Category Archives: News

understanding renewables

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Interesting to watch the reposnse to yesterdays article (Revealed:cover up plan on energy target) in the Guardian  with  a flurry or posts to blogs, letters, responses from government and eidtorials.

This is being well covered by Phil Clarke over at Sustainability Blog,

Strong stuff in Monday’s Guardian, where economics correspondent Ashley Seager takes the Government to task for its encouragement (or lack of it) of renewable technologies. He offers a stark contrast between us and Germany, where renewables now makes up 13% of all energy compared to our 4.6%. Seagar reckons we are tinkering at the edges with our botched low carbon buildings programme and the renewables obligation (RO)system, which requires energy producers to use a growing propertion of renewable sources. “Britain’s climate change strategy, such as it is, is crumbling,” he concludes.

What is evident is that a whole new environmental and energy economy is emerging that will have great importance for the built environment and its future energy usage strategies.

Builders attack green homes rule

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Reported on Guardian Unlimited today:

Housebuilders are trying to persuade the government to ditch a key policy designed to cut carbon emissions through constructing green homes.

Britain’s renewables industry and many local authorities are concerned that intense lobbying may have persuaded the government to rethink.

It is assumed the housebuilders in question do not include those commiteed to the 2016 Commitment to zero carbon housing (see Communities and Local Government website)

Need to rethink carbon offsetting?

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Recent reports that trees may not be the solution to carbon offsetting appeared a few days ago in Grist (Their bark is worst for our blight) and in Live Science (Trees may not fix global warming) may prompt a rethink of the carbon offsetting appraoch to addressing carbon reduction. This is based on 10 year research by scientists at Duke University,  North Carolina

So those projects and facilities looking to achieve carbon neutral or zero tragets through off setting need to be very confident the route they are taking is sound.

Although critical of carbon off putting, this report in WorldChanging, Rural Biogas, Global Carbon Market of a grass roots initiative gives inspiration, along the lines of a contraction and conevrgence approach which looks to be a more appropriate alternative to carbon off-putting

Time to commit

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2016 Commitment

Housing minister Yvette Cooper has urged house-builders, councils, and others to sign the 2016 Commitment to zero carbon housing.

More details on the Communities and Local Government website

List of signatories can be downloaded from here. A quick scan shows some 100 plus signatories to date – but none from the north west??

Time to make that commitment to working together and addressing the 2016 target challenge

The Earth fights back

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A real life 70’s style disaster movie script…

Never mind higher temperatures, climate change has a few nastier surprises in store. Bill McGuire says we can also expect more earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and tsunamis.

Guardian Unlimited
Tuesday August 7 2007

Affordable Zero Carbon Homes…

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The Cooperative Bank has teamed up with Living Space 21 to provide a new green solution to housing.  From the press release (7th August):

Co-operative Bank sponsors ground breaking green housing initiative

Tackling climate change and providing affordable housing for first time buyers are the biggest challenges facing the British housing market today. With this is mind; the Cooperative Bank has teamed up with Living Space 21, a new housing developer, to offer homes that are not only eco-friendly but, also within reach of those starting out on the property ladder.

This exciting new partnership directly addresses the Government’s promise to increase the UK’s house-building programme by 20%, which would provide an additional 3 million homes by 2020. Furthermore, with the Housing Green Paper 2007 setting targets to reduce property carbon emissions by 25% by 2010, these new homes, which have inbuilt eco features will be well placed to help meet this objective.

The eco benefits of these homes include timber frames, sourced from sustainable forests, rain water capture and recycling, plus sloped roofs which maximise solar efficiency. However, these features do not in any way comprise the quality or design of the build. The contemporary apartments have been designed by Living Space 21 and their pioneering building techniques enable them to be tailored to almost any location, leaving the lightest environmental footprint possible for the price.

Flood lessons to drive innovation?

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“We live in a culture in which developers and the construction industry are allowed to plunder the present, leaving everyone else to pay for tomorrow’s mess.”

Alan Simpson. MP (lab) for Nottingham South, writing in the Guardian (pour response) yesterday makes a strong case for our ‘built environment’ industry to learn real lessons from the floods, particulary from european practices.

He cites examples such as:

In the Ljburg district of Amsterdam, floating houses have been built. Not far away, on the floodplain of Maasbommel, the Dutch are building permanently floating and amphibious homes. Anchored to mooring piles rather than fixed into foundations, the concrete-based homes rise and fall with flood water levels. Wiring and sewage is ducted through the mooring piles. In the newest, changes in water level are used to generate electricity to make the houses energy self-sufficient.

Looking forward to the construction of the 3m homes, many of which will be on flood plain areas…we do need a radical, not step change, approach to housing design, and in doing so using lessons from the recent floods as a catalyst for delivering the sustainable home of the future.

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 

2030 – just when you thought …

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… meanwhile the following email posting from the USA Architecture 2030 programme makes sobering reading.

Architecture 2030:

Rapidly accelerating climate change (global warming), which is caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is now fueling dangerous regional and global environmental events. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration illustrates that buildings are responsible for almost half (48%) of all GHG emissions annually. Seventy-six percent of all electricity generated by US power plants goes to supply the Building Sector. Therefore, immediate action in the Building Sector is essential if we are to avoid hazardous climate change.

Just when we thought we were making a difference…

Wal-Mart, the largest “private” purchaser of electricity in the world is investing a half billion dollars to reduce the energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of their existing buildings by 20% over the next 7 years. “As one of the largest companies in the world, with an expanding global presence, environmental problems are our problems,” said CEO Lee Scott. The CO2 emissions from only one medium-sized coal-fired power plant, in just one month of operation each year, would negate Wal-Mart’s entire effort. Continue reading →

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