**2. From the machine worldview to the systems worldview**

Whether we are consciously aware of it or not, we have been conditioned in modernity since the 17th century by a foundationalist worldview [3–6], sometime called the Newtonian worldview of a determinist physicalist clockwork-universe. The full-pledged expression of foundationalism happened only in the nineteenth century. One timeline is the introduction of Laplace's Demon: "In the introduction to his 1814 *Essai philosophique sur les probabilités*, Pierre-Simon Laplace extended an idea of Gottfried Leibniz which became famous as Laplace's Demon," [7] which is a full expression of determinism. The second is one pointed out by Papineau [8], see also [3] that only with the advent of the law of conservation of energy which finally ruled out any force other than physical forces, the notion of a causally-closed physicalist universe became widely accepted. While a determinist universe solely in terms of physical forces was first suggested by Descartes and Leibniz in the seventeenth century, Papineau pointed out that later in the century Newton actually allowed possibility of non-physical forces [8]. The standard practice of calling the determinist physicalist clockwork-universe the Newtonian worldview, therefore, is actually inconsistent with the historical fact.

In any case, profligate acceleration of energy consumption also began in the nineteenth century. This made it possible to start the Second Industrial Revolution in which fuel-burning powered machines were the backbone of all industrial activities. So, it began a worldview in which a clockwork-universe dovetailed with viewing at such a universe made of all those fuel-burning powered machines: not only the whole universe is a machine, the universe is made of all those individual machines. For this reason, we shall call the "Newtonian" worldview a machine worldview.

In 1712, Thomas Newcomen invented atmospheric steam engine, the first practical fuel-burning engine which demonstrated that heat can be a source of power. The atmospheric engines were applied on site of coal mines, where the cost of coal was not an issue, for pumping water from mines. Their efficiency, i.e., the coals required for their operation, was not good enough for applications of atmospheric engines away from sites of mine. Those applications became possible when James Watt, in partnership with Matthew Boulton, made a critical improvement of atmospheric engines by separating the condensation process of steam from the main cylinder to another cylinder designated for condensing steam: instead of the main cylinder undergoing alternate heating and cooling (for the purpose of lowering the pressure in the cylinder thus the difference of atmospheric pressure and the resulting cylinder pressure is the force that produces power), the main cylinder is the heated cylinder while the separate condensing cylinder is the cooled one; whereby the lowering pressure in the main cylinder is obtained by opening the valve connecting the two cylinders. Thermodynamically speaking, the elimination of alternate heating and cooling reduces irreversibility, a key thermodynamic concept, in the operation. The great reduction in coal consumption made it possible for the Boulton-Watt atmospheric steam engines to be used as stationary powerplants away from coal mines. In 1776, Boulton said to Boswell, who was visiting him, "*I sell here, Sir, what all the world desires to have—power.*"

This historic technology advance initiated the First Machine Age with factories with power source not only free from the constraints of water and wind but also of magnitude unimaginably higher than animal, water and wind powers. For the first time in history power can be obtained reliably, independent of the capricious nature of water and wind. Power is where engine is, stationary ones or movable ones. Engine power augmented muscle power wherever engines and atmospheric engines are located—*separating* the power (that could drive factory machines) from the capricious nature. That was the beginning of the Second Industrial Revolution.

The Second Industrial Revolution would not be a complete revolution without another transformative technology, electricity. Most people give credit to Benjamin Franklin for discovering electricity. The invention of the electrochemical battery by Alessandro Volta in 1799 made possible the production of persistent electric currents. Hans Christian Orsted, and Andre-Marie Ampere separately, investigated electromagnetic interaction and described how electric currents through electromagnetic interaction could give rise to mechanical force and motion. It was Michael Faraday who discovered electromagnetic induction and demonstrated the phenomenon in the opposite direction, how motion through electromagnetic induction could give rise to electric currents. Thus, the production of power and motion could be used to generate electric currents, which could be transported over large distance with the invention of high voltage AC currents—separating the power from the engines. Central electricity powerplants now could power electric motors driving operations of factories, making possible for further *flexibility in siting* factories, which can be sited wherever within the reach of grid of a centralized powerplant.

All these machines, mechanical ones and electric ones, are fed with input of fuelenergy or electric energy and have specified output of work, or delivered heat energy, or delivered cold energy (i.e., heat removal), or value-added products. With defined input and output, and well-established relation between input and output, performance of the machines is defined in terms of efficiency; in the case of delivered heat-removal, "efficiency" is in the form of "coefficient of performance."

In the early 20th century, efficiency movement, a movement that sought to identify and eliminate waste, became the obsession of continuously improving operation in all areas of the economy and society [9]. The second law of thermodynamics and the concept of reversibility (and irreversibility as the cause of loss in efficiency) were the theoretical cornerstone of that movement. Augmenting human and animal muscle power [10] and improving in augmentation through continuous efficiency gain has been the reason for the singular transformation of the last three hundred years since the Enlightenment.

There is one category, however, that has so far escaped the reach of the Enlightenment and the success of science undergirded by the foundationalist worldview, the category of systems and complex systems. For example, a building is a complex system, the study of which has been greatly enhanced by computer simulation tool, such as DOE's *EnergyPlus.* But this new category is different in more fundamental way than just being more complex: they are systems instead of machines.

### **3. Buildings as examples of homeostatic thermal-systems**

Astrophysicist Emden published in *Nature* [11] a short article in the form of puzzle or riddle:

*Why do we have winter heating? The layman will answer: "To make the room warmer."* *Systems-Thinking Framework for Renewables-Powered World DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100438*

> *The student of thermodynamics will perhaps so express it: "To import the lacking (inner, thermal) energy." If so, then the layman's answer is right, the scientist's is wrong …*

Emden correctly perceived no intrinsic relation between the "lacking energy" and making the room "warmer." Yet, the issue of energy for building applications is universally addressed in terms of energy efficiency. The truth is that, absent of an input-and-output relation, energy efficiency is meaningless.

ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) noted in a 2013 study report, Whereas the United States has made significant progress in increasing efficiency and reducing energy use in the transportation and industrial sectors of the economy, both building sector energy use and building system energy use have shown only modest reductions, well below what building owners and government policy leaders have hoped for. Automobiles, aircraft systems, and locomotion systems have all shown efficiency improvements twice that of building systems … (ASME Integrated / Sustainable Building Equipment and Systems (ISBES) Open Research Forum (ORF-1) April 24, 2013 Washington, DC).

Neither the movement based on efficiency improvement nor the green-building movement has produced the result that have been the intense pursuit of the first two decades of the 21st century. There are two possible interpretations of this 2013 report conclusion of lacking of progress in building sector: (1) there is some fundamental misunderstanding of what a building is and, as a result of that, we fail to find effective building solutions; (2) building energy efficiency is the wrong metric as progress indicator so that talking about lacking of efficiency improvement is a red herring (see below for an alternative performance-metric).

Both interpretations are correct. The best way to decode the Emden riddle begins with the recognition that a building is not a machine and it is not designed to have a product output. Instead, a building is a system, the "design goal" of which is in keeping the state of its existence within homeostatic ranges, in particulate within a temperature range. "The scientist" and "the student of thermodynamics" are wrong because they have been trained in viewing every system as machine instead of real system—and the performance metric of every machine is in terms of efficiency.

Architects appreciate partially the point in this way: building conditioning should not be based on machine-based solutions failing to see a building as a system as a whole. Addressing the building conditioning problem, "Albert, Righter and Tittmann" characterized the solutions of the three centuries this way as shown in **Figure 2**. ART depicted a 19th century building offering minimal thermal comfort. In the 20th century, the building conditioning was handled by machines of the First Machine Age resulting in, as ART depicted, a messy, incoherent set of devices. The point is that the machine-based solutions were conceived without a plan for maintaining a building as a system as a whole. This practice continues today. In the third depiction, ART suggested the building being maintained by renewable energies managed with mechanical assistance—basically it suggested an architecturebased solution that are known as green building solutions by USGBC. While the eventual success of transitioning from mechanical-engineering solutions to greenbuilding solutions remains an open question, **Figure 2** correctly suggests that architectural societies and engineering (ASHRAE) societies need, in partnership, to look at buildings as systems, not machines.

Furthermore, the full implication of thinking in terms of systems must go beyond individual systems to think about both individual systems and how the individual systems, in the context of building systems, interact with each other and with "power-grid/powerplants-that-power-the-grid." Systems thinking is very much ecological thinking.

#### **Figure 2.**

*Evolution of building heating systems over three centuries: From architectural solutions to mechanicalengineering solution to machine-assisted green solutions.*

Electrical power is an energy carrier that can be powered by renewables. In recent years, wind power and solar electric power have become cost-wise competitive with traditional powers, and there is a consensus that electrification-of-everything is the best approach to achieve ultralow-carbon emission goal or zero-carbon emission goal—which is the ultimate objective of the current energy transition project.

Instead of being distracted with "increasing efficiency and reducing energy use in … building sector," we have the perfect performance-metric for building, *carbon emission.* A recent study of the application of such metric unveils a very interesting finding.

A typical electric grid is powered by a mix of generators: baseload powerplants of nuclear, coal, and hydro; natural gas electric-generators; wind farms and solar farms; fossil-fuel peak-stations. The carbon emission related to electricity generation/consumption is strongly dependent on the actual mixture of the generators with various types of fuel sources. The study, a doctoral thesis [12], is based on the 2019 (hourly) time series data of electricity generation/consumption by source fuel type (NY ISO [13]) for determining hourly *carbon intensity*,
