Buildings don’t use energy: people do

Reducing energy use in buildings is a critical component of meeting carbon reduction commitments. There are several ways of accomplishing this goal, each of which emphasizes actions by a different set of stakeholders. Much of the work in this area follows a physical, technical and economic model of the built environment (Lutzenhiser, 1993). In this scenario, architects, engineers and efficiency advocates are the major players, making technical improvements to existing buildings and designing new ones to higher standards. More recently, the European Union’s energy performance of buildings directive asserts that reducing energy consumption is affected by not just how buildings are designed, but also how they are built, commissioned and used. This performance-based approach adds owners, operators and developers to the list of constituent groups. Energy use in buildings is also considered a social problem rather than a technological one (NRC, 1980; Stern and Aronson, 1984). How societies are motivated to use or conserve energy has been a topic addressed sporadically by social scientists for more than a century (Rosa et al., 1988). From this perspective, it can be argued that reducing energy use in buildings requires changes in the entire fabric of society, not just changing the shape and nature of buildings. Although there are diverse approaches to changing how energy is used in buildings, the power of architectural solutions and professional leadership has been recently reinvigorated by passive solar architect Edward Mazria. In his ‘Architecture 2030 Challenge’, Mazria reconfigured the usual energy consumption sectors used in the US Department of Energy’s statistics to create a ‘buildings’ sector. This new sector combines the annual energy required to operate residential, commercial and industrial buildings in the US along with the embodied energy of industry-produced building materials like carpet, tile, glass and concrete. This analysis exposes buildings as the largest single energy-consuming and greenhouse gas (GHG)-emitting sector – 48% in the US, ‘even greater’ elsewhere – and it argues that architects and other members of the building community are therefore the key to stabilizing emissions (Architecture 2030, 2008). The 2030 Challenge asks the global architecture and building community to adopt energy performance targets that can be accomplished through design, on-site renewable generation and up to 20% renewable power purchase. The targets are: