Cities of Full Energy Independence

A project by architecture 2030

We visited Lancaster, California, the world’s first energy-independent city! In this context, we learned about the goals and social status of architecture 2030 and incorporated the ZERO TOOL into our structural systems.

architecture 2030

The company architecture 2030 is a non-profit independent organization founded in 2002 following the climate change crisis.

THE 2030 CHALLENGE

Goal: All new buildings, projects, and large-scale renovations will have minimal carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2030. Architecture 2030 aims at minimal carbon dioxide concentration caused by urban construction activity. The goal is to create cities with minimal energy requirements, combining modern green prefabricated construction with renewable energy sources. Urban construction is responsible for 75% of the annual carbon dioxide emissions. Eliminating these emissions is key to reversing environmental change and achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Architecture 2030 has requested the global architectural and construction community to adopt the following goals:

– All new buildings and large-scale renovations should aim for energy consumption 70% lower than the average energy consumption level in the specific geographic region by 2030.

– Similarly, each year, a given geographic area will be reconstructed to meet the desired results of reducing energy requirements.

– The reduction in the use of fossil fuels through the construction of modern buildings and major renovations will increase by:

• 80% by 2020
• 90% by 2025
• Absolute elimination of fossil fuel use by 2030
  
  

These goals are achieved by implementing green prefabricated construction made of wooden structures and using renewable energy sources for heating and cooling.

Already, the global community has adapted, with the construction of prefabricated energy-efficient homes reaching 70% of total construction output. The new planning strategy aligned with the 22nd century abandons conventional polluting and energy-consuming construction and focuses on modern, low-energy seismic residences.

The classic conventional construction (brick houses) has been completely abandoned as a seismic-vulnerable structure and has been replaced by ICF (Insulated Concrete Form) houses. These monolithic, seismic-resistant constructions made entirely of solid concrete represent the outstanding progress urban architecture has undergone in the last half-century. See Androulakis’ ICF technology here.

Androulakis, in turn, has adopted the architecture 2030 strategy by incorporating the ZERO TOOL into the study of its structural systems.

Through ZERO TOOL, we check if our structural project meets the requirements and complies with the regulations set by the global construction community and the American Institute of Architects. By inputting the specifications of the structural project into the system, we roughly estimate the annual energy requirements of the house and evaluate the performance of our energy systems. The results of the tool across all our projects help us conduct a semi-annual study aimed at restructuring and optimizing the production process at Androulakis.

The company’s practice is to align and align its goals with the new requirements of the Paris Agreement on climate change. The efficiency coefficients of our projects exceed the previous requirements of the European Union, and our goal now is to create modern residences, with our main concern being to follow the evolutionary path of 21st-century modern architecture.