Paul Wilkinson over at BIW, brought his blog, Extranet Evolution, to my attention with an interesting piece on IT and sustainability, the “Draft Strategy for Sustainable Construction“, and the forth coming event in the Midlands, EMCBE Expo 2007 Construction Conference
Just announced through Building – Galliford Try and Affinity Sutton Group housing association have been selected by English Partnerships to jointly pioneer one of the first major carbon neutral developments in the UK. named as the preferred bidder on the planned redevelopment of the former Graylingwell hospital site in Chichester, Sussex, creating 800 carbon neutral homes.
See previous post on isite here
An interesting project to watch to see how much of the carbon reduction to neutral is achieved through offsetting and that achieved through real action in design, construction and technology
The recent Digging Beneath the Greenwash supplement in Building (page 30) carries an great definition of greenwash, a term often used on this blog.
Simply offset your carbon emissions with hot air emissions. Stick a picture of a giraffe on the cover of your annual report and inside be sure to point out that your company did not kill a single giraffe this year. Change the corporate logo to a fuzzy picture of a tree. Carry on as before.
Excellent
Attending a number of fringe events hosted by Climate Clinic at the conservative conference in Blackpool (because of the location not any political alliance) looking for hints as to the future treatment of the built environment left me slightly worried. Cutting through the rhetoric, I found very little conviction that politicians or advisors have a handle on dealing with our sector. There appears to be a blinkered approach with no joined up thinking.
Key themes I took away include
More political focus will be placed on the built environment sector as a tool to reduce overall carbon emissions. However this would seem to lead to more confusion as Merton Rules, Building Regulations, grants and subsides, etc get tampered with.
Mircopower, decentralised power suppliers and feed in tariffs are very popular. Interesting question though is how large scale green power schemes – such as wind and Severn barrier become environmental problems associated with centralised power
The Quality of Life group group paper Blueprint for a Green Economy from authors Goldsmith and Gummer is the mantra of the conservatives, with praise upon praise being heaped on to Zac Goldsmith every time the document was mentioned. Yet, this is a market driven approach, very close to Tory values that may well have contributed to where we are today, (for example ‘Construction companies must take the lead in ensuring new buildings are as green as possible,) and has a few striking omissions, such as biodiversity. Still worth reading …just in case. The highlights relating to buildings include:
Two non political comments I took away, which sums up the problems we face:
From Michael McCarthy, Environmental Editor of the Independent…“be clear: this is the ultimate political issue”
and from Sunand Prasad, President of the RIBA, who queried in the Quality of Life question time session whether this issue was too big to be political and requires some form of non, or a – political body to drive, to collect green taxes and make the ‘polluter pay’.
Listening and reading between the lines, and indeed one of the questions at the Quality of Life question time,was the difference between he Goldsmith-Gummer approach and those who feel the environment agenda has gone to far, notably the Redwood degulation camp. The question to the panel was for how long can both remain within a conservative party.
Leaving the event the most striking moment however was the fantastic sunset, in contrast to the high energy usage Blackpool Illuminations, just a reminder that the earth and nature is far superior and will out survive our messing it up, and how important nature and biodiversity etc are in the balance of our approaches. (Ok, a Gaia moment but hey…)
Tony Juniper sums up the conservative environmental approach from a Friends of the Earth view here – A Paler Shade of Green
Pleased to note the greenhouse project in Beeston Leeds as reported in Building today. (Work starts on UK’s first carbon negative project) Having had an office on the fringe of Beeston for about 10 years, it was an area that fascinated me, a built environment from another era, with most of the housing of 19th century stock, including what must be some of the last remaining small back-to-back terraces
The greenhouse project is billed as being carbon negative – rather than just carbon neutral. It is hoped this includes the construction processes as well as the use of the new homes, and NOT achieved through carbon offsetting but through real improvements in process, management and technology. I searched for a definition of carbon negative – but unable to find anything useful that was not linked to carbon off-putting, but for an excellent overview see this Worldchanging link
It is fascinating to see how far we have come from back to back housing
The rows of houses were literally built ‘back to back’ one room deep. The typical back to back house has three rooms, one above the other. The housing became renowned for squalor, disease and poverty due to its cramped design and poor sanitation.
“Our house is a three storey terrace with a common yard, a privy and wash house which we share with fifteen other families.”
(BBC)
There is an impressive series of fringe events being organised by Climate Clinic along side the conference next week in Blackpool. Of note is the Ask an Architect event on Monday and Tuesday, hosted by the RIBA, billed as
Get advice from some of Britain’s best green architects on creating new, environmentally friendly buildings or improving the energy performance of existing buildings. Understand the science of climate change and get advice from the science experts – Met Office Sustainable Energy Advice – learn about easy steps you can take to be more energy efficient – Energy Saving Trust
I am hoping to get to some of these events and will feedback through here.
Updated -comments here: conservatives, blackpool and the built environment
Details at Climate Clinic
Noticed this (free) Envirowise event in Loughborough on 30th Oct. Delighted to see David Hampton (Carbon Coach) is one of the speakers. I plan to attend and report back through here, and hopefully track down that elusive Construction Carbon Calculator.
For Lancashire Best Practice Club members – this is the type of event we need to host here in Lancs. I will investigate.
…. to run a 100-watt light bulb 24 hours a day for a year?
Came across the useful – and frightening – link on How Stuff Works. Take a look – the answer is a lot and a lot of carbon emissions as a by product.
Timely as news from the government to phase out traditional light bulbs. But why wait till 2012 – they are already yesterdays news in Australia and elsewhere.
Greenpeace director John Sauven, reported in the Guardian, said: “For every year of delay in getting rid of these bulbs, 5m tonnes of CO2 are emitted into the atmosphere unnecessarily.”
I have mentioned the Architecture 2030 programme here before. (An American programme to reduce carbon levels in construction and use of ALL buildings by 2030, 5 years ahead of the predicted point of irreversible damage when carbon emissions are predicted to hit 450ppm – they are currently at 380 something.)
Architecture 2030 is very focused on removing existing and halting planned coal power plants in the states ( and elsewhere) as the single biggest contribution we can make.
Today they placed a full page ad in the New York Times. Although obviously focusing on the states the ad carries some strong messages for the built environment generally.
Have we, here in the UK , stopped to think of the relationship between coal power stations, our built environment, and the use of energy within buildings that continues to ‘justify’ the continuation of these power stations to generate electricity. Just think of our typical night time cityscapes – illumination from empty buildings, lighting and other unnecessary illuminations, nearly all pulling power from coal power stations, and thereby needlessly increasing carbon emissions.
According to the BAA Campaign for dark skies – the amount of additional carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere due to inefficient UK street-lights in the last 12 month is 540,271 tonnes. (That’s the British Astronomical Association . not the other BAA). (and that’s just street lights?)
Noted the new American based Triple Bottom Line blog – and claims to keep CSR managers and sustainability professionals up-to-date on current issues, provide analysis and advice, highlight practical resources, and encourage a dynamic conversation about the challenges and opportunities of sustainability. One to watch. It does have an RSS!
Fairsnape 