SUSD0003 Week 9: Utzon Lecture: Innovating to Zero in the Building sector

https://www.be.unsw.edu.au/events/utzonlecture/innovatingzero

In this Utzon lecture series Prof Santamouris (which is also a regular lecturer for our ARCH Building Services Course) discusses mostly about the energy crisis in the present and how to plan for the future. Given the lengthy title it was actually a simple concept: reduce usage of energy. Half or so of the lecture was to convince the audience that the energy crisis is real and gripping. There was numerous real data, past, present, and future projections, that shows that the world needs to act and act soon. The later half also had facts and figures some relating to the consequences of not doing anything. He also reminded us that the whole world pledged to reduce energy consumption in the Paris Convention, yet arguably we are not going anywhere towards that goal. Many solutions were suggested, some simple others not so much, but they are potential solutions nevertheless.


Although the numbers and figures were muddled to us and to my mind rather off-focus at times, they do wonders in convincing us the necessity of innovating energy-neutral buildings(or at least environments that use less energy). It is true that a significant amount of capital is needed for both innovation and implementation of energy-reducing measures but the cost of not doing anything will be greater especially in human lives if the energy poverty isn't relieved by the time global warming has taken its toll. I do not think this is a simple call to change our behaviour to solve the problem either; sometimes we do not have a choice. Say if the temperature outside is 50 degree C and room temperature is soaring towards 40 degrees we have to use energy to cool down our living spaces else we might suffer from heatstroke. Such a scenario will be much more common in the future considering the heat-island effect in ever-growing cities and the rising global temperature due to climate change. Surprisingly many of the fixes are relatively easy. For example, our dark-coloured asphalt can be replaced with lighter coloured ones to reduce heat absortion in cities (most likely place to find large areas of asphalt roads/pavements). Lower temperatures means that we do not need as much cooling and therefore less energy is needed. In short, smart passive design can reduce energy consumption.