Magenta House Approach to Research
When you conduct research, you face difficulties.
But when researching a charged issue like climate change, where facts can be hard to nail down, things get even more difficult.
Worse, the research numbers across various sites simply don’t match up—in terms of costs and savings.
But when researching a charged issue like climate change, where facts can be hard to nail down, things get even more difficult.
Worse, the research numbers across various sites simply don’t match up—in terms of costs and savings.
But if we found savings exaggerated, we also found costs to be discounted or to go unnamed altogether. For instance, the true cost of business as usual in terms of energy use is not just an increase in utility bills, or even power outages, but planetary disaster on a civilization-sized, or even life-threatening, scale.
In any case, this article will discuss the methodology we’ve used in finding and producing the data for the Magenta House initiative. It will also comment on the methodology’s shortcomings as well as potential ways to remedy these problems.
Our methodology and approach
Although information abounds today, reliable sources are hard to find. What to do?
For any upgrade we’ve discussed, we’ve relied on the Department of Energy (DOE) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) savings estimates as limiting agents; that is, we’ve assumed that no quoted savings values should exceed numbers given by these agencies. Further, we checked major facts against multiple sources of varying types—government agencies, blog posts by experts, or reliable retail descriptions.
Each article also clearly states all assumptions on cost and use of resources. Price of energy was calculated using a rate of $0.12/KWH. With this number, cash savings and energy savings were calculated if either of those data points were missing. This value for cost of energy is the national average, and changes by state. Energy and monetary savings can fluctuate accordingly.
Water cost was calculated using a rate of $2.00 per 1,000 gallons. Long-term savings are calculated assuming an annual investment of theoretical savings at a 4% interest rate over a period of thirty years; this does not account for fluctuations in the market which could either negatively or positively affect these numbers.
Some fixes/renovations maintained such a high degree of variability that their savings simply were not calculated and, as such, did not add into any final savings. Like with gray water recycling, costs and savings were too variable.
The levels of Magenta House savings imply ease of access to the various upgrades and are not tied into any saving potential.
Level 1 upgrades imply those that require little to no technical knowledge, money, or time; these can be done in an afternoon with some friends.
Level 2 upgrades are those that require a larger upfront investment, technical knowledge, or time to plan/implement.
Level 3 upgrades require a substantial amount of upfront investment and expertise to implement.
Methodology problems
The problems with our methodology include: the coupling principle, a lack of quality data, exaggeration, a high number of variables, and failure to include full-production cycles into account.
The coupling principle implies an inherent exaggeration on savings because it combines multiple categories into one and, then, re-iterates them individually. For example, the savings stated for air sealing a home seem to include the savings of air sealing in combination with insulation.
Similarly, the average savings for insulation seem to include air sealing as well as insulated windows and doors. Hence, if treated as individual fixes, the savings double and create an artificially high number. Savings proposed by solar couple in a more visible manner. Because solar effectively can pay for most power, it eliminates all other stated savings to a large degree. All the power renovations save power individually. However, solar supplants those savings by decreasing the actual value of using less energy.
Other issues stem from a lack of good data, high variability, and exaggeration. All the stated numbers are national averages. The United States encompasses an incredibly large area and includes a large number of geographic zones. As such, an average for such a diverse nation can mean very little to an individual home. Variability also comes from the diversity of homes in these regions. Some houses' building material requires more or less insulation, for instance. Some houses would save a tremendous amount of water from a greywater irrigation system. Others, without a yard, would save none. There does not seem to be much data which accounts for such variables and provides more localized and precise estimates of savings.
Exaggeration also plays a part – using extreme ends of the spectrum. For instance, the EPA states a household can save up to $140 per year by switching to low-flush toilets. The average person flushes the toilet 5 times per day. These savings thus imply that a household either has almost ten people, is using a 10 gallon per flush toilet, or is flushing at a much higher rate than average. Or, for a less extreme example, insulation savings imply going from no-insulation to full, all-house insulation – another rare case.
Lastly, these overall savings trackers do not fully emphasize all the aspects of production cycles. For instance, trillions of gallons of water are used yearly to cool power plants in the United States. That number is decreasing steadily as natural gas increasingly replaces coal as the primary production method for electricity. However, natural gas obtained by fracking still requires an insane amount of water to withdraw. Anytime one uses less energy, they are also severely cutting down on all of the resources required to create energy. The savings tracker does not take this into account or emphasize it properly.
Not to mention, most energy production cycles cause a large amount of pollution. Even solar energy, while drastically better than fossil fuels, requires intensive mining operations. The materials present in solar cells also can pollute local environments very badly if not recycled properly. Promoting system-based thinking which looks at whole cycles should be emphasized in any research going forward. The point of saving is not to be able to spend more. The point of saving is to be more conscious of the cost of over-consumption.
Potential solutions from Magenta House
Magenta House can potentially solve some of these methodology problems by tracking the effects of green home improvements at a local level. Its program requires a pre- and post-assessment of candidate houses and provides real, concrete data of specific locales. Because Magenta House homes have to complete multiple upgrades, more specific categorization of green home improvements can lead to more realistic savings data as well.
For example, a Magenta House home measures the difference in effect of improving insulation, air sealing, doors and windows; it does not isolate these artificially but treats them as one categorical area. Its numbers can thus help defeat the coupling principle.
Magenta House also operates self-sufficiently. After initial “seeding” of homes, communities can grow naturally and share knowledge amongst themselves. This can help combat exaggeration and lack of trust as to how these renovations benefit the individual and the world around them.
