ChAPTER 5 Energy and Atmosphere 
 

INTRODUCTION

Creating a very low energy consumption profile is perhaps the key design issue and challenge that must be addressed in designing a high performance building.  Building energy consumption in the U.S. is about the same scale as energy consumption by automobiles, about 40% of total primary energy for each, and much of the automotive consumption is caused by the way Buildings are placed on the landscape as part of community design.  Toward the end of the current decade, on or about the year 2010, humankind will face the rollover point in petroleum production, the point in time when the extraction rate is predicted to peak and significant additional energy and financial resources will be needed to extract remaining oil resources.  At the same time economies around the world are and will be attempting to grow, all of them dependent on abundant, cheap energy, with none of them more dependent on than the U.S.  H.T. Odum, the eminent ecologist who founded the branch of ecology known as systems ecology, determined that at the rollover point the energy needed to extract the oil will be greater than its energy value.  As an additional warning note, Odum and his colleagues maintain that the energy required to produce some key technologies that are the future hope to replace our fossil fuel powered energy system, among them photovoltaics and fuel cells, also require more energy to produce than they themse