[av_heading heading=’School is not a Building: Sharing Economies and the Low-carbon School of the Future’ tag=’h2′ link_apply=” link=’manually,http:\/\/’ link_target=” style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ margin=” margin_sync=’true’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” av_uid=’av-k0ykp6qb’ custom_class=” admin_preview_bg=”]
\nby Kevin Sullivan
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\nSingapore sits just above the equator and is monotonously hot and humid all year round.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s a long way from my native New England, with its distinct and ever-changing seasons. My Singaporean friends joke that they have two seasons: indoors and outdoors. Singapore is perhaps the most air-conditioned nation on earth. The former long-time, and recently deceased, Prime Minister Li Kwan Yu once famously declared air-conditioning the greatest invention of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n
I was thinking about a lot about air-conditioning recently as I froze through a two-day conference on sustainability in a school that ironically was recognised for having the second \u201cgreenest\u201d buildings in Singapore (the first being the government\u2019s \u201cZero Energy Building\u201d). Apparently making rooms as cold as meat lockers as efficiently as possible counts as an innovative approach to sustainability.<\/p>\n
I was forced to make frequent trips into the non-air conditioned lobby to defrost. \u00a0The relatively new, purpose-built school is in many ways a model of good school design \u2013 a lot of flow between public and private spaces, nooks for small group learning, classrooms flooded with daylight.<\/p>\n
But what I noticed the most was the sheer amount of space and resources devoted to routine human activities \u2013 sitting, walking, eating. \u00a0The fact that children are involved brings into play a whole battery of safety codes and regulations. Most are for good reason, of course, but some of it is terribly unthinking and unimaginative. Do all children fit neatly into 50 square meters of space in classrooms, or six meters of hallway to pass each other, two meters to go potty?<\/p>\n
And consider for a moment the extraordinary amount of resources and embodied energy that goes into making and maintaining these spaces. \u00a0We extract stone, sand, lime, iron, aluminium, and dozens of other metals from the earth, fell trees from non-rapidly renewing forests, pump vast amounts of fossil fuels to process and transport building materials, still more energy to pour, cast, erect, bolt, weld, it all together, then add a stew of toxic chemicals – paints, adhesives, laminates and finishes – to cover it all up. And that\u2019s just what\u2019s upstream. Downstream – at the end of a building\u2019s relatively short life, maybe thirty years at best, and every day in between – awaits more even environmental damage in the form of unused and unusable waste.<\/p>\n
The point is that we are way beyond default mode when it comes to addressing potentially catastrophic and irreversible effects of climate change. We simply can no longer afford unthinking business-as-usual, if we ever could. \u00a0So if we are to be honest and clear-eyed about the enormity of the mess we have get ourselves out of, here is the challenge in a nutshell: Do everything we\u2019re doing today using half the energy and meet the needs of twice as many people. \u00a0So as a formula it looks like X \/ 2 = Y x 2 (X = amount of energy consumed, Y = number of consumers).\u00a0\u00a0 Or a simple algebra operation will show us that we need to be 4 times more productive than we currently are.<\/p>\n
So, starting today, or as quickly as humanly possible (politically possible is another matter all together) we have to produce every single good and service in the global economy using half the energy and meet the needs of twice as many people.<\/p>\n
Pretty daunting on a global scale to be sure. We\u2019re struggling to just get correct data on countries\u2019 GHG emissions, let alone hold ourselves to national targets. The COP21 in Paris last year was undoubtedly a breakthrough in terms of political will and vision. But the almost 200 hundred nations attending the conference walked away without any binding plan for how to achieve the goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees by mid-century.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s go back to the math and break it down to bite-sized pieces. \u00a0 Take the event I was attending at the \u201cgreen\u201d school in Singapore. Even though it is one of the lowest consuming buildings in the country, it still falls far short of the task of delivering its goods and services to twice as many \u201cconsumers\u201d (students) using half the energy. It\u2019s pretty hard to squeeze much more energy savings out of a building that already uses the latest solar PV technology, water-efficiency and lighting and comfort controls.<\/p>\n
So we have to change our perspective, our mindset. \u00a0And this gets to the heart of the question of what do we want our schools (homes\/offices\/cities\u2026) to do<\/u> for us? \u00a0Not just how we want them to look, or how safe they keep our kids, although those are also important. \u00a0But what essential human purpose do we want the things we design and create to serve \u2013 in this case our schools?<\/p>\n
If we shift our perspective on the purpose \u2013 not to educate x number of students because that is the market will bear for elite private education in Singapore \u2013 but to create buildings and infrastructure for as many people as possible to learn in. (Let\u2019s set aside for the moment the issue of who pays and how much, etc.)<\/p>\n
Now what would that building look like? \u00a0First of all the rooms would not be cooled to a bone-chilling 18 degrees. \u00a0But much beyond the architecture and operations we would need to rethink who benefits and how they benefit from our school of the future. Remember we have to be four times as efficient.<\/p>\n
From where I was sitting in the \u201cgreen school\u201d classroom, I could envision what we’d\u00a0need to change to meet our goal. \u00a0First we could not have one teacher delivering educational content (\u201cgoods and services\u201d) to just fifteen shivering students. \u00a0That\u2019s not even an efficient use of resources for conventional school. \u00a0How about one teacher lecturing to twice that many, thirty? \u00a0No sweat \u2013 we could easily accommodate another fifteen people in the ample classrooms. \u00a0Now how about four times more \u2013 sixty? \u00a0Still doable, we\u2019d just need to move to a larger classroom or open a wall divider and combine it into two classrooms.<\/p>\n
So we reached our goal \u2013 four times more students served using the same amount of resources. Well, not exactly the same because we increased a few resources by expanding the classroom – more AC, more lights, etc. \u00a0But that could easily be offset by turning up the AC one or two degrees and switching off some lights.<\/p>\n
Wait \u2013 that wasn\u2019t so hard. Why stop there? \u00a0Let set the goal at 10 times more efficient – serving 150 students with the same resources. \u00a0Now it gets interesting. We can\u2019t rely on the current design arrangement of the school, and it there aren\u2019t enough auditorium spaces to make all classes so large, so where do we turn?<\/p>\n
Look no further than what\u2019s probably in your hand right now (or pocket or bag). The technology revolution makes this challenge seem as easy as opening the divider to make a bigger classroom \u2013 easier, in fact. And we\u2019re doing it all the time. Link up our teacher through videoconferencing (or more cheaply and flexibly via Skype, Google Hangout, Facetime, etc.) to 150 students, no wait, how about 1,500 students, or 15,000?<\/p>\n
Suddenly it\u2019s not hard to imagine. In fact it\u2019s happening all around us every day. We are, or can be, a hundred times more efficient by simply seeing things differently and making different choices. Let\u2019s take how we get to work \u2013 being four times more efficient is as easy as car pooling. But if you choose to take the bus or subway, you\u2019re about 50 times more efficient. Now dust off that old bike and take it some days, and walk more on other days, and soon you\u2019ll be at 100 times. Heating or cooling your home? In tropical Singapore, the evenings are quite comfortable, and the night-sky cooling effect acts as an incredible natural air conditioner. So we just open all our doors and windows at night and let Mother Nature do the rest. No CFCs, no CO2 – and best of all, no cost!<\/p>\n
So, suddenly, the challenge we have set for humanity to stop global warming doesn\u2019t seem so daunting after all. In fact, in countless, unsung ways we\u2019re already doing it: we\u2019re making the necessary shift out of choice and facilitated by technology not because our politicians are telling us we have to (because for the most part they aren\u2019t!) but because we find it\u2019s often more economical, sometimes more convenient, and even more joyful.<\/p>\n
The environmentalist and entrepreneur Paul Hawken has recently started an organization called \u201cDrawdown\u201d (www. drawdown.org) that lists one hundred current solutions \u2013 technically proven, economically viable and happening right now \u2013 that are moving us towards \u201cdrawdown,\u201d the inflection point at which we actually begin to not just slow down climate change, but reverse it. \u00a0As Hawken says, what\u2019s the point of going off the cliff at a slower speed when what we really need to do is stop and turn around!<\/p>\n
And think of how much more beautiful and joyful our world will look with the abyss of global warming receding in the rearview mirror instead of looming in windshield.
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