I recently attended a U.S. Green Building Council presentation where architect and professor emeritus Norbert Lechner, a noted Fulbright senior specialist and energy expert, presented his thoughts on the field of efficient building energy design and sustainability, a topic often considered the foundation of green philosophy.
I learned that reduced energy goals are in many cases easily obtainable with the simplest approaches to building orientation and design. At present, buildings consume approximately 50% of all total energy used, and this percentage is even higher according to some. At this rate of consumption, it will be impossible for the world to keep up with energy demand unless buildings are designed to be more energy efficient.
Professor Lechner named the following building design elements conducive to achieving maximum energy efficiency (listed in order of greatest energy savings).
1. Building orientation (can reduce energy consumption by up to 50%)
2. 
Building color (and add another 20% of energy savings)
3. Window placement
4. Window size
5. Shading
6. Passive solar heating
7. Day lighting
8. Active solar
9. Photovoltaics (PV) – the future
What was amazing to me is that the lowest hanging fruit—the stuff that’s practically lying on the ground waiting to be picked up—is building orientation. Situating your building at the optimal place and angle can reduce conventional building energy resources by up to 50%. That means that by simply considering building orientation as a design factor we can reduce our total energy demand from all resources by up to 25%.
There’s even a movement to create zero energy buildings . But first, we all need to be thinking about how to get everyone on the same page and how our combined efforts can help make it possible for the next generation to save energy responsibly.
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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.
Tags: building design, energy, Fulbright, Norbert Lechner, Photovoltaics, U.S. Green Building Council, zero energy buildings
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Great post, Mr. Stewart.
I was saying many of the same things to a new builder friend of mine this morning over breakfast. Many of the goals of the (systemized, documented and commissioned) official green movement can be acheived through what is was once taught as ‘good design’ in school. A building’s solar orientation and passive daylighting strategies were first steps.At least that’s how I was taught at Auburn University – where Professor Lechner taught in the early 80′s.
Thanks for the reminder of that low, ripe friut!
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To be energy efficient, to save carbon and be sustainable for the low hanging fruit is fairly simple as you say. Just remembering the basics will get us a long way. When we built our new building it has been amazing for me to observe the simple things that we do now that we did not do before. thanks for your comments.
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With all due respect to Professor Lechner, that list has some major omissions and some questionable numbers. Orientation is, of course, the easiest thing you can do for home energy conservation. And it’s free! Whether it will cut the energy bills by 50% is pretty iffy, however. Maybe if you take a building with all glass on one side that’s facing west, and you turn that side to face south or north.
And how in the world can photovoltaics appear in the top 9, whereas air-sealing, location of mechanical systems & ducts, proper choice of building envelope location, and duct sealing aren’t anywhere to be found? Perhaps Professor Lechner needs to read my 5 step plan for solar energy (http://bit.ly/bWtZTp).
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Sorry to sound like a zealot here, Merrill. The items in that list are all good things. I just disagree with the priority assignments.
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