Review Index
Renewable Energy in the Built Environment
Click here to Return to title page
1. Renewable Energy in the Built Environment, The Building Centre Trust, London, 2001, page 15.
2. Renewable Energy in the Built Environment, page 11.
3. Ray Noble speaking at the Renewable Energy Technology seminar at the Building Centre, 29 January 2001, quoted in Renewable Energy in the Built Environment, page 21.
4. Shane Slater, Ben Madden and Duncan Price of Whitby Bird and Partners, Revolutionary Energy, Chapter 14 in Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age, edited by Ian Abley and James Heartfield, Wiley-Academy, London, 2001, page 165.
5. Reyner Banham, The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment, first published 1969, Second Edition, The Architectural Press, London, 1984, page 16.
6. Patrick Bellow, Renewable Energy in the Built Environment, Introduction, page 9.
7. Renewable Energy in the Built Environment, page 14.
8. Randall Thomas quoted by Amanda Birch, 'Fuel for thought', Building Design, 30 November 2001, page 16.
9. Randall Thomas quoted by Rob Gregory, 'All fired up', Building Design, 25 January 2002, page 12.
10. Renewable Energy in the Built Environment, page 16.
11. Renewable Energy in the Built Environment, page 18.
Click for Design tokenism and global warming extracted by the Architects' Journal
These web pages will be developed as contributors provide book reviews
Renewable Energy in the Built Environment
During 2001 The Building Centre Trust ran a series events that culminated in their publication Renewable Energy in the Built Environment. This valuable distillation of exhibition materials, presentations, debates and seminars is one third case studies, which inform the more important two thirds if insightful assessment. Unlike most authors of books on renewable energy The Building Centre Trust have been prepared to discuss the awkward insufficiencies of available technologies in a way that makes sense of the serious opportunities that are pending.
There is an appreciation that it will be the development of a hydrogen based development infrastructure that will move society on from the carbon fuel economy. The improving array of renewable heat and power generating technologies will be subsumed into processes for hydrogen storage and consumption, solving problems of intermittency. As they say:
'Wind power needs wind and this is normally at its strongest during the winter when demand is highest. Consistency cannot be guaranteed however. Conversely solar power and heat is most available in summer when demand is lowest.'(1)
Intermittency affects renewables of most kinds except ground source pumped heating and cooling, which being dependent on pumps is subject to the electricity supply, and does nothing by way of electrical power and lighting. Hydrogen is needed as an intervening medium to store surpluses of renewable energy over time for distribution to the point of use. The Building Centre note that hydrogen fuel cells will perhaps subsume the plethora of generating technologies...'in 20 years time as the technologies which will convert the earth's renewable resources into our energy needs, and will be the subject of a future publication in this series.' (2) The 20 year prediction depends on subjective and objective factors. Ray Noble of BP Solar believes that...'it will be the fuel cell and hydrogen business which will bring (photovoltaics) on stream'. (3) The Building Physicists at Whitby Bird and Partners concurr:
'The key to using renewable energy for transportation, unlocking a future of clean and pleasant urban environments, is both simple and elemental, for it takes the form of the simplest element of all: hydrogen.'(4)
Writing in Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age Whitby Bird and Partners recognize that the hydrogen 'fuel cell' might revolutionize society by opening the door to a 100% renewable and clean energy supply. The fuel cell is based on a process that is effectively the reverse of electrolysis. A thin membrane separates the hydrogen and oxygen gases: a catalyst impregnated into the membrane promotes them to recombine and in doing so they form water. This electrochemical reaction releases electrical energy and a smaller quantity of heat for either motive or static applications. The fuel cell is efficient, compact and practically silent, has no moving parts and is highly versatile. As the Building Centre Trust also recognize
Reyner Banham probably best understood that the development of functional building services is inseparable from the transformation of architectural and structural form. His yet to be surpassed The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment is dated only insofar as technology continues to move on, and consumption management had not come to the fore as is the case today with sustainability. But Banham importantly recognized that it was pointless to focus on the date of technological invention as an explanation of historical change in how the built environment is serviced.
If invention were key to progress then hydrogen fuel cells would be ubiquitous today. Hydrogen has been known as an element capable of being produced in numerous ways since the 1760s, and Electrolysis was demonstrated in Britain by William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle as early as 1800. Fuel cells were first developed by the Welsh scientist William Grove in 1839. In 1923 the Scottish scientist JBS Haldane was using wind power to generate and store hydrogen for later use, and research into combustion or catalyst based hydrogen fuelled technologies has been sporadic from the 1930s onwards. Banham understood that although invention was necessary the history of architecture was less...'about firsts than about mosts.' He knew that new building services theory is necessary but insufficient without a means to mass application.
'The invention and application of technological devices is not a static and ideal world of intellectual discourse; it is (or has been) impelled forward by the competitive interaction of under-achievers and over-achievers - who might even be one and the same person, for some breakthroughs in application were achieved without matching breakthroughs in invention. But nothing would have been broken through without some extremism of method, and extravagance of personality.'(5)
Society needs a combination of individual and collective effort determined to improve the ways we make our environments habitable, but all depends on having the means to turn first ideas into the most widespread of approaches, before that habit is itself superceded by others. The Building Centre Trust have acknowledged this reality of development: that there are subjective and objective factors at work on wishful thinking. That is why Renewable Energy in the Built Environment avoids falling into the utopianism, or more accurately dystopianism, that has imbued the promotion of sustainability.
Unfortunately in his introduction to Renewable Energy in the Built Environment the Governor to The Building Centre Trust, Patrick Bellew of Atelier Ten, misses the insightfulness of the book. Though Bellew attractively chooses to pose sustainable design as...'achieving better environments for people to live and work in', he suggests that:
'Until there is a significant market and body of experience with the various technologies, their application is unlikely to happen on a scale that makes a difference.' (6)
This does not clarify how renewables might be turned to. Expert familiarity with solar, wind, tidal, biomass, passive or ground source heating and cooling amongst services engineers and the architects, structural engineers, quantity surveyors, project managers, contractors and clients who work with them will be predicated on those technologies being taken up by society at large. Popular demand will require services to offer a functional improvement on what has gone before. Otherwise consultants will simply remain enthusiasts for renewables. Wider social shift will never spontaneously happen under market conditions until hydrogen infrastructures are developed and invested in by daring individuals and companies as a commercial supply side solution to solve the inherent intermittency of renewable energy sources. That might consign some renewables to the dustbin of history, whilst bringing others to the fore, but could take 5, 10, 20 or many more years depending who takes action to develop hydrogen, and in what circumstances they act.
Of course the state can step in to skew the economics, punishing those accessing the still abundant fossil fuel reserves, or subsidising particular renewable technologies. If the only 'difference' expected is a reduction in Carbon Dioxide emissions, then moralists and technocrats can try to manage a reduction in the demand side of the energy equation.
Yet such tinkering will not make history in environmental services. It will simply make consumption more costly and intermittent. That may also be an 'extremism of method', but in being punitive and authoritarian is antithetical to anything Banham had in mind. Most people without a personal commitment to self sacrifice for the sake of environmental policy know that energy is only 'wasted' once a more efficient way of staying comfortable or in business is established. Then the...'body of experience' in better ways of servicing buildings sensibly follows.
'For the moment, green power is relatively expensive and most of the schemes involve a premium price - of up to 15%. This may not matter to companies who are primarily concerned with being seen to be 'green', but, altruism aside, most domestic consumers want competitively priced green power.'(7)
The Building Centre has appreciated we need that power supplied in increasing quantities 24 hours a day around the globe, whether the sun has shined, the wind has blown, or the crops have been harvested. Renewable Energy in the Built Environment recognizes that an 'extremism of method, and extravagance of personality' is needed to solve the supply side of the energy equation. Randall Thomas, partner at Max Fordham, notes that across a range of pioneering companies and research initiatives...'the race is on'. (8) He says that:
'The city of the future is just as much about providing energy as it is about consuming it. No-one really knows where the outcome will take us, but these are very exciting times.'(9)
There can of course be no consumption without production, and the chance to secure renewable energy supply did not escape The Building Centre Trust. 'Pioneers can be rewarded' (10), but those of the calibre of a Willis Havilland Carrier, the man responsible for air conditioning, are notable in their absence in these days of construction inertia and environmental caution. Renewable Energy in the Built Environment illustrates the point by noting the reluctance of some environmentalists to accept renewable energy technologies such as wind farms, sensibly suggesting...'we have to be prepared for this impact, particularly in rural areas.' (11) This book deserves serious attention because it begs immediate questions which can only be answered by action, like who will establish the hydrogen fuelled future, how and when? Ian Abley
Welcome / What's New? / Activity / Services / Books / Shop / Links / Contact /
This website is maintained by abley@audacity.org and all material is Copyright © 2002 Audacity Limited where not copyright of the originator.