Energy, Water, CO2 and You: Local Solutions to Global Challenges

(Previously titled: A Sustainable Stanford in a Sustainable World)

Jeff Koseff Perry L. McCarty Directory, Woods Institute for the Environment

Stanford Sustainability Initiative

• What Stanford is and what it will be in the 21st Century
• Not only leader in producing solutions but also to se these solutions
• “A sustainable world where human needs are met while protecting and restoring Earth’s life support systems and resources for people today and generations yet to come.”

Goal

• How do we take these massive problems and scale them down to a level that can be understood at the personal level?

Climate Change

• We have had same levels of CO2 over 600k years ago, but climate was radically different back then
• We need time to adapt, took 1000 year for there to be a 1ppm change in CO2; now it happens every year

Fresh Water

• 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe water supplies (20 liters per day)
• 2.4 billion people don’t have access to improved sanitation
• Without improved sanitation, giving people more water won’t help but will only spread disease further
• Freshwater is not just a developing world problem
• In California, the most efficient way to store water is in snow pack, however under different climate change scenarios, by 2099 only from 11% to 27% of the snow pack will remain

Oceans

• pH of ocean varies a lot by location and season and animals have adapted to this.
• However climate change will make it more acidic, probably from 8.1 to 7.8, this is happening at a rate 50 times greater than normal so animals and reefs will have a hard time adapting

Solutions

• Clean energy, sustainable agriculture, healthy oceans, safe drinking water for everyone
• Art Rosenfelt, California Energy Commission(?)

Energy

• Energy use: 36% industrial, 28% transportation, 20% residential, 17% commercial
• Buildings use 37% of the total energy and produce 40% of the CO2
• Architecture responsible for more CO2 than transportation and industry
• Pacala and Socolow “wedges”
• We will have a lot more conversations about nuclear power because it gives the most bang for the buck of major energy conversion techniques
• Per capita sales of electricity has increased from 8,000 to 12,000 kWh from 1974 to today in the US, but in California, it has stayed at 7,000. This is due to incentives and standards
• Refrigerator example
  • Size has increased 3 fold from since 147
  • but energy has decreased since the 70s by almost a factor of 4,
  • Also refrigerators are 1/3 the cost (in 1983 dollars)
  • How much has this saved? Energy saved by refrigerator standards is more than 100 million 1kW PV systems
  • Value saved (at retail) almost as much as the value as nuclear energy (at wholesale prices)

Stanford’s Carbon Challenge

• 2005 produce 240k tons CO2 per year
• Goal to reduce this by 81k tons
• Most emissions are from buildings
• One retrofit reduced energy consumption by 40%
• Sun Field Station at Jasper Ridge produce more energy than it uses

Y2E2

• Large building: 166k sq feet, 500 people
• Goal: reduce energy by 50% and water by 90%
  • Step 1: Reduce Loads: Gives 25% savings. Looked at optimizing natural light, which also reduces cooling costs and other techniques
  • Step 2: Passive systems: Gives 15% savings. Heat goes through atrium, electric controlled louvres
  • Step 3: Active systems: Gives 10% efficiency. Efficient air handling
  • Step 4: Energy recovery:
  • Step 5: On-Site generation: PV provides about 5% of the power, mainly for learning
• Did it pay?
  • Budget the same as other buildings, so some sacrifices were made
  • Sustainability premium: about 2% to 3% initial cost
  • Saves about $225k per year (mainly electricity savings)
  • This will take about 6 to 8 years to payback
• Dual plumbed, so greywater can be used separately
• Doesn’t use solar heating because Stanford’s co-gen plant has lots of extra heat and also makes a big ice block at night and distributes around campus for cooling

Current Status

• Stanford water use reduced from 2.75 to 2.2 M gallons since 2001, mainly replacing low flow bathroom fixtures, also 80% of landscaping irrigation uses lake waters
• Need to do better at rainwater collection and planting
• “Green Dorm” is being proposed that would use zero grid electricity (and $1200 in total energy costs) versus 100,000 kWh/yr ($25,000 yr) for standard 55 person row house