ABSTRACT
There is enormous potential for reducing energy use in buildings, and the many-headed monster of climate change is the paramount reason to do so. Dramatically increasing the efficiency of our buildings is vital if we hope to steady the Earth’s climate. Ed Mazria, an architect from New Mexico, launched the 2030 Challenge to architects to design buildings by 2030 that use no fossil fuels, stating, “It is the architects that hold the key to turning down the global thermostat.” His goal is to transform architectural design from the mundane reliance on fossil fuels to an architecture intimately linked to the natural world in which we live. The architectural concepts and construction technologies available today enable architects easily to design new buildings with half the energy requirements of existing ones. Among the design technologies used are: natural lighting, natural ventilation, rooftop solar water and space heating, rooftop solar electric cells (photovoltaic), ultra insulation, ground source heat pumps, waterless urinals, and more efficient lighting technologies and windows.
