PETAL INTENT
The intent of the Energy Petal is to signal a new age of product design and manufacturing, wherein facilities of all types rely solely on renewable forms of energy and operate year-round in a safe, pollution-free manner, ultimately giving back more than they take. In addition, this Petal encourages manufacturers to consider the full life cycle energy Footprint of their products and to look for ways that product or process innovation can conserve energy.
Living Products will be manufactured in ways that produce more energy than is required to make the product on-site. Further, Living Products will be designed and distributed in ways that enable them to generate or conserve more energy over their entire life cycle than is required to produce them.
The Energy Petal aims to prioritize reductions and optimization before technological solutions are applied to eliminate wasteful spending—of energy, resources and dollars. The majority of energy generated today is from highly- polluting and often politically-destabilizing sources including coal, gas, oil and nuclear power. Large-scale hydropower, while inherently cleaner, results in widespread damage to ecosystems. Burning wood, trash or pellets releases particulates and carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere; it also often strains local supplies of sustainably harvested biomass while robbing the soil of much-needed nutrient recycling. These ects of these energy sources on regional and planetary health are becoming increasingly evident through climate change, the most worrisome major global trend attributed to human activity.
IDEAL CONDITIONS + CURRENT LIMITATIONS
The Living Product Challenge envisions a safe, reliable and decentralized power grid powered entirely by renewable energy and supplied to incredibly efficient buildings and infrastructure without the negative externalities associated with combustion. Although considerable progress has been made to advance renewable energy technologies, there is still a need for greater efficiency from these systems and for new, cleaner ways to store the energy they generate. These realities together with the current cost of available systems, and restrictions by utilities and government agencies on system size and interconnection with the grid, are the major limitations to reaching our goals.
