Post date: Aug 04, 2012 4:22:16 PM
Feb 10 2012 Fairfield CT - When I arranged to meet face to face with my colleague Eric Fedus at the Fairfield CT Whole Foods I did realize that our meeting was the location of a prototype Whole Foods one that not only was designed as a green building but also which featured a Seimens Solid Oxide commercial scale Fuel Cell. This was exciting to us because it provided a actual case study of how an appropriate technology was developed in a fully mainstream and commercial application.
Unfortunately the site staff while helpful and friendly were unable to provide us with comprehensive information about the facility.
During our meeting we looked at the food at the store. We marveled at the supply chains involved to supply us with all these things and how technologies were emerging that were changing product life cycles dramatically. For example what if low power computer operating systems like Linux Mint or Ubuntu reduce the need for new computers by increasing the time it takes for a computer to be considered obsolete?
One of the biggest challenges for example is product longevity. If we make a product that lasts too long then we put the factory and business that produces it out of business. Yet if we produce too many things that fail too quickly we will end up encouraging a throw away economy that thrives on convenience and waste while doing little to truly improve the quality of people's lives. Its important to note that we are at an unprecedented time in human history where the power of technology that is literally at our fingertips gives us a greater ability to change the world than ever before in our history. And we have had just a very short time to grasp the scope and implications of their power and the tremendous responsibility it implies.
Similarly when we consider distributed power it is about how to manage resources so that they are used wisely and with a minimum of unnecessary infrastructure. So the idea of a fuel cell powering a grocery store has some advantages in terms of the electricity being generated directly onsite through the conversion of the grid fed natural gas into hydrogen and then electricity for use in the facility. Additionally the waste heat is also used to power the chiller to cool the space in the summer and provide heated water for hot water and building heating through a radiant floor system. We could also see that this system could also be integrated with the cooling elements of refrigerators in the store (and it may be that this has already been done there) for additional savings. Building centralized or district systems for cooling and heating are more efficient that individualized systems such as having each stand alone refrigerator or freezer power by electricity.
Eric and I expanded on this discussion by looking at the work of ZERI founder Gunter Pauli and seeing synergistic approaches are key to making sustainable and appropriate technologies compelling alternatives to existing conventional ones. I envisioned the development of other systems that might complement the supermarket powered by the fuel cell. For example what if next to the store a composting processing facility was built that took in kitchen scraps from residential and commercial streams and processing them using a biogas digestor? It possible that then the grid fed natural gas could be replaced with locally produced biogas.
To expand we begin to enter into the realm of what is called Industrial Ecology. What if every new Whole Foods was designed not only to have a Fuel Cell and be designed as a green building but as an incubator of sustainable living. The company seeing that it had reached the ceiling of the natural food business could form a consortium encouraging a partnership of green businesses to foster holistic innovation centers. These would include a mix of local business development depending on local conditions and opportunities all feeding on each other synergistically so that the cost of the more expensive sustainable technologies is offset by the gains in productivity from these synergistic interactions.
Sources and References:
Fuel Cell Case Study: Kathy Loftus Global Leader, Sustainable Engineering Maintenance & Energy Management Whole Foods Market, Inc. http://www.cleanenergystates.org/assets/Uploads/Loftus-FuelCellsSupermarkets.pdf