As extreme heating and cooling events become more common in the coming decades, we’ll need to find new strategies for keeping everyone comfortable while minimizing emission of additional greenhouse gasses.
The biggest challenge we face is that most buildings are poorly insulated — and that means mechanical heating and cooling is an extremely inefficient process. Extensive renovations can make a big difference if executed by competent trades, but this isn’t an option that most people or government climate programs can afford to pursue any time soon.
We desperately need a fast, scalable, and inexpensive alternative. The conventional cycle of building turnover doesn’t move anywhere near quick enough to correct this problem in the timeframe that’s required to keep pace with our carbon and climate change resiliency goals.
I’d like to propose a simple idea that I think could go a long way toward addressing this situation:
Rather than expend resources on full-building retrofits, what if we focused on ensuring that every dwelling and workplace has at least one room designed for maximum energy efficiency? It could be installed within an existing structure, or deployed as a separate unit on an adjacent plot of land. These rooms would provide a place for people to ride out the most intense hours of extreme weather periods without turning on the power-hungry systems that regulate other poorly insulated / high-volume areas.
We could call these rooms temperature-bunkers. They’d be constructed in a way that’s well-sealed, and thermally insulated on all sides. To that end, both internal and external versions would be equipped with an exterior-grade door. They’d also contain independent mechanical heating and cooling systems for days when passive measures like opening a window fail to provide sufficient moderation.
While temperature-bunkers would be most valuable for quickly reducing the energy consumption of units in existing buildings that lack access to basements, I think they’d also be a great feature for any new-build project with open-plan zones. Why waste energy controlling the temperature of an entire home or office when one small area would be big enough to accommodate people for short durations?
The key to making this work would be nailing the construction details. Sealing a space correctly is surprisingly complicated, and it’s easy for designers and trades to make mistakes. A thoughtfully crafted guide for effective temperature-bunker assembly would help a lot. Even better would be if we could find a way to prefabricate carefully detailed components that could be assembled in custom spaces as a kit of parts. Mass production would reduce the chances of construction errors and likely shrink costs. That’s important because the communities in which these temperature-bunkers could make the difference between life and death, often have very little to spend.
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Regions don’t become uninhabitable due to extreme temperatures. They become uninhabitable when people lack spaces in which to cool down or warm up. The viability of many of the world’s great cities rests on finding a way to ensure this problem is addressed on the fastest possible schedule. With limited time and resources, we must put our efforts into pragmatic initiatives that will help us reduce emissions while bolstering resilience. Temperature-bunkers would do both.
So what might it take to make this approach widely adopted?
Support from a lot of different people.
Since the primary leverage here lies in refocusing our efforts from full-building rehabilitation to small-scale single-room additions and retrofits, I think policymakers are going to play the biggest role. They have the power to set standards and create monetary incentives. Of course, policymakers can only make smart choices if they’re informed about worthwhile ideas by ordinary citizens, and that’s a category almost all of us fall into. Two other professions that could contribute something important here would be architects and contractors. We can’t build without them, and they have the ability to push certain approaches in discussions with their clients. Finally, entrepreneurs will be critical to rolling this out with the speed, scale, and cost-effectiveness we need. I think it could be a great business opportunity.
Of course, if you’d like to contribute right now, the best first step would be to share this post with people you know who would value reading it. Passing on ideas we believe in is the thing that saves them from obscurity.
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