This has been done to some extent, although low (relative) prices for the last few years may have blunted it.
- take advantage of natural light; windows, skylights, etc.
- design heat gain/storage mass in colder climates
- minimize heat gain/AC load in warmer climates
- use thermally efficient materials/insulation
- specify energy efficient HVAC, lighting, elevators, etc.
OK, I'll start the argument. Is there REALLY an energy "CRISIS"? I would put forth that we have a political crisis about energy.
As far as building design goes, I would say that part of the designers job is to provide a client with a building that is economical to operate. To me, that means taking advantage of all aspects mentioned by TheBlackSmith and balancing them against the cost of operation over the life of the building (life cycle costing). The final result should trend toward the enviormentally sound designs, since failure to do so will be more costly in the future.
I am not going to enter into a futile debate about whether we have 35 years (as US DOE predicts) or 60 or 52.568 years of oil reserves left in the world. The fact is that reserves are finite, and at some point in the future we will run out. The more intelligent question is, "What, as engineers, are we doing about it?"
From an excellent article [Colin J. Campbell & Jean H. Laherrere, "The End of Cheap Oil", Scientific American, March 1998, pp 78-83]:
"From an economic perspective, when the world runs completely out of oil is thus not directly relevant: what matters is when production begins to taper off. Beyond that point, prices will rise unless demand declines commensurately…
"Predicting when oil production will stop rising is relatively straightforward once one has a good estimate of how much oil there is left to produce. We simply apply a refinement of a technique first published in 1956 by M. King Hubbert. Hubbert observed that in any large region, unrestrained extraction of a finite resource rises along a bell-shaped [normal] curve that peaks when about half the resource is gone." After that point, every barrel extracted costs more than the last.
As far as politics go, we all know that our recent war with Iraq (and the current conflict in Afghanistan, of course) has most to do with the control of the supply and price of oil and gas. In spite of what the classical economic models about "perfect competition" and the myth of "free markets" purport to tell us, pricing as often as not has little to do with true costing of a good.
In the early '70s common texts on building standards were dogmatically intoning the litany of "adequate insulation" - pegging insulation levels (for northern regimes) to heating costs, as if these costs had never risen in the past. In those days, 3.5" of batt insulation (nominal R-10 to R-12) in the walls was considered sufficient by all the experts (and 6" in the roof) - dooming those who bought these homes to a costly upgrade in the '80s, or to unsustainable heating bills each year.
In partial response to Nu911's rhetorical query, we engineers have the science, we have access to the products as never before, and we have developed the techniques to make each building not only energy-efficient, but a net-energy producer. The knowledge is out there, but of course cannot be encompassed in forum space. Let's get on with it.
Sustainable, Solar, Environmental, and Structural Engineering: Appropriate technologies for a planet in stress.
