I have been using the 36% figure for percentage of GHG from building heating/cooling, the 48% firgure  must be for lighting, water heating, cooking as well?

76% of electricity?  Incredible.

To me it's very good news, since the combination of solar cogeneration (heat+electricty from the same solar panels) and geo heat exchange heating/cooling could affordably eliminate that 48% and 76%.  Plus yield extra power for the grid.

Go Ed.  Maybe Brad and Ed could reprise their revolutionary duo in "Fight Club"?  But non-violently this time.  To sponsor a green building competition to come up with a cogeneration/geo heat exchange home as a building block for a distributed smart grid.

Buildings like this can feature energy storage as well as conservation (geo heat) and cogeneration.  By storing heat/cold in building mass and extra heat storage solutions.

That storage is enough to smooth out the power flow from a completely solar, wind, water, and biogas powered grid.  

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i had initially heard that buildings were 48% of U.S. total ENERGY consumption...it was on Architecture 2030's website, if i remember correctly...although I could be mistaken, since I've also heard the 33-36% of total ENERGY consumption figure as well to confuse me.  All the statistics start to blend together after a while, no?  :)  And 76% sounds extremely high to me as well.  I'd love to find out the source behind these numbers so I can confirm the values and be done with it.

Also, I want to comment that although less glamorous, retro-fitting old buildings is a much more important issue than new buildings.  This is due to the sheer quanitity of existing buildings (something near 80% of the buildings in the world in 2050 will be the buildings currently built).  So, as you can see, if we only concentrate on new construction, it'll only comprise 20% of the 2050 buildings sector and won't make near the carbon/energy reductions aggressive retrofitting would make...Both are great though!  Now we just need policy to force us to do so (wish we as a society could do things w/o having to be forced into it, but unfortunately it's not so)!

The local news here had a feature on geo heat exchange heating/cooling saying it could save thousands in energy costs per year.

It showed the outdoor pipe loops being buried in trenches and the inside installation, it looked like a typical furnace.

Mass production will bring the price down.  And of course a per kwh saved subsidy would help consumers pay for these systems.  they directly replace fuel oil and natural gas heating and very energy expensive electric air conditioners.

by offering subsidies, taken away from fossil fuel industries, mass production would ramp up very quickly.  Stimulating the economy with savings.  And cutting down on oil and gas use.

Not sure about the percentages, but if lighting, cooking, computers, tvs, appliances, water heating, refrigeration, and so forth are all added onto heating/cooling, that extra percentage makes sense.

48% of GHG and 76% of electricity saved by solar cogeneration and geo heat exchange.  That would be sweet.  

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