Stats

[Strawnet@aol.com]

Straw Wolf wrote:
>G'Day Strawdamus Old Mate
>
>We all knew you would be back one day.  Your predictions are likely to 
>happen but in the mean time according to DEsert Dave which is according 
>to USDOE the good old USA will be building some 38 million new buildings 
>in the next 10 years some 50% more buildings than already exist in the 
>good old USA today.  Reference Building Codes, you all know the 
>publication that I am talking about.
>
>So Strawdamus we had better look now as to what these 38 million, plus 
>the million or so new homes down under, {I guess that we should include 
>the rest of the world, and Canada, someone would know how many homes are 
>to be built world wide in the next decade), that are going to be built 
>and what are we going to build them with.  Sure SBC works as a catalyst 
>in people's thinking and maybe they will use some form of alternative 
>building technique but until we get the technology in a form that is 
>CHEAPER because CHEAP is the best catalyst for brain waves to react on, 
>then SBC will not become mainstream.

Though the DOE statistics John is quoting are up on the Center of 
Excellence for Sustainable Development website, I don't think they are 
totally accurate. They said that in 1996 there were approximately 76.5 
million residential buildings in the US and about 5 million commercial 
buildings. They predicted that by 2010 an additional 38 million buildings 
would be built, meaning, if accurate, they represents more than 46 
percent of the buildings in existence in the US in 1996 - or in something 
over 15 years, building half again as many buildings as existed in 1996. 
In my conversations with various people about the origin of these stats, 
I was told that some of the data was re-interpreted into equivalents 
(units and average sizes) - given that many residential buildings are 
multifamily buildings and the huge variability of size in both 
residential and especially in commercial buildings. Unfortunately, when I 
used those stats in the Building Standards magazine article I wrote, I 
didn't know about this, nor have I gotten much better information since.  

What is clear and undeniable though, is this. We are building more and 
bigger and higher impact houses every year - lately at a rate in the US 
of between one and one and a half million houses a year. These are two to 
three times as big (sf) on average as what was built in the housing boom 
that followed the second world war and extended into the sixties.  These 
houses use more synthetic and highly processed materials, and more of 
just about everything except energy. And even there, though these new 
buildings are typically far more energy efficient than the older ones, 
they are so much bigger and there are so many more of them that our 
energy consumption in this country related to building continues to climb 
steadily. Buildings in the US now use at least 10 percent of the world's 
energy! The five percent of the world population that we make up uses 25 
percent of the world's energy for all uses. R(ascal)T(om), though loathe 
to admit it, knows that those folks to the north of the energy hog 
capital of the world are hot on our trail, though still not quite as 
piggish as us 'murricans.

Anyway, we do need to be quite conscious of what we are doing and sb 
construction represents part of the solution if done with that 
consciousness.  There is a great deal more to do and the discussions on 
this list and awareness of these issues is always encouraging. And I'm 
always heartened to see the Straw Wolf on that trail. 

I'm heading back today from DC (weather permitting) to Tucson having done 
my part to influence the DOE Building Envelope Technology Roadmap process 
initial meeting to consider devoting some percentage of their research 
program for building envelopes to public domain, non-proprietary, non- or 
semi-industrial building materials and systems...we will see what 
transpires...

David Eisenberg
Director
Development Center for Appropriate Technology
P.O. Box 27513
Tucson, Arizona 85726-7513 USA
(520) 624-6628
(520) 798-3701 Fax
strawnet@aol.com (direct personal e-mail)
dcat@azstarnet.com
http://www.azstarnet.com/~dcat/
http://www.azstarnet.com/~dcat/barriers.htm
http://www.azstarnet.com/~dcat/BSM.html