Click to enlarge
Spotted on the IET website, a series of really useful basic factsheets on CHP, Fuel Cells, Nuclear Power, Solar Power, Wind Power, Tidal Power, Hydroelectric Power and Biomass.
Have I mentioned before how much I love Theyworkforyou.com? Yes, I believe I have. Pinging into my inbox today a great Q&A regarding schools and BREEAM:
David Willets asks:
how many schools have completed the BREEAM schools assessment process; and what rating they have achieved?
Jim Knight replies:
The numbers of schools that have registered for BREEAM Schools certification now stands at 470 up from 347 in December 2006. Of these, 459 are currently undergoing assessment.
11 schools have now completed the assessment process; four in England and seven in Scotland. In England, two schools achieved a “good” rating, one a “pass” rating, and one a “very good” rating. All seven schools in Scotland achieved a “good” rating.
For your information, a ‘Very Good’ is between 55% and 70% and is the pre-requisite for capital funding under BSF (Building Schools for the Future). I’d love to know if the 3 in England which didn’t make the ‘Very Good’ grade got their funding (if it was applicable)? (The 7 schools in Scotland would not affected by BSF funding, although it is likely that the assessment was carried out for some funding requirement). And if anyone was held liable if they didn’t?
No-one’s got an ‘Excellent’ (over 70%) yet…
There’s some great work coming out of HEEPI (Higher Education Environmental Performance Improvement). I wrote about CEBenchbuild back in November and sustainable laboratories back in February.
They have now released some research on student residences here (.doc, 10 pages):
While the vast majority of buildings submitted were fossil fuel heated buildings, many universities still have a large number of electrically heated residences. The benchmark results indicate that the electrically heated buildings perform better overall than the fossil fuel heated buildings, and there is a smaller spread of results. One large factor for this better performance is the fact that electric heating facilitates the use of timers in student bedrooms. For example both Kings College and Queen Mary University all had electrically heated residences with electric panel heaters operated using timers. The advantages of well-insulated, electrically heated, buildings combined with timers includes:
• Popularity with students as they are able to control their own heating system;
• Popularity with residence managers, as they are easier to maintain;
• Popularity with financial directors, as they are generally cheaper to install and maintain than wet systems;
• Large energy savings because rooms are not heated while the student is out, or on holiday, and corridor heating can be eliminated, or be minimal;
• Energy savings because it avoids the common problem of students opening windows because residences are being over-heated.On a whole life basis, electric heating may therefore be superior to fossil fuel in both cost and energy consumption in well-insulated buildings. However, this is probably not the case for CO2 emissions when electricity is supplied from conventional sources. Of course, in the future there is the possibility that universities will switch to green electricity contracts, or install their own renewable electricity supplies, to overcome this disadvantage.
I’m slightly alarmed that electric heating isn’t renounced entirely. This passage could almost be used as ammunition in the case for electric heating, which I don’t believe is what the authors meant to do.
No mention is made of breeam:multi-residential which is the scheme which would cover student residences.
Vaguely related to the above, I’ve been reading a great blog: Aber Environment and Ethics. It’s good to get the student’s perspective of green issues from within campus.
I love graphical representations and during one of my ever frequent forays into the land of environmental economics (which still continues to intrigue me) I came across this model attributed to William Nordhaus whose work was used in the Stern Review. You can download a massive 87MB avi file or watch a rather jerky version on this page.
The G-Econ research project is devoted to developing a geophysically based data set on economic activity for the world. The current data set (GEcon 1.3) is now publicly available and covers “gross cell product” for all regions for 1990, which includes 27,500 terrestrial observations. The basic metric is the regional equivalent of gross domestic product. Gross cell product (GCP) is measured at a 1-degree longitude by 1-degree latitude resolution at a global scale.
The data is obviously a little old now, but still makes for fascinating viewing.
I’ve lost my rss feeds. Very remiss of me, but it means no rss feeds or emails have gone out since Wednesday. I just need to figure out what I’ve changed to make them disappear. Apologies in advance if this makes the site look a little odd at times over the weekend…
Fantastic interview with the guy who wrote possible the best kids books ever (His Dark Materials
In my pessimistic moments, I think we are all heading for a catastrophe in which the planet is just going to slough off about five billion of us. In my better moments, I remember other things I was worried about that just went away.
Yvette Cooper estimates we need between 2,500 and 4,500 qualified assessors. She sets out how much setting up HIPs has cost here (£11.7m total). Let’s remind ourselves why HIPs and EPC exist:
The Housing Act 2004 requires that a mandatory Home Information Pack (HIP) is put together on every home that comes to the market from June 1st 2007. Crucially, each pack will contain a mandatory Energy Performance Certificate (EPC).
What’s more, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) provides that an Energy Performance Certificate to be provided for all residential lettings no later than January 2009.
The Daily Mail reckons assessors will be earning up to £80,000 a year each. Connells Limited and LSL Property Services plc joint venture, energy-assessors.com reckons £50,000 a year.
200 companies have been set up to ‘cash in’ as the Daily Mail terms it. These are in general micro-independents or KTC*’s (kitchen table consultants). In addition, energy-assessors.com reckon they can provide 870 assessors.
www.energy-assessors.com personnel comprises 300 DEAs, 100 home inspectors, plus 470 chartered surveyors employed by LSL and Connells. Energy-assessors.com said it would also provide training for those wishing to become energy assessors.
In just 12 weeks and for £1,995 you too could be an assessor with them. Or opt to spend £3,250 with NHER (if you have no previous experience) or £2,750 if you are an experienced practioner. Again, it takes 12 weeks to get qualified. BRE will charge you £1,700 for their training.
Government has indicated that the only suitable qualifications will be the Home Inspectors Diploma (Level 4 VRQ) or a QCA approved Domestic Energy Assessors (DEA) qualification. It appears that three different awarding bodies; the Awarding Body in the Built Environment (ABBE), City & Guilds, and the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA), will be offering DEA qualifications. The ABBE was the first of these to be approved by QCA towards the end of December, City & Guilds launched on the 23rd January and the NAEA has been approved as of 31st January.
All of the training providers I have mentioned are registered with one or other of these qualifications, but as you can see there is a wide range of prices available. I’ve not managed to track down how much it would be just to turn up on the day of the exam without training, but it appears there’s a market developing in providing training, never mind the certificates themselves.
As Yvette Cooper keeps reiterating, the price of certificates will be set by ‘the market’. But with the market effectively sewn up with 1/3 of assessors under the same umbrella, is this somewhat compromised? I’m no economist, but I’m sure there must be a theory or name for this?
On a different note, Rat and Mouse have a slightly gloomy asssessment here, with very few of the public actually taking any notice of the proposed rating scheme given the buoyant property market, especially in London.
It looks like Wednesday’s budget (para 7.68) may have answered Yvette’s wish back in September for green mortgages to be linked to EPC’s:
Based on consultation with major banks and building societies, the Government anticipates that these measures and improved energy advice and information have the potential to create a market for ‘green’ financial products designed to help householders invest in energy efficiency and microgeneration installations.
It’s just 10 weeks until 1 June – fun and games ahead…
* “copyright”, JTB
A nice placeholder piece in Building with various green ‘gurus’. By placeholder, I mean it will be interesting to come back to in a few years time and see if things have moved on. I suspect the gurus all would have said pretty much the same things if asked the same questions 5 years ago.
What’s interesting is that Building have asked for a ‘technology tipped for success’. This in itself belies a belief that technology will ’save us’. Whilst fuel cells, CHP and biomimicry are all very ’sexy’, their impact is probably not as great as ensuring existing buildings operate as efficiently as possible within economic means. This of course lacks the same focal ‘hook’ that these new technologies have. It’s like the diet industry – ‘eat less and exercise more’ just isn’t as ‘publishable’ as the latest daft celebrity diet*.
Greenwash gets a pounding, and various myths are dispelled. I didn’t start this post meaning to come across quite so negative – I do agree with most of the sentiments in the article and have crossed paths with a few on the list. But given the pitch of this article, it could be some time yet before I need to retire the ’sustainability consultant’ title…
*I’ve compared fuel cells to a daft celebrity diet – I’m being somewhat flippant obviously…
This is doing the rounds of the blogosphere at the minute – a computer games company trying to recruit/poach staff by finding them via their blogs and then flattering them with a highly personal message on an iPod shuffle.
Two messages here – recruiting is really hard in our current climate – reminds me of the converse advice I saw in the nineties (when times were not so great) about pitching your CV on a bottle of champagne (now a very tacky idea).
Secondly, your online persona is a constant marketing tool for yourself. Think about how you present yourself online? If you don’t have a presence, potential employers bearing free gifts and massive flattery won’t be able to find you. And if you’re a soon to be graduate with a myspace page – what does it say about you? We’ve all got the ability to google you, you know (I’ve seen students blogging about their job offers and who they’ve been to interview with – either blindingly genius or dumb depending on your POV)
Apologies to all the folks who tried to leave comments over the past few days. Something went wrong with Feedblitz (which powers my email subscriptions) and it was redirecting comments to there. I’ve disabled the email subscription button on the side until I can work out how to fix it. If any geniuses out there can help – drop me a comment (now that you can again).
Current subscribers by email will continue to get the subscription, and if anyone wants to subscribe please use this link in the meantime.
I had a conversation with a new to blogging blogger over the weekend and we were comparing blogger (from google) to wordpress. We came to the conclusion that wordpress is to linux what blogger is to windows. Wordpress is great and it lets you reconfigure virtually anything, but a little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing.
As I keep demonstrating.
If anyone out there is dabbling in WP and therefore HTML and CSS I can’t recommend Sitepoint’s ‘Build Your Own Website The Right Way Using HTML & CSS‘ book enough – has saved my site on numerous occasions (even if it’s still not quite built the ‘right way’).
Recent Comments