Last month, Harvard’s Center for Green Buildings and Cities released a brief report on energy production and consumption at HouseZero—the 1920s dwelling in Cambridge converted to the Center’s offices as an experiment in energy efficiency—during its first full year of operation. At the same time, the Center published an academic article about the prospects for offsetting the building’s embodied energy in time to help thwart climate change. It also put out a press release in which its director, Ali Malkawi, said he and his partners firmly believe “in the overarching importance of transparency.” And a spokesperson responded to a series of questions posed by RECORD, at one point noting that the Center plans to install additional photovolatic (PV) panels on the house’s roof to help it offset its operational and embodied energy—a goal the Center now refers to as achieving “carbon balance.”
HouseZero, at 20 Sumner Road in Cambridge, has been promoted by Malkawi and others as an attempt to show how older houses can be retrofitted to reduce energy use. In an article last July, RECORD asked hard questions about the design of the experiment, in particular whether sufficient attention was paid to the house’s embodied energy—that is, the energy that was consumed by its renovation.
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