The Extra Costs of Being Sustainable

Essentials of Economic Sustainability -The  source of all economic value is energy. Everything we extract from nature and it's valuable to us requires energy. The ability to produce things of economic value will diminish if our economy continues to depend on nonrenewable resources. We can get all the energy we need to run the world economy from solar and wind. This is the only way we will be able to sustain life on Earth. 

Houses & Tunneling Through the Cost Barrier -Things are beautiful when they are efficient. This way, you can sustain yourself without undermining the rest of the life on Earth. When you make homes and structures more efficient, you can reduce the overall short term and long term costs. With all of the savings you can have you can get the house to pay off on its own. But everything depends on the design. The design of the structure will determine how efficient it's going to be. Tunneling Through the Cost Barrier says, "By the time the design is completed, about 80-90 percent of their life cycle economic and ecological costs have already been made inevitable!". They key is thinking about the structure as a whole and not as parts that come together in a whole. So the house or the structure can work as an integrated system. When you make each part of the home extremely efficient, it can make the home as whole inefficient. Also, it is very important to take the right steps at the right time. Every intelligent design and engineering process has a series of steps that need to be followed. A low cost efficient home will be inevitable if and only if all the elements of intelligent design and engineering are applied.      

Many people think it is impossible to generate all the energy we need  to power the world economy with only solar and wind . Lester Brown states in Plan B 4.0 that if we capture all the solar energy we get from the sun in an hour, we could power the world economy for a year. This unknown facts have mislead people to belief that there's no other way to run our economy and, solar and wind are not really an option. 

Poor designs are creating unnecessary costs to the home owner's pocket and to the environment.    

The issues lie in ignorance. They can easily be solved if the knowledge is spread. If the majority of the people knew the facts and understand it is really possible to run the world economy with solar and wind energy, things will be differently. Knowledge is power and with that power the people can push the government to invest in renewable energy and create the necessary policies to support it. 

Also, we have to educate our architects and engineers. The mistakes they make are because they are not aware of these essential factors in the design process. By educating them they will know what things they have to take in consideration in their designs. Another solution I suggest is to require a sustainability expert to look over the plans and sign them in order get the required permissions to build the structures. Wether is spreading this knowledge or creating the right policies, these issues can be easily solved.