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我天生反骨,只吃有機食物,極力降低碳排放量,而且執著於外科自控裝置。我一直想要建造綠能屋,但卻也抱持著極度懷疑的態度,看待所有這些用意良善的文章,人們多以道德為出發點,但卻少了數據來敘述他們如何做到這一點,所以,我必需自己動手研究,舉例而言,這麼做是種罪惡嗎?一坨產自在地快樂農家的有機優格掉在廚房料理台上,我撕了張紙巾試圖擦拭,但我應該使用紙巾嗎?
(笑聲)答案可能要依據具含能量而定,即整體具含於任何紙巾或用水中的能量,每次我使用一張紙巾,我消耗這麼多的實際能量及水量,擦拭,然後丟棄,對比於棉質毛巾,我可以使用上千次,我似乎沒有消耗很多具含能量,直到我清洗那條沾滿優格的毛巾,但如果計算實作所需的能量,我會將那條毛巾放入洗衣機,能量與水量消耗便產生,並回算到那條毛巾上,除非是使用前載式高效洗衣機,情況可能會好些,但如果是使用回收材質的紙巾呢?大小只有原尺寸的一半,結果是紙巾更節能,先不提紙巾,來看洗碟海綿,我用海綿擦拭,然後打開水龍頭清洗,結果是能量消耗大幅降低,但水量巨幅增加,除非你像我一樣將水龍頭扳到熱水的位置開啟,那麼能量消耗則同步上揚,或更糟的是你讓水流到轉熱,才開始清洗,則剛談的利基就全沒了(笑聲)。
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文
First of all, I'm a geek. I'm an organic food-eating, carbon footprint-minimizing, robotic surgery geek, and I really want to build green, but I'm very suspicious of all of these well-meaning articles, people long on moral authority and short on data telling me how to do these kinds of things. And so I have to figure this out for myself. For example: Is this evil? I have dropped a blob of organic yogurt from happy self-actualized local cows on my counter top, and I grab a paper towel, and I want to wipe it up. But can I use a paper towel? (Laughter)
The answer to this can be found in embodied energy. This is the amount of energy that goes into any paper towel or embodied water. And every time I use a paper towel, I am using this much virtual energy and water. Wipe it up, throw it away. Now, if I compare that to a cotton towel that I can use a thousand times, I don't have a whole lot of embodied energy until I wash that yogurty towel. This is now operating energy. So if I throw my towel in the washing machine, I've now put energy and water back into that towel, unless I use a front-loading high-efficiency washing machine, and then it looks a little bit better. But what about a recycled paper towel that comes in those little half sheets? Well, now a paper towel looks better. Screw the paper towels. Let's go to a sponge. I wipe it with a sponge, and I put it under the running water, and I have a lot less energy and a lot more water, unless you're like me and you leave the handle in the position of hot even when you turn it on, and then you start to use more energy, or worse, you let it run until it's warm to rinse out your towel. And now all bets are off.
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這告訴我們的是,有時你最料想不到的事,諸如水龍頭扳手的開啟位置,其影響可能遠大於其他你想要有效節能的方式,再想像一下像我這般瘋狂試圖建屋的人(笑聲),但那的確是我和丈夫正在幹的事,我想要知道綠能屋的極限,坊間有 1001 篇相關的文章,敘述如何平衡建造綠能屋的得失,但他們也同樣遲疑地敘述著所有的節能小技巧,但卻忽略了最根本的重點,一般的房屋約有 300 百萬瓦特/時數的具含能量,這是建造所需的能量,可換成數百萬張又百萬張的紙巾,我們想知道怎麼做才更節能。
所以,像其他人一樣,我們相中一塊地上的一間屋,我會在上行顯示一般建構,在下行顯示我們正建構的綠能屋資訊,首先,我們將房屋整個拆除,這耗了些能量,但如果你進行解構、支解並重複使用其中一部份,確實可以彌補一些耗費的能量,我們接著在地上挖了個大穴,置入一個雨水集儲槽,以供我們的花園用水所需,緊接著,我們灌入大片地基,以集結被動式太陽能,如果你使用高飛灰混凝土的話,具含能量可以降低約 25 %,之後,我們豎起骨架,像圖所示,木材、合成材料,計算這部份的具含能量耗費有點難,但這部份的確可以是永續資源,如果你使用 F.S.C. 認證木材的話,我們接著做的是...第一件讓我們感到很驚訝的是,如果我們在這間房屋架設鋁窗,我們消耗的能量會是雙倍,PVC 材質較節能,但全比不過我們所選用的木頭材質。
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So what this says is that sometimes the things that you least expect, the position in which you put the handle, have a bigger effect than any of those other things that you were trying to optimize. Now imagine someone as twisted as me trying to build a house. (Laughter) That's what my husband and I are doing right now. And so, we wanted to know how green could we be. And there's a thousand and one articles out there telling us how to make all these green trade-offs. And they are just as suspect in telling us to optimize these little things around the edges and missing the elephant in the living room. Now, the average house has about 300 megawatt hours of embodied energy in it. This is the energy it takes to make it, millions and millions of paper towels.
We wanted to know how much better we could do. And so, like many people, we start with a house on a lot, and I'm going to show you a typical construction on the top and what we're doing on the bottom. So first, we demolish it. It takes some energy, but if you deconstruct it, you take it all apart, you use the bits, you can get some of that energy back. We then dug a big hole to put in a rainwater catchment tank to take our yard water independent. And then we poured a big foundation for passive solar. Now, you can reduce the embodied energy by about 25 percent by using high fly ash concrete. We then put in framing. And so this is framing, lumber, composite materials, and it's kind of hard to get the embodied energy out of that, but it can be a sustainable resource if you use F.S.C. certified lumber.
We then go on to the first thing that was very surprising. If we put aluminum windows in this house, we would double the energy use right there. Now, PVC is a little bit better, but still not as good as the wood that we chose. We then put in plumbing, electrical and HVAC, and insulate. Now, spray foam is an excellent insulator, it fills in all the cracks, but it is pretty high embodied energy. And, sprayed-in cellulose or blue-jeans is a much lower energy alternative to that. We also used straw bale in fill for our library, which has zero embodied energy. When it comes time to sheetrock, if you use EcoRock, it's about a quarter of the embodied energy of standard sheetrock.
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接著是配線工程,電路及高壓交流電及絕緣,泡沫塗料是極優的絕緣體,能堵住所有的縫隙,但卻含有很多具含能量,纖維素塗料或碎牛仔褲是較節能的替代方案,我們也使用大捆的麥稈填入我們的圖書室,所需的具含能量為零,選擇石膏板時,如果是使用 EcoRock,則僅會有1/4標準石膏板所擁有的具含能量,最後進入完工階段,所有那些敘述「綠能」文章的主題,以綠能屋格局的影響來說,幾乎沒甚麼不同,雖然大家都將焦點放在這一方面,地板除外,如果你在家中鋪設地毯,那會佔整幢房子具含能量的十分之一,除非你使用混凝土或木材,具含能量才會大幅降低,至此,我們算入,最終的建造能量,全加在一起,我們建造的房子所用的具含能量不到一般房屋的一半。
但在我們互拍肩膀慶賀之前,我們還是用了 151 百萬瓦特/時數的能量來打造這幢房子,用以取代先前的房子,問題是,我們要如何彌補這些能量?如果用新建的節能屋,對比於老式未有效節能的房屋,打平的時間是六年,但我也許只是升級舊屋,讓它更節能,果真如此做的話,打平的時間延長為 20 多年,或如果我忽略具含能量,則我們需要的時間將超過半個世紀。
對比於升級舊屋,這有何意涵?依我房子的大小看來,約相當於我開車一年所耗費的能量,那約為我吃全素省下的五倍,但我訴求的重點便會不存在,因為我將被迫從 TED 走路回家,無論如何,所有關於具含能量的計算都放在部落格上,謹記,你最不在意的細節往往是最大改變的開端,感謝聆聽(掌聲)。
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And then you get to the finishes, the subject of all of those "go green" articles. And on the scale of a house, they almost make no difference at all. And yet, all the press is focused on that. Except for flooring. If you put carpeting in your house, it's about a tenth of the embodied energy of the entire house, unless you use concrete or wood for a much lower embodied energy. So now we add in the final construction energy, we add it all up, and we've built a house for less than half of the typical embodied energy for building a house like this.
But before we pat ourselves too much on the back, we have poured 151 megawatt hours of energy into constructing this house, when there was a house there before. And so the question is: How could we make that back? And so if I run my new energy-efficient house forward, compared with the old, non-energy-efficient house, we make it back in about six years. Now, I probably would have upgraded the old house to be more energy-efficient. And in that case, it would take me more about 20 years to break even. Now, if I hadn't paid attention to embodied energy, it would have taken us over 50 years to break even compared to the upgraded house. So what does this mean? On the scale of my portion of the house, this is equivalent to about as much as I drive in a year, it's about five times as much as if I went entirely vegetarian. But my elephant in the living room flies. Clearly, I need to walk home from TED. But all the calculations for embodied energy are on the blog.
And, remember, it's sometimes the things that you are not expecting to be the biggest changes that are.
Thank you.