Category Archives: facilities management

Changing our carbon footprint…

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Earlier this week the Government launched the draft Government and Industry Sustainable Construction Strategy for conusltation.Reducing on-site waste, using sustainable materials, and increasing skills in the workforce are just some of the 35 or so  targets set out for our industry, in a strategy that will undoubtedly have a profound impact on education, design, procurement, construction and facilities management.

The draft strategy’s key areas include:

  • Reducing the carbon footprint of activities within the construction sector
  • Production of zero net waste at construction site level
  • Developing voluntary agreements and initiatives between the construction industry and its clients with the aim of reducing the carbon footprint and use of resources within the built environment
  • Creating a safer industry by improving skills, boosting the numbers of workers taking part in training programmes, and retaining more skilled workers.

Stephen Timms, Minister for construction  said:

“The threat of global warming is of enormous concern to the community, and it demands change from Government, industry and the public alike.

“Currently the built environment accounts for around 47% of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK (Construction accounts for 1.5%). Not only must the construction industry rise to the challenge of reducing those emissions, it must also consider how it will adapt its products to deal with the impacts of unavoidable climate change.”

 Use your chance to comment – download the consultation document 

The 2010 Imperative – (NW Sustainability Network)

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Further to the NW sustainability network initial meeting this week, noted the following on the USA’s Arctitecture 2030 programme web site, the 2010 Imperative

How about carbon neutral campuses (campi?) for the NW by 2010 ???

To successfully impact global warming and world resource depletion, it is imperative that ecological literacy become a central tenet of design education. Yet today, the interdependent relationship between ecology and design is virtually absent in many professional curricula. To meet the immediate and future challenges facing our professions, a major transformation of the academic design community must begin today. To accomplish this, The 2010 Imperative calls upon this community to adopt the following:

Beginning in 2007, add to all design studio problems that:
“the design engage the environment in a way that dramatically reduces or eliminates the need for fossil fuel.”

By 2010, achieve complete ecological literacy in design education, including:

  • design / studio
  • history / theory
  • materials / technology
  • structures / construction
  • professional practice / ethics

By 2010, achieve a carbon-neutral design school campus by:

  • implementing sustainable design strategies (optional – LEED Platinum / 2010 rating)
  • generating on-site renewable power
  • purchasing green renewable energy and/or certified renewable energy credits (REC’s, Green Tags), 20% maximum

Building purple haze…

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The post to Worldchanging on green issues in New York City caught my eye over the weekend:

Around 85 percent of all the buildings that will exist in New York City in 25 years are already standing, according to reporter J. Alex Tarquino in this past Sunday’s edition of The New York Times. 80 percent of the city’s greenhouse gas pollution is created by building energy use — with residential buildings taking up about one-third of that energy.

So however advanced green building methods become, however energy-efficient, we’re going to make the biggest gains in cutting energy use — thus lowering particulate and greenhouse gas pollution — by transforming these older buildings.

Even though the New York way of living is inherently very energy-efficient, compared to other American cities or communities, we can do better, reports Tarquino:

The article makes a valid point of focusing equally on the facilities management aspect of the built enviroment as the construction.

There are so many figures around as to the built environments contribution to carbon and other ”greenhouse’ gases.

Sometimes it feels we are patting fog…do we really know? As Dave over at Carbon Coach has been pointing out for many years now…if carbon gases were purple then the sky would have changed colour in our lifetimes,  and we would be living in a purple haze now – but we would take action …but as its colourless…we don’t.

ithink comment – smoking ban – environmental timebomb?

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i-think has posted this thought provoking comment.  Log on to i-think to join the debate and comment.

The smoking ban has occasioned much debate from both the pro- and anti- camps, but now it seems that the new law could also lead to an unexpected environmental backlash.

A recent survey by British Gas asserts that the average gas-fired patio heater emits more CO2 per year than a Range Rover and the sudden upsurge in patio heaters, used to warm determined smokers who flock outside pubs for their much-needed cigarette breaks, could be drastically harming the environment.

Based on the usage of patio heaters in Scotland post its smoking ban in March 2006, British Gas estimates that now the whole of the UK is smoke-free patio heaters in pubs will emit up to 160,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.

According to Darren Johnson – Green Party member of the London assembly “each patio heater generates 2.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide on average per year – the equivalent to driving a car for over 6,000 miles”. In layman’s terms, some claim that patio heaters installed in pubs could produce as much carbon dioxide as a small city.

So what’s the alternative? Should the hardened smoker simply have to reach for another jumper, as the Lib Dem environmental spokesman Normal Baker has suggested? Or are these figures just a massive case of over-inflated scaremongering?

Carbon Footprint – definition – useful?

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Recently published paper from ISA-UK Research & Consulting, based in Durham looks at the commonly used term of ‘Carbon Footprint’

definition of ‘carbon footprint’.

The term ‘carbon footprint’ has become very popular over the last few years and is now in widespread public use. With climate change high up on the political and corporate agenda, carbon footprint assessments are in strong demand.

The paper suggests the following definition, which may be useful in understanding the carbon footprint of  the construction process, the building or facility itself as well as  the facilities management aspects.

“The carbon footprint is a measure of the exclusive total amount of carbon dioxide emissions that is directly and indirectly caused by an activity or is accumulated over the life stages of a product.”

(my italics)

In any case, all direct (on-site, internal) and indirect emissions (off-site, external, embodied, upstream, downstream) need to be taken into account.

download the paper from ISA UK here