Sustainability
More on activism
Ever noticed when you start thinking about a word or a topic, it starts popping up everywhere? Found this great discussion over at Ann Thorpe’s blog:
Within the professional design framework there is little space for activism. At best, designers can legitimize activism by finding “win-win” solutions that meet client profit-making needs while also addressing social [...]
Is Chris Cole the highest paid CIBSE engineer?
Doing some research and I came across the wonderfully voyeuristic Business Week Company Insight Centre.
After the news of Zaha Hadid awarding herself £725,000 on a turnover of just over £10m I thought I’d see what the rest of the industry was up to.
I was surprised to learn to learn that WSP CEO Chris Cole is a [...]
Engineers - a protected species - part deux
Remember about a year ago there was an epetition floating around regarding the use of the word engineer?
Because I signed up to the petition (along with 1,726 others), I received the response in my email. I’ve copied it out in full in case anyone’s too lazy to click through. [...]
Plan B 2.0
Has anybody read this yet? Lester Brown’s book (free ebook download at the link) has been sitting on my to-do list forever (since April 2006 at least - oops!) and rather than wait to read it myself, I thought I’d share it with you all in the hope that someone will read, dissect and point all the [...]
I will survive…
After the serious note yesterday - some silliness. Rob Annable over at no2self has some coffee-snortling funny lyrics to the tune of I will survive:
Were you the one who tried to break me with your RFIs
you think I’d crumble you think I’d lay down and die?
New look, nearly New Year
As you can see, if you are not one of my 50 odd subscribers by RSS (at last folks seem to be catching onto the joy of RSS), I’ve changed the look of the blog (again). If you are one of my 50 odd subscribers, thank you and please stop by and have a poke [...]
Interactive map of UK renewable energy locations
Since August 2006 this resource has been available and I failed to mention it until now. http://maps.restats.org.uk
From the press release: The collection of renewable energy statistics - began in 1989 via a project carried out by ETSU (now FES - a part of AEA Technology Environment) on behalf of the UK Department of Trade and [...]
One definition of a zero carbon development
There is a wealth of information available at the LEP website including ‘Towards Zero Carbon Developments’ (pdf 108 pages from July 2006). The document proposes a definition of a zero carbon development as:
A zero carbon development is one that achieves zero net carbon emissions from energy use [...]
Insurance companies taking notice of climate change
(another slightly out of date post - I liked my point about nat vent buildings though, so I’ve posted it anyway)
Via It’s the Environment, Stupid evidence Allianz/WWF (October 2006, pdf, 46 pages) plus Lloyd’s (pdf, 17 pages) are taking notice of climate change.
The only overt reference to the built environment within the Lloyd’s report is [...]
Most credible environmental assessment method?
This is woefully out of date, but the report is still worth a read.
According to the General Services Administration (GSA) in the US, LEED beats BREEAM, CASBEE, GBTools and Green Globes US, as reported in ACHR News on 12 October 2006 and USGBC 27 September 2006. Reasons given are:
LEED applies to all GSA project [...]
