Hello! It's 2024. Let's talk about buildings.
During December and January, Smiling Tree took some time off, but now I'm back, and learning more about buildings.
The smart people who study climate change and how to fix it generally divide the problem into sectors: industry, electricity, agriculture, transportation, and buildings, and I’d like to take some time to learn more about buildings specifically. In the United States buildings, both commercial and residential, are responsible for about 30% of total greenhouse gas emissions.
Buildings are particularly interesting when you think about climate change because when it comes to buildings, we need to think about both reducing emissions and increasing resilience. Buildings need to house and protect humans who are vulnerable to the increased weather volatility that we are already experiencing—like the record-breaking heat in Arizona in the summer of 2023.
The next four issues of Smiling Tree Writing Learns about Climate Solutions (I really need a new name) will dig into how buildings need to change in order to keep us safe in a changing climate and reduce emissions to net zero. We will consider:
materials used in buildings
how we can make buildings more resilient as the planet becomes hotter
how we power buildings
what homeowners need to know to keep their homes energy efficient and safe
For each issue, I’m talking to experts who are working on these problems, and companies that are developing solutions to increase the energy efficiency of the built environment, or to make the places we live and work safer as storms become more violent, wildfires more frequent, and temperatures continue to rise.
As with each of the sectors, the issues surrounding decarbonizing commercial and residential structures are complex and require creative and flexible solutions. What’s going to work for a homeowner in a rural setting in Kansas probably won’t work for a corporation that owns several multi-family dwellings in a city like Atlanta. Nothing related to global decarbonization is straight-forward or black and white, and attempting to understand the gray areas and nuance is important.
Although housing is the first thing we might think of, buildings exist for a range of purposes. In an excellent issue of Construction Physics from 2020, Brian Potter provides a nice overview and analysis of how many buildings are in the US, how much space they take up, and how they are used. He finds that in the US there are:
100 million single family homes (which is almost 90% of buildings)
5.2 multi-family buildings that contain 40 million housing units (from duplexes to large apartment buildings)
5.5 million commercial buildings
350,000 industrial buildings
240,000 military buildings
Most of those buildings need to be heated, cooled, and protected during weather events like high winds or scorching heat. Since some 90% of the buildings in this country are single family homes, other forms of greenhouse gas emissions must be considered, like how we power our appliances and cook our food.
Join me over the next few months as I learn more about how buildings can become safer, more energy efficient, and better for the planet. And, as always, please share with anyone who may be interested.
Interesting! Curious to see where the next parts lead.