear all the time. It explains a lot, Joe.

But but the point being that, yes, I mean the idea that that even if you were to coat the entire side of a building with some form of solar panel, and you know, they've talked about films that could be used to coat different services that could act as a photovoltaic cl Let's say that we get to that point where we can do that, you still are limited by the fact that that side of the building is only going to be exposed to the sun during part of the day, right, so part of the day it's going

to have a lot of sunlight hitting it. The top of the building is going to have sunlight hitting it for most of the day. But if if you've built a very tall but relatively skinny building in the in the sense that when you get to the roof you only have a small percentage of the square footage of the roof is only a tiny fraction of what the sides are. That's not an efficient way to generate energy.

The taller you go, you're increasing the ratio of your energy needs to your ability to harvest solar energy exactly. And you know, and tall buildings like you know, the the HVAC system that we're talking about. Let's let's assuming that, of course, the passive solar approach is not completely eliminate the HVAC requirements. And really, and if we're talking about a realistic skyscraper, I can't imagine a scenario where passive soldier takes care of all of that. Then you could

force it to people. People are just gonna have to to shiver and sweat depending upon the time of year, or in Atlanta, depending upon the day, since we seem to be going through winter, summer, and spring simultaneously this year this week. So in that case, you know, you're talking about the more floors you have, the greater the amount of energy you need to maintain the climate as well. So again, the bigger you get, the higher your footprints

going or the deeper your footprints going to go. I guess we could say if we're gonna use that metaphor so that that makes it a challenge. Also does it depend on I mean, you know, you you mentioned that this this Chinese building was an office space. Is it going to take a lot more energy cost for a community,

for for a living community. I would imagine that it probably would, because if you're talking on office space, one of the things you could do to help limit the energy is you essentially say, you know, at X time, this office building is essentially closed and you can still be here, but with the lights right right, you may not have electricity or heat or or or air conditioning, but you could still be here. Whereas, of course, if it's residential oxygen now I don't think it's gotten quite

that bad. But yeah, if you for residential, clearly you would need to have access to all of those things. More people shower, I would say, at home than they do in their offices. So well maybe you probably you have obviously not seen the shower on this floor, um, or the shower at my home for that man, it's a talent only shower. We have, you know, their benefits to go with the job. But yeah, so there are

some challenges here. In fact, we cannot really say for certain if if a high rise like a skyscraper could really be a net zero energy building, if we're talking about in the middle of an urban space, it would be an incredible challenge. Um. Maybe we could find more efficient ways to generate electricity through things like wind power or solar power, and that would help, but you're still

talking about a huge energy need. Another thing we could do is looking at energy conservation, so cutting down on things like vampire power UH standby power. So essentially that's when you know you have your computer turned off, but it's plugged in and it's still pulling some power from the UH from the building. If you were able to eliminate that and have you know the switches where when you turn the switch off, that's it. No more powers

going through there. That would help. Or or you know, the per capita water use in America something like six hundred and sixty thousand gallons per per family per year, and that's that's an enormous amount. That's almost twice the global average. So yeah, so so cutting down that would help a great deal as well. So I think it definitely would be a huge challenge and possibly even an

impossible one right now with today's technology. That that's not to say that we would not someday find a way to achieve this, but uh and and if any at any rate, going through this would mean reducing our energy consumption, which is a good thing. I mean, whether or not we believe the claims about this building in China, we do know that now we can create what are called low energy building that you know, that's it's definitely feasible to create a building that, though it might not completely

break even it uses very little. Even even less is a pretty terrific amount when you go for a couple of years. So and there are some buildings out there, and they're usually smaller ones that you know, they take some energy from the grid, but then they may generate energy throughout parts of the year and actually sell energy

back to the grid. So ultimately, if you look at you know, if you look at the receipt at the end of the year, you might say, oh, well, this building ultimately breaks even even though during parts of the year it has to consume energy from the grid. Um, So there are those options as well. And of course, maybe one day we'll reach a point where this won't be as big a a priority. For instance, maybe if we somehow crack that fusion problem, then in k yeah,

we've got an energy surplus at that point. And if you have an energy surplus, then these considerations are no longer really important. Now, I would stress that a lot of the things that go into this this design process are beneficial in other ways. Besides the fact that they help cut down our energy consumption, they also cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, which also then means that we

have less of an impact on on climate change. So there are other reasons to pursue these technologies besides just right right right. But I'm saying that even if we get to the day where where fusion is completely possible,

which you know, I hope that day comes. I just I just don't you know, I don't see it happening tomorrow, but if it, if it happens, maybe ten years from now or twenty years from now, I still think that the design principles of the net zero energy buildings are important for us to consider for the other benefits besides energy consumption. So uh, that's the answer I give to

people who who think that. You know, they say, oh, well, don't worry because technology is going to solve our energy problems, so we shouldn't have to worry about this at all. My response is, no, we should definitely look into this because it means that we come up with new ideas that help the world, even if it even if the energy consumption angle goes out the window. Well, I love to speculate about technology as much as anybody, but you know,

it's really easy when you're not the one making it. Yeah. Sure, no, I'm working I'm working on to keep our feet on the ground. Yes, yes, yes. The only reason I say all that is because I know people. I actually know people in my life who have the attitude of that's not worth worrying about because someone smarter than I am

is working on it. Just just throw that McDonald's rapper right at that baby dear's head and technology a robot will come along and pick up both the baby deer and the rapper, use plasmification to turn them into useful energy, and Bambi and your fast food will power your home for the next three hours. I know people who think you want there are people who think like that, and my, my, my perspective is that that is not necessarily a responsible philosophy.

The idea that oh, we don't have to worry about it today because tomorrow will solve the problem. Well, the only way that works is if we actually work on solving the problem. That's my point. I know that we talk a lot, and especially in this episode, about the challenges that we face, but honestly, if there's one thing I think human beings have proven themselves capable of doing, it's meeting challenges that previous generations thought as being impassable.

There was just no way we're going to get around it, get over it, get through it. And yet time and time again we have found ways to fix problems that people thought were unsolvable. Oh, of course, I mean, like every cool thing we've ever done was deemed impossible, right and so and so I really do think that you know, knowing that what what the challenges are, that's definitely important. But don't give up thinking that those challenges are are

are hard barriers that will never get through. That just means that we need to rise to the occasion is ultimately what I think. Um So, guys, if you are interested in these sort of topics, these futuristic topics, then we highly recommend you get in touch with us and you can follow us on Facebook. You can follow us on Twitter, you can follow us on good goal plus. Uh. You can go to the blogs fw thinking dot com that actually has links to all the things I mentioned.

You can find me the various links to the videos the podcast that you're listening to. Now, if you want to listen to some older podcasts and you don't have time to download them, you can listen to them directly on the website. We have lots of information there and we want you to be part of this conversation. Let us know what what's exciting to you, and we will make sure that we incorporate that into our future discussions. We really look forward to hearing from you. And we

will talk to you again really soon. For more on this topic and the future of technology, visit forward Thinking dot com. H brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,