Clarifying the Stats
Posted: June 30th, 2010 | Author: Jane Gaboury | Filed under: Sustainability | Tags: carbon footprint, energy, green building, sustainable design |The editors of DesignIntelligence received an e-mail this week that illuminates a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency statistic reported in our article “Design Leadership and the Environment.”
Edward Mazria, founder and chief executive officer of Architecture 2030, notes:
“I wanted to clarify a statistic you cite in the article: ‘Our buildings account for 39 percent of the country’s total energy use.’ This percentage is for residential and commercial building operations only. It does not include industrial building operations, i.e. HVAC and lighting (about 2 percent), and the annual embodied energy of building materials and building construction (about 8 percent). The total U.S. energy consumption attributed to the building sector is currently at 51 percent. I say this because the design of industrial buildings, building systems and the specification of materials is also our responsibility. Understanding the entire magnitude of our designs and decisions makes the ‘call to faster and wiser actions on the part of the design and construction community’ that much more urgent.
“And I am only talking here about architecture and buildings. If we add in the other design disciplines — planning, landscape architecture, interior design, industrial design, textile, communication, and fashion design — the call is not only urgent, it becomes critical.”
Let’s hope designers of all variety take note.
I think that this statistic is interesting, that buildings use such a large percentage of energy, but what amazes me is how this is supposed to be surprising to us. It seems like the percentage would actually be much higher, after all, where else is energy used? Transportation, mining, what else? All energy is used by people…where are the people? In buildings, of course, or in cars, or out in a field with a flashlight? Where else would energy be consumed?