VETERAN
GREEN ARCHITECT
EDWARD MAZRIA
His “2030 Challenge” Calls For ‘Carbon Neutral’ Buildings
STORY
BY MAUREEN TRAXLER
Who better
to know the power of architects than one who is an architect?
So, with environmental concerns about the rise in planet
Earth’s temperature and the ebbing of fossil fuel
resources, veteran green architect Edward Mazria says that
the key to solving the global warming crisis lies in the
hands of his peers.
A Lafayette
High School (Brooklyn) grad who received a Bachelor of
Architecture degree from Pratt Institute, Mazria has focused
his career on energy-efficient design and sustainability
since the 1970s, the time of the so-called first energy
crisis. A pioneer in “environmental design,” he
authored a book in 1979 titled The Passive Solar Energy
Book, A Complete Guide to Passive Solar Home, Greenhouse
and Building Design. His book, Mazria notes, is a “seminal
reference on the fundamentals of solar design.”
Several
years ago, at the urging of his young staff at Mazria,
Inc., an architectural design firm he established in the
late-1970s in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he began to take a
closer look at the connections between environmental design
and the growing problems of global warming and greenhouse
gas emissions. His research showed that architecture, or
the “built-environment,” demands the greatest
use of energy and leaves a hefty carbon “footprint.” Mazria
realized that architecture accounts for 48% of the total
U.S. energy consumption.
Rio Grande Botanic Garden Conservatory,
Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mazria, Inc., architect. Photo
by Craig Campbell
“The
Building Sector is the largest energy consumption and greenhouse
gas emitting sector in the country and the world,” Mazria
told Networking® magazine in a recent interview.
In response
to his findings, Mazria established the nonprofit organization,
Architecture 2030. Its goal is to achieve a dramatic reduction
in the global-warming-causing greenhouses gas emissions
of the Building Sector by changing the way buildings and
developments are planned, designed and constructed. In
2006, Mazria issued his “2030 Challenge” to
the men and women in his profession and the building industry,
boldly calling for all new buildings and major renovations
to reduce their fossil fuel/greenhouse gas emitting consumption
by 50% by 2010, and by incrementally increasing those reductions
so that all buildings become ‘carbon neutral’ by
2030.
In 2007,
to engage students of architecture and their professors,
Mazria launched his 2010 Imperative, a challenge and strategy
for transforming design and design education.
New
Sense of Responsibility
Through his traveling multimedia presentation and his white paper, “It’s
the Architecture, Stupid!”, Mazria has been attempting to reach critical
mass in the numbers of architects and others who realize that the world
can lick global warming if efforts are focused by architects and the building
industry. In addition to the American Institute of Architects (AIA), which
adopted the Architecture 2030 initiative and its targets one month after
they were announced, Mazria says the 2030 Challenge has been “adopted
or endorsed by every major professional organization, the U.S. Conference
of Mayors and the National Association of Counties,” as well as the
US Green Building Council, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
(LEED), the Environmental Protection Agency, Royal Architects Institute
of Canada, International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, and
World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The AIA Board has also
added a new canon to its Code of Ethics calling on architects to be environmentally
responsible, and its Document B101-2007 includes language requiring architects
to discuss environmentally responsible design approaches with their clients.
“The
Federal government adopted the 2030 Challenge in its Energy
Bill, which was passed into law and requires that all federal
buildings must meet its targets,” says Mazria. [The
Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 was signed
by President George W. Bush and became Public Law 110-140
on December 19, 2007.] He adds, “The U.S. Green Building
Council is moving toward reissuing its LEED certification
to incorporate the targets, and many architects in their
practices have adopted the targets. The state of California
is moving to implement it, as well as many cities. In general,
it’s at the local level where most of the movement
is happening.”
Local
Praise for Mazria’s Work
Renewable Energy Long Island (RELI) Executive Director Gordian Raacke,
who has heard Ed Mazria present his research and his 2030 Challenge, calls
Mazria “an amazing architect and advocate.” He says that he
was “wowed by his idea and concept,” adding, “if we want
to tackle global warming and climate change we have to work with the building
professions, which build those buildings that use so much energy.” In
2006 Raacke was selected as one of former Vice President Al Gore’s
1,000 worldwide “Climate Change Messengers,” and he attended
The Climate Project’s United States training seminar conducted by
Gore in Nashville, Tennessee. He has spent many hours bringing the message
about global warming and its solutions to a wide range of audiences.
“We
have a very short amount of time left, probably the next
10 years is our window of opportunity, to bring about some
dramatic and radical changes in the way we build new buildings
and retrofit existing buildings,” says Raacke. “Mazria
and the 2030 Challenge give us a clear and direct road
map to get to where we need to be going in the next couple
of decades.”
Raacke
believes Mazria’s 2030 Challenge targets—all
new buildings and major renovations reducing fossil fuel
consumption by 50% by 2010 and all buildings becoming ‘carbon
neutral’ by 2030—are “doable,” and
he adds, “it’s not even significantly more
expensive than conventional building.” Raacke points
to his own experience, building an energy-efficient home
with his wife in the early 1990s. Even though technology
wasn’t as advanced as it is today, he says that with
research and good design he was able to reduce his home’s
energy consumption by 70%. A number of years later when
he added solar panels, he reduced his electric bills to
virtually zero. “So, the Raacke family home is almost
carbon neutral today,” he remarks. Raacke also points
out that Mazria’s concept suggests that if smart
energy-efficient design doesn’t achieve a builder’s
or architect’s energy consumption goal, he or she
always has the option to buy green energy, such as through
LIPA’s Green Choice program, in order to reach that
goal.
Sol y Sombra, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Mazria,
Inc., architect
Photo by Kirk Gittings
Reaffirming Environmental Connections
Local architect Bill Chaleff, of Chaleff and Rogers in Water Mill, recalls
that Mazria’s staff had asked him if he would talk to them about
the “stuff” he did in the Seventies and Eighties and “pushed
him to become involved again in promoting sustainable architecture.” Like
Raacke, Chaleff designed and built his own energy-efficient home using
recycled and composite materials, passive solar engineering principles,
structural insulated panels and a smart in-floor heating system. His firm
has built over 200 energy-efficient homes.
With
a background as a university research professor, Mazria
analyzed U.S. Energy Information Administration data, including
charts and graphs showing world temperature, population
growth, and oil and natural gas reserves, and noticed the
correlation in the upward curves shown on the energy consumption
and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions charts. He looked at
the annual energy consumption pie chart (seen on page 26)
of the traditional four sectors, which showed industry
consuming at 35%; transportation, 27%; residential, 21%,
and commercial, 17%. (Most of the energy consumed is in
the form of fossil fuels, which release the greenhouse
gases CO2, methane and nitrous oxide, heating up the atmosphere
and contributing to global warming.)
But
Mazria believed that the distribution among the four traditional
sectors didn’t show the real picture. He reorganized
the energy consumption and CO2 emissions charts, defining
what he called the “Building Sector” or “Architecture.” In
addition, his professional knowledge and design experience
told him that in order to build in a sustainable way, calculations
of energy consumption must also include “embodied
energy,” which is a measure of the total energy required
to produce a particular material or building component
and get it to the building site. By putting these pieces
together, he says he made “a discovery that reinforced
the work he and his associates were doing and made solving
the problems a little more urgent.”
When
he presented his finding that architecture is a major energy
consumer and contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, his
staff protested that architects don’t design all
the buildings and pointed a finger at the building industry.
To satisfy this response, Mazria consulted the AIA to determine
how much of a hand architects have in overall building
design. AIA statistics showed that 77% of all non-residential
buildings, along with 70% of all multifamily and 25% of
all single-family construction, are designed by architects.
“We
basically control the built environment,” he told
his staff. “So who really holds the key to the global
thermostat? It’s the architects.”
Finding
the Solution
Over the years, says Mazria, buildings have become less connected to the
natural environment. In fact, codes actually encouraged sealing up buildings
to protect inhabitants from the environment. Mazria estimates that the
stock of buildings in the United States is about 260-270 billion square
feet. Five billion square feet are built new each year and five billion
are renovated, but for the most part as the 21st century begins, the square
footage is not sustainable.
With
the energy awareness and conservation practices of the
1980s and 90s as a backdrop, more recent attention has
focused on development of renewable energy sources by the
environmental movement, development of new government codes
that call for more insulation and more efficient appliances,
and rising standards in the automobile industry. Yet, Mazria
adds that those efforts by themselves don’t bend
the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission curves
downward. For Mazria, a transformation of the built environment
over the next quarter century provides an historic opportunity
to dramatically reduce the building sector’s CO2
emissions. He notes that architects have tremendous choice
in the design of buildings—from construction materials
and the type of heating and cooling systems, down to tile,
carpet and paint.
RELI’s
Raacke points out that Mazria’s 2030 Challenge is “version
three” of an evolution in energy efficiency and lower
greenhouse gas emission benchmarks, following ENERGY STAR®,
the government-sanctioned badge for energy efficiency,
and the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED certification
standards.
“Since much of the world looks to the United States,” Mazria remarks, “it’s
important that the U.S. take a leadership role.” n
(Note:
Some material for this article was excerpted from Edward
Mazria’s presentation at a seminar titled, Key to
the Global Thermostat, which was sponsored by AIA New Mexico
and Metropolis magazine in September 2003. His full presentation
can be accessed at www.metropolismag.com-/cda/story.php?artid=819.)
2010
Imperative to architectural and design students
Mazria’s 2010 Imperative plays an important role in his overall global
initiative. He notes that the United States has 124 accredited schools
of architecture with 30,000 architectural students, and of them, about
10 to 15% are foreign-born. Many of these foreign students will be returning
to their emerging industrialized countries where a tremendous amount of
new construction is taking place.
When
Mazria and his staff brainstormed for the quickest route
to approach the difficult task of changing the way architecture
is taught, 2010 Imperative Director Kristina Kershner says,
rather than try to rewrite a whole curriculum, they decided
the easiest way to make a change was to ask for inclusion
of one sentence: All architectural school design problems
call for the design to engage the environment in a way
that dramatically reduces or eliminates the need for fossil
fuels.
Kershner
adds that the objective is to have sustainability become “intuitive” so
that when students design projects they will say, “We
need windows and doors, and we need an energy efficient
building. The principles have been used for thousands of
years.” Through student research, professors benefit
and can bring these techniques to subsequent classes.
“The
point we make to students is that you’re going to
inherit this world and you’re going to have to design
for it,” remarks Kershner. Students are very interested
in engaging in the growing trend toward environmentally
friendly designs, she notes, especially as they prepare
to enter forward-thinking architectural firms.
“Most
architecture schools are moving fairly aggressively in
addressing climate change in the building sector,” notes
Mazria, “and almost every design school now has a
carbon-controlled design studio.”
Architecture
2030 had held two webcasts to bring the 2010 Imperative
to colleges and students. Its Global Emergency Teach-in,
co-sponsored by the American Institute of Architects in
February 2007, focused on the role of design education
in global warming and reached a quarter of a million students,
design professionals and government officials worldwide.
A second webcast, Focus the Nation, from Architecture 2030’s
website, www.architecture2030.org took
place on January 30, 2008 and engaged a similar audience.
Reaching
the 2030 Target
• All
new buildings, developments and major renovations shall
be designed to meet a fossil fuel, greenhouse gas (GHG)-emitting,
energy consumption performance standard of 50% of the regional
(or country) average for that building type.
• At
a minimum, an equal amount of existing building area shall
be renovated annually to meet a fossil fuel, GHG-emitting,
energy consumption performance standard of 50% of the regional
(or
country) average for that building type. (Renovating existing buildings
to consume 50% less fossil fuel energy allows for new buildings that meet
the 50% reduction to be built without
increasing the Building Sector’s energy demand.
• The
fossil fuel reduction standard for all new buildings shall
be increased to:
60% in 2010
70% in 2015
80% in 2020
90% in 2025
Carbon-neutral
in 2030 (using no fossil fuel GHG-emitting energy to operate).
These targets may be accomplished by implementing innovative
sustainable design strategies, generating on-site renewable
power and/or purchasing (20% maximum) renewable energy
and/or certified renewable energy credits. For complete
information, see www.architecture2030.org/2030_challenge
