BEYOND OIL
Rethinking paradigms, for a world after oil

by Bruce King

“We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources . . . But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil and the gas are exhausted.” - US President Theodore Roosevelt, May 13, 1908

You and I, we of the Industrial Revolution, are made of oil. We grow our food with oil, we make clothing with oil, and we certainly build, light, cool and heat our buildings with oil. Notwithstanding this generic use of the word “oil” to connote the family of fossil hydrocarbons— petroleum, natural gas, and coal—that we began mining and using in earnest 250 years ago, these assertions are, to a stunning extent, literally true. You are probably wearing petrochemical clothing, recently ate food grown with natural gas fertilisers, will soon use a gas-powered vehicle, and will sleep tonight in a climate controlled with fossil fuel energy. All of this might be fine except for a few problems only recently coming to light: the many and huge toxic hazards to people and environment that are an oil-based economy and its by-products, the abrupt and unpredictable changes to global climate caused by the recent increase of carbon and other substances in the air, and, last but certainly not least, the fact that supply is limited: we’ve already used up half the oil we ever had. The easy and cheap stuff is gone and burned up, and we now fight wars, drill in deep arctic waters, and scratch at the tarry sands of Alberta to keep the tank full. You and I are part of a spectacularly anomalous period of history, and though we think of it as ‘normal’ and fight to preserve it, this anomaly like all others will soon end. We may already be passing the point in time now called ‘peak oil’, the point at which global supplies begin to inexorably fall while demand continues to grow. The oil is running out; there was only so much to start with, so the question of the party ending is not “if” but merely “How soon, and how hard?” As the oil gets more and more expensive, we will have to reinvent—or remember—how to get by without all the cheap, intense, polluting energy. We will have to build with brains, not oil. The built environment accounts for a huge proportion of the material and energy that humankind consumes, and all over the world, developers, builders, architects and engineers are engaging the design challenge that is green building. This is driven as much by practical concerns such as indoor health and comfort, and reduced energy bills, as it is by regulation or the yet-developing carbon trading markets.

Recent experiences in America and elsewhere have added to new sense of urgency and importance to green design: the dramatic vulnerability of modern buildings to the power losses that accompany cataclysmic natural and terrorist events. How useable will your latest project be if left without electricity for three weeks? You probably have a diesel generator in the basement that can keep the lights on for a while, but for how long? Heating, cooling, lights, elevators and water supply can and sooner or later will be interrupted—and for more than a few hours. Both weather and political relations are becoming increasingly unstable, and the coal, oil and gas from which we get power will only get more scarce and expensive.

The architectural response paradigm to this is called ‘passive survivability’: make buildings as useful and hospitable as possible in the event of an extended loss of power. A failure to do so can have far more terrible effects on human life and safety than flawed structural design of wind and earthquake systems. And, it turns out, the checklist for passive survivability is identical to that for good green design: passive solar and wind design, insulation, non-toxic materials and indoor air, onsite energy generation, efficient appliances and equipment, water collection and reuse, and so on. Here in California it’s fairly easy to get by without external energy input, but for most of the world—and for most builders—design for survivability is both challenging and essential. We can build structures that continue to take care of people and our bottom line, long after the lights have gone out. Green design is no longer just for ‘do-gooders’; it is an essential aspect of life safety that should be codified like fire and structure. It is a smart way to protect a huge investment, and it is just the smart way to build in a fast-changing and dangerous world.

Bruce King is the founder and Director of the Ecological Building Network, and the founder of the Green Building Press. Bruce is a registered structural engineer with a private structural consulting practice in San Rafael, California. He also serves as a Clean Technology advisor to venture capital firms near San Francisco.

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