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Saving the World, One Light Bulb at a Time

Why Conservation Is the World's Best Energy Source

By Alexander Jung

Part 4: Positive-Energy Homes and Next-Generation Lighting

Their penthouse is heated entirely from a nearby wood-fired power plant. “We had heating costs of only €300,” says Schweer, referring to the paltry annual bill for the 167 square-meter (1,800 square-foot) apartment. The secret of such savings is the house’s extensive insulation. Even on cold days in February, the thermostat is often kept at a low temperature. The south-facing glass side of the structure captures the winter sun, but during the summer the sun is high enough in the sky so that the rooms don’t heat up.

The building, a so-called positive energy house, actually produces more energy than its residents need -- it’s essentially a tiny power plant. The solar panels on the roof produced almost 9,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity in the first year. Subtract the structure’s own power usage along with heating costs and there’s still a surplus of around 2,000 kilowatt-hours left over. The monthly expenditures of €100 for electricity and heat are more than offset by the €400 in revenue the solar panels bring in.

The key point is that the family can actually make money with its energy-efficient way of living. And it doesn’t require spending winter evenings reading by candlelight or taking only one warm shower a week. But such homes remain the exception in both Europe and America. Most of the 17 million houses and apartment buildings in Germany spend some 30 percent of their total energy use just heating rooms and water. This also happens to be where most of the savings potential lies.

A report by the energy services firm Techem found that a regular heating unit needs on average 15.7 liters of heating oil per square meter. Low-energy houses require only 7 liters. Some models, such as the one where the Hoyer-Schweer family lives, make do with even less. And such structures no longer look like oversized burlap bags.

Making old buildings fit for the future

The biggest energy-wasting culprits are older buildings. They burn around 50 liters of heating oil per square meter. Unfortunately they also make up the majority of the structures in Germany. Three quarters of all houses and apartments were built before 1977, when strict insulation regulations went into effect. That’s more than 12 million structures in Germany alone.

“There’s a backup in renovating old buildings energy-wise,” says Andreas Troge, head of Germany’s Environmental Protection Agency. And that slowdown will be hard to change -- only one percent of all real estate is renovated each year.

When homeowners call upon carpenters, electricians or plumbers, it’s usually for cosmetic repairs. Perhaps the bath will be spruced up, the stairway painted or the kitchen modernized. But unspectacular renovations in the cellar or in the attic are usually the ones that never get done. That’s not where guests will be looking.

Only when the heating bill shows up do some people decide to take action. Often they get advice from someone like Peter Hirt, an energy consultant for the consumer protection association in the northern German city Kiel. The trained engineer then searches for those spots where a house leaks heat. It could be poorly insulated cellar ceilings, thin frames for built-in blinds or even boilers placed in non-insulated niches in foundation walls – a typical building practice in the 1960s. “They make nice red spots on the infrared camera,” says Hirt.

Every blot of color on his monitor represents money lost. Homeowners could save up to two-thirds of their heating costs if they took advantage of all the technology available. The installation of a condensing boiler -- which makes use of its own exhaust for heat -- could be combined with solar panels or a heat pump, as well as a properly insulated roof, walls and windows.

Policies spur home improvements

Beginning in 2008, the European Union will require the issuance of energy certificates for homes and apartments that rate a building's energy efficiency. Though home and flat owners are excluded from the certificate rule, they will be required to obtain one if they sell or rent out the property. Like so many regulations that come out of Brussels, the final energy certificates and requirements are a watered-down compromise. Indeed, in some instances, the certificate will include little more information than the previous year's heat and electric bill. But those dealing in real estate expect the energy certificate to change the industry, since the added transparency could end up having consequences for the market value of homes and apartments, as well as the rents landlords charge.

Requirements like the energy certificate could help consumers do the right thing. But tax credits and other incentives provided by the government also help.

Germany's KfW development bank has around €5.6 billion to support energy renovations through 2009. That’s four times as much as in previous years. The state-backed financial institution offers low-interest loans of up to €50,000 ($66,800) per apartment, as well as grants topping out at €8,750. The program ends up working like government aid to prime the economy -- helping in particular smaller, regional architects, carpenters, and heating installers. “For every billion euros invested in the renovation of buildings for energy reasons, 25,000 jobs in the construction sector are created or secured,” the latest environmental report of German federal government claims.

However, the involuntary heating of their surroundings isn’t the only way homeowners waste energy. They also use far more power than necessary for their household electronic devices -- be it their refrigerator, freezer, computer, stove or lamps. With very little effort each household could cut their electricity usage by one-third.

The first thing to do is to install switchable outlets that ensure that electronics are completely cut off from the power network -- including those models that no longer come with an “off” button. Normal household devices using a so-called “stand-by” function can use more than €90 in electricity each year. A computer with a monitor and printer can alone eat up €24. Germany could shut down two large power plants if the country’s consumers did without such unnecessary electronic idling.

It’s also underestimated just how much power the circulation pumps of a home’s heating system use. New models that regulate warm water according to time and temperature use only a fraction of the energy the older ones do, which lowers costs considerably. Germany could in theory switch off another power plant if most of the heat pumps in the country’s single- and two-family homes were replaced. That’s the problem, though: 60 percent of the public isn’t even aware that their oil or gas heat uses electricity.

Light savings

The potential savings from lighting are especially impressive. Regular incandescent light bulbs have used the same primitive operating principle for the past century: a coiled wire, usually tungsten, glows under electricity in a glass vacuum. This method is much like a joke without a punch line: Only five percent of the electricity is actually converted into light. The rest is wasted in heat. Despite such horrible inefficiency, shops in Europe continue to sell some 2 billion of these energy-wasting light bulbs each year.

Lighting is by far the biggest item on the power bills for office buildings. Streetlights also devour huge amounts of electricity. Often they are outdated models from the 1960s still lighting city streets or paths. If Europe’s civic planners switched to modern lighting they could save between €600 million to €700 million each year.

A research lab in the western German city of Aachen offers a view of what the future of lighting holds. Here, some of the 260 physicists, computer experts and engineers working for the Dutch electronics giant Philips research new lighting technologies. One of the most promising is Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED), which are thin yet wide lighting glass tiles that are coated with a layer of polymers. They can be integrated into walls or furniture, can change color and are especially energy efficient.

“They create completely new possibilities for applications,” says an excitied Dietrich Bertram, the director of Philips OLED research unit. His vision is that in a few years such new lighting will hopefully replace classic neon tubes. Traditional LEDs are already known to last much longer than even compact flourescent light bulbs and are more robust and less sensitive to vibrations. They also react extremely quickly, which is why the auto industry is using them more and more for brake lights.