HomeMy WebLinkAbout6/4/2024 Item 5k, Schmidt, R.
From:Richard Schmidt <
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:Belated agenda correspondence -- remodel energy retrofit ordinance
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Dear Council,
Thank you Mayor Stewart for your no vote.
As for the three yes votes, I find it curious that you did not take my comments on embodied carbon impacts on some of
these measures more seriously. I laid out the case for insulation, but the same facts hold other of the adopted measures,
such as replacing windows.
Mr. Hermann's response that a "local builder" had affirmed the energy savings of adding profligate amounts of insulation
simply proves my point -- that staff is completely ignorant about embodied energy/embodied carbon. The energy "saved"
that Mr. Hermann speaks to is operational energy, and indeed I don't disagree that a tiny amount of such energy MIGHT
be saved, under optimal conditions with building occupants who don't do things that defeat the savings measure (like
open a window), but Mr. Hermann's ignorance doesn't get at the TOTAL CARBON IMPACT ISSUE because he is only
addressing OPERATIONAL CARBON, not the building's TOTAL CARBON FOOTPRINT, which is what any serious effort
at averting climate catastrophe must be focused on. (It must also be noted that IMMEDIATE CARBON REDUCTIONS not
long-term carbon reductions are what the city must be concerned with if it is to have a climate impact; embodied carbon's
impacts are immediate, while any conceivable savings from insulation are extremely long-term, happening long after
climate catastrophe has already occurred and the unnecessary carbon impacts of excessive insulation have spurred on
climate catastrophe -- as illustrated in the quote at the bottom of this letter.) Since the city cannot seem to get this through
its collective head, it is clear THE CITY'S CLIMATE EFFORTS ARE UNSERIOUS RATHER THAN SERIOUS. So go
ahead and have fun rearranging the chairs on the Titantic while the earthship sinks. Taking the word of uninformed staff
over that of experts will take us all to the ocean's bottom.
Now, back to my previous letter informing you that going from R-30 to R-49 roof insulation, as your new ordinance would
require, would increase, not decrease, the carbon impact of a building in our mild climate, here is an excerpt from a recent
article in Architectural Record, a pre-eminent professional publication, by two expert and enthusiastic Passive House
designers who determined that going from R-30 to R-50 -- the same spread you're talking about -- made no sense in New
York (where it's much colder and hotter than here)! Unless one could assure the insulation stayed in place and use for at
least 144 years! Therefore. to achieve a better carbon outcome they cut their insulation for the project being analyzed
below the Passive House requirement since their goal was exactly what our city's should be -- to HAVE MAXIMUM
CARBON IMPACT BEFORE 2030.
The acronymic all-cap abbreviations used below: PH=Passive House; OC=operational carbon; EC=embodied carbon.
"To keep the design within PH standard thresholds, our rule-of-thumb value for roof insulation has been about R-50. After
testing using code minimum values, however, we found that the buildings we tend to design—generally cooling-dominated
buildings due to form factor, density, and internal load—actually benefit from an optimized R-30 value; the OC reduction
benefit of a higher R-value does not outweigh the EC reduction potential in this case. The reduced insulation had minimal
impact on heating/cooling loads in the building, and the overall OC increase was not a huge order of magnitude compared
with the immediate EC reduction benefits. The calculation here is that it would take almost 145 years to see the long-term
carbon benefits of the proposed increase in insulation, which is much longer than typical lifespans of flat roofs."
This is but one example of what those who actually understand carbon know and which the city refuses to learn.
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By the way, is there no way the city can improve the legibility of its online documents? Here's what the council update
looks like:
I can't read that.
Richard Schmidt
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