AvailableGreenEnergy

Posts Tagged ‘a-system-like’

Here’s a very good example of simple tech that works efficiently. Because hot air rises, cool air falls down. So if chilled water is carried through tubes at the ceiling, it sucks hot air from a room; sending down the cooler air. Simple tech is often low carbon technology too. Chilled beams use water to remove heat from a room. This is the opposite of radiant heating; in which pipes carry hot water in pipes embedded in a mortar for a stone or tile floor. The potential reduction in fossil fuel use of using chilled beams instead of a traditional air conditioning system can be as much as 50%. “Chilled” is a bit of a misnomer; as the water doesn’t even need to be chilled. Even just running city water through this system will work as typical city water is about 55 degrees Fahrenheit; enough to cool a 90 degree room. This works as a heat exchange. If we used a system like this to cool every building we could achieve a cooling carbon reduction of 50% over 2009 levels. Fossil fuel use in heating and cooling buildings accounts for about 40% of our national carbon emissions. This year’s climate bill contains incentives (Cap and Trade) for us to make reductions in fossil fuel use. Cap and Trade just means using fees (for choosing high carbon energy) to fund incentives (to help us buy low carbon energy). The national building codes in the Climate Bill could do for the country what California building codes did for California: effortlessly cut our carbon footprint to half that of the nation: near European levels. Read more of this story »