In sustainable concept and practice the reality of obtaining net-zero energy consumption in buildings has been around for nearly twenty years. A parallel movement, The Green New Deal which arose c.2007 and includes as a fundamental goal the reversal of greenhouse gas emissions, is currently gaining traction and momentum as a political movement. Exactly how do these two concepts intersect, and how will they converge in future?
What is a Net-Zero Building? A useful description of the Net-Zero Building can be found in “Sustainable Construction: Green Building Design and Delivery” which offers, “In general, these are grid-connected buildings that export excess energy produced during the day and import energy in the evenings, such that there is an energy balance over the course of the year. As a result, NZE buildings have a zero annual energy bill with the added bonus that they are considered to be carbon neutral with respect to their operational energy.”
What Is the Green New Deal? The Green New Deal is a movement oriented to redirecting the national economy away from a non-sustainable, hydrocarbon-based model to a sustainable model with zero-carbon emissions as its core foundation. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Friedman, credited by many to have coined the term, recently identified four key goals:
Zero-net energy buildings: buildings that produce as much energy as they consume.
Zero-waste manufacturing: stimulating manufacturers to design and build products using fewer raw materials and easily disassembled and recycled.
Zero-carbon grid: combining renewable power generation at the macro-scale with consumer-generate energy at the micro-scale resulting in a carbon-free electrical grid.
Zero-emissions transportation: private electric vehicles and electric public transportation integrated into a zero-carbon grid.
What is the Connection? The ongoing professional practice of designing net-zero buildings and the Green New Deal both have as fundamental goals the moving away from hydrocarbon-based fuel economies and towards renewable energy, in other words in the direction of sustainability. The technology of net-zero buildings originated from and is designed to resolve the problem of greenhouse gases originating from the built environment. The Green New Deal is emerging similarly to resolve the problem of greenhouse gases and proposes to approach the problem as subset of a larger, more ambitious agenda aimed at not only reducing reliance on fossils fuels and reduction of carbon emissions but also that of creating jobs and wealth by taking a proactive stance and embracing sustainable solutions.
Convergence Net-Zero Building is an existing, well-grounded structure towards the reduction of greenhouse gases. The Green New Deal is a popular movement aimed at creating a carbon-free economy of which net-zero building technology is a part.
For Further Reading Resources for further research into these topics: • The Green New Deal Rises Again, Thomas Friedman in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/opinion/green-new-deal.html • Introduction to Net-Zero Buildings, The Whole Building Design Guide: https://www.wbdg.org/resources/net-zero-energy-buildings • The Zero Energy Ready Home, U.S. Dept. of Energy (D.O.E.): https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/zero-energy-ready-home
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