Elemental

These are my links for January 10th through January 14th:

• Why do architects earn less than other professionals? – BD Resource – Going back 50 years or so, architects used to have similar earning power to lawyers and medics, but we seem to have gradually painted ourselves out of the picture for clients. We wanted to focus on the interesting design bits. We didn’t want to “do money”, which led to the rise of the QS in advising and controlling costs for the clients. We were less interested in the management of projects, which led to the project manager becoming the client’s agent. All the so-called boring technical bits we delegated to technicians, technologists and engineers. No wonder clients now put far less value on what architects do.
• Building4Change : M&S backs A rated appliances and Code level 4 – Quite a commitment!: "High street retailer Marks and Spencer is incorporating energy efficient domestic appliances and building to level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes into its home insurance policy. If a property is damaged severely and warrants a total rebuild, properties will be rebuilt in line with the Code for Sustainable Homes level 4."
• Completion date scrapped for Masdar eco-city – Building – "Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s clean energy firm, has abandoned the final completion date of 2016 for its pioneering £13bn desert eco-city project.
  Initiated in 2006, Masdar City was billed as the world’s first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city. At the city’s groundbreaking ceremony in 2008 a completion date of 2016 was announced, but this has now been scrapped.
  The first stage of the project will be finished by 2013, with a new date of 2020 set for Masdar City to have a critical mass of residents and businesses."
• Ex-Llewelyn Davies Yeang team on move again | News | Architects Journal – Llewelyn Davies Yeang’s (LDY) former masterplanning unit has been sold on for the second time in two years
  The 13-strong team, which was offloaded by LDY in February 2008 to consulting giant the Tribal Group, has joined multi-disciplinary design and engineering outfit Scott Wilson.
• ASHRAE Standard 189.1 The Standard for the Design of High-Performance, Green Buildings – "Standard 189.1P, once published, will provide a ‘total building sustainability package’ for those who strive to design, build and operate green buildings. From site location to energy use to recycling, this standard will set the foundation for green buildings through its adoption into local codes. The Standard for the Design of High-Performance, Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, is being developed by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) in conjunction with the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The standard is slated to be the first code-intended commercial green building standard in the United States when published early in 2010. It covers key topic areas similar to green building rating systems: site sustainability, water use efficiency, energy efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and the building’s impact on the atmosphere, materials and resources."
• Green, not grand – "Environmental concerns are no longer being overlooked by many developers, who have begun to take advantage of the politically correct, socially responsible image that being "green" provides, especially to attract multinational tenants. To prove their buildings are environmentally friendly, design professionals are beginning to adopt standards from the United States for "green" buildings, such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, an internationally recognized rating system designed by the US Green Building Council. LEED certification is meant to verify that buildings are energy and water efficient, have low CO2 emissions, and utilize local resources that use smaller amounts of energy to create and transport. "

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These are my links for December 8th through December 10th:

• ASHRAE’s Building Energy Quotient building labeling program – ASHRAE's BEQ (roughly equivalent to DEC) continues to be developed.
• The Language of Sustainability: Why Words Matter | GreenBiz.com – Communicating sustainability: "Provide context for "sustainability," in that it means the ability to continue into the indefinite future by respecting the Earth's ecosystems, its limits, and providing space for the other beings on the planet to exist. Otherwise, we create perverse concepts like sustainable growth, as if we can continue unlimited growth in the face of limits."
• The Greenest Brick is the One That’s Already in the Wall : TreeHugger – Great point: "He understands also that while a sustainable building must be durable, flexible and frugal, it must first be lovable,
  "because it does not matter how efficiently the building performs if it is demolished and carted off to the landfill in a generation or two because it cannot be loved."
• Climate Change | Housing | Quarter-Acre Block – "But relatively high densities have little to do with the use of sustainable transport. The best performer is the Canadian capital, Ottawa, which is much less dense than Los Angeles and about the same as Melbourne. Brisbane has barely half Melbourne's density and a third that of Los Angeles, but use of sustainable transport is similar to Melbourne and more than twice the level in LA.
  Sustainable transport use has more to do with transport policy than density, which is excellent news for anyone concerned about the environment. It would take many decades and vast expense to substantially change the density of a city of 4 million people, and we don't have that much time. Climate change and insecure oil supplies are urgent problems, and we need solutions now. Fortunately, transport policies can be changed more quickly and with less disruption than urban form, so we might be able to keep our leafy suburbs and still save the planet."
• Homophily « twopointouch – Something often on my mind. Tricky: "Often, when I read blogs and tweets, I know that the person writing is doing so because it in some way amplifies or enhances their professional career. A lot of people I connect with are consultants of some description in their jobs. Their job is to be wise and right. That makes them lovely people, by and large, but there are arguably downsides. It can very often have the side-effect of meaning that they are never going to go out on a limb or wish to seem controversial. It’s also a job where you need people to want to work with you, so you won’t go around telling potential clients or collaborators that they’re wrong."
• House 2.0: The Copenhagen Blues – Great article from Mark Brinkley: ”Milliband minor answered thus: “By 2050, our economies will be six or seven times larger than they are now, and so we must ensure that all that growth is low or zero carbon growth.”
  I took a proverbial double take. Six or seven times bigger than 2010? That assumes something like a 10% annual growth rate every year for 40 years. And yet carbon emissions are due to fall by 80% by that time. Just how is that going to work?
  Historically, economic growth has been fuelled by carbon – almost every innovation we come up with involves substituting machines for human labour, which involves burning carbon somewhere along the line. Now we may be able to make machines which are less carbon intensive, but do you really think we will be able to get to zero carbon by 2050 whilst at the same time expanding the world economy by six or seven times?"

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These are my links for September 25th through October 1st:

• "Passive" Heating and Cooling Is a Misnomer. It’s Active. : TreeHugger – "there are 36 Billion square feet of non-residential buildings from the 50s through the 80s that need to be retrofitted and greened. It ain't going to be easy."
• AIArchitect This Week | Buildings Brought to Life: The First Project to Meet the Living Building Challenge Is Only Months Away – "For a building to meet the Living Building Challenge it must consume net-zero energy and water. It must produce net-zero waste. It must choose an ecologically responsible site and maintain it. Inherently unsustainable materials (like lead, mercury, and formaldehyde) are not allowed, and there’s a limited radius from which materials can be transported to the building site during construction. Indoor air quality must be maintained, and, among many other requirements, all of these sustainability features must be featured in educational materials and programs at the building. Since the challenge was formulated in 2006, no building has met it."
• Don’t Underestimate the Power of Information in Pursuing Sustainability | GreenerBuildings.com – "The Energy Passport is a related idea that could be implemented much more easily. Conceived in the early '90s by Dr. Yuri Matrosov of the Moscow Center for Energy Efficiency (CENEf), Energy Passport programs were first adopted in Moscow, then in Germany, which is now pushing for it to be implemented in the EU as a whole.
  The initial Energy Passport is based on modeled energy use and then actual energy use is compared each year with predicted use, which then could be accessed by tenants and others. Clearly, comparing actual energy use with predicted energy use, as well as consumption trends over time, would give designers and developers an incentive to get the prediction right in the first place (parenthetical note, without clear modeling rules it is shockingly easy to game the results of energy models), as well as provide a clear benchmark for operators to manage their buildings more closely."
• Glass Industry Raises Concerns Over ASHRAE 90.1 Revisions That Could Reduce the Use of Glass in Nonresidential Buildings – Impact of potential changes to prescriptive route for ASHRAE 90.1 (similar to old elemental method for Part L) for glazing: "The proposal does not recognize or accommodate the need for different glazing solutions across climate zones. It is a "one size fits all" approach and will limit the glazing choice to a small range of high transmission, clear low-E glazings. They are not the appropriate products in all climate zones, especially the Southern cooling-dominated climates because of the sunlight intensity. Use of such high transmission glass in those climate zones will likely result in greater use of blinds resulting in increasing lighting energy usage.
  …There is only limited possibility for saving energy in buildings unless the space also includes automatic daylighting controls. Even with recent proposals, daylighting controls are only required in rooms where the "primary side-lighted area" is less than 1,000 square feet. …"
• How to keep your mouth shut « Scott Berkun – Oh, I have been here many times. Like Scott, I'm recovering ;o). Read the whole post: "But then later on, in a new job at Microsoft in a group known as MSTE, I discovered a world of dysfunction, despair and passive/aggression. No one spoke their mind in public. Few people worked hard or asked tough questions. Quality of work, and morale, was low. So I soon felt obligated to mention these facts as often and as loudly as possible to leadership. I even expected to be rewarded for telling people how bad things were. Why wouldn’t they want to hear this? I thought.
  Before I knew it, I was that guy. The guy who always complains."
• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
• Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment » Blog Archive » Ethics and the Built Environment (by Jon de Souza) – If consultants only get involved at the Jus in Bello stage, is it ethical to build immoral buildings? Waiting avidly for part 2: "At present, the discussions about ethical behaviours in construction largely consider what happens after a decision has been taken to construct – the Jus In Buildo stage if you will. (Told you). What is missing is consideration of that former stage – the question asked is “can we build it”, but not “should we”. This seems to chime with our view of the world – that there are some things that simply shouldn’t be built. I mean, can any of us really morally defend snow domes in Dubai?"
• UK notches strong gains in renewable capacity in 2008 – Politics – Renewable energy news – Recharge – wind, solar, biofuels, wave/tidal/hydro and geothermal – "The UK’s installed renewable generation capacity surged 19% in 2008, thanks largely to a 727 megawatt (MW) increase in onshore wind capacity and a 192MW boost in offshore wind, according to new government statistics.
  At the same time, the amount of electricity produced from renewables in the UK rose a more modest 10%, to 21.6 gigawatt hours (GWh)."

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These are my links for July 26th through July 27th:

• International Green Construction Code (IGCC) Now in the Works| News | Architectural Record – International in the same way the World Series is a global baseball competition: "On June 29, the American Institute of Architects, along with the International Code Council (ICC) and the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), announced their intent to create an International Green Construction Code (IGCC).
  The new code aims to cover all aspects of sustainability in the built environment, from roofing to ventilation strategies, drawing from existing codes and standards to create one universal code. The code will apply to new construction and renovations. “We hope this will bring all of the separate efforts together and put them under one umbrella to make it easier for jurisdictions to know what they are adopting,” says Adolf Zubia, ICC board president."
• CBI climate change progress tracker. CBI on climate change. – Climate change remains one of the most critical issues affecting the UK, but in tough economic times it is at clear risk of slipping down the political agenda. Urgent action to cut emissions must be delivered if we are to hit government emissions reduction targets, ensure a future independent supply of energy, and manage rising energy costs.
  The CBI’s Climate Change Tracker is a tool developed by the CBI to track progress against the priorities set out in the CBI’s 2007 climate change report, Climate change: everyone’s business.
  The Tracker benchmarks the progress of the priorities for action set out in the report, focusing on the immediate decisions and delivery needed up to 2010.
• Dubai development may be down, but it’s not out – Los Angeles Times – Fascinating and scary article on Dubai: "In the heart of most cities, the biggest piece of land that a single developer is typically able to control is one square block. …In Dubai, whole districts of the city, many covering dozens of square blocks and hundreds of acres, have been given over to single developments. Seeing architectural diversity within any project as a threat to the bottom line, their creators usually hire a single firm to design them around a recognizable theme…
  The result is a surprising twist on the privatization of cities like Los Angeles, where public space is notoriously scarce. In the privatized city, as the well-known critique goes, people aren't forced to mix with people who are different from themselves. They are hidden from that interaction inside their private cars and gated developments. … In Dubai, remarkably enough, the same is true for buildings, which tend to cluster together with other pieces of architecture just like them."
• Property’s Quangocracy – Property Week – Excellent dissection of the RDA's and their spending. MIPIM anyone?
• Charter of the New Urbanism | Congress for the New Urbanism – My Jane Jacobs obsession has lead me to the doors of New Urbanism and their charter. With LEED-ND and BREEAM Communities rearing their heads, time to get to grips with New Urbanism and what the future holds…
• Frank Gruber: New Urbanism: Very Misunderstood – "New Urbanism, although it has antecedents in mid-century voices (such as that of Jane Jacobs) …is a movement that arose in the 1980s among architects upset not only with the decline of the quality of the built environment but also with the failure they perceived of the profession of architecture to pay attention to the spaces between buildings and the larger urban or regional context…
  New Urbanists are attacked from both sides of America's cultural divide. Chances are, if you mention New Urbanism to group of forward thinking, contemporary design professionals, whether architects or planners, they will roll their eyes. To them New Urbanism, …is a facilitator of sprawl, not a solution. …New Urbanism is hopelessly nostalgic.
  But if you find yourself among a group of conservatives or libertarians, … you'll just as likely unleash a denunciation on the grounds that New Urbanism aims to thwart the natural desire of Americans to live in a single-family house on a cul-de-sac."
• Media library · Town and Country Planning Association – "Leading planning and housing charity, the Town and Country Planning Association(TCPA) will celebrate its 110th AGM today by publishing a Manifesto for the 21st Century. The Association’s vision – Towns and Countryside for a New Age of Challenge – sets out a new set of aspirations which directly address today’s challenges of climate change, globalisation and social justice.
  The TCPA’s Manifesto comprises four main elements: choice and diversity; cities and the larger task; a revitalised countryside; and networks of cities, towns and villages."
• The Effect of the Recession on Partnering in the Construction Sector – Excellent presentation from Don Ward, which he presented at the AEC networking meeting at the Building Centre last week. Slides 31/32 hold key messages for me. A lower price for the client does not necessarily have to eat into our profit margins (and in fact, shouldn't – we all need to make money).
• Real Time Carbon – I love this – I have a great deal of time for anything coming out of AMEE : "Until now, anyone trying to understand the carbon impact of the electricity they use has only had a single static Government conversion factor. The factor – currently 527 grams CO2 per kWh of electricity – is updated only a few times a year.
  The standard figure is based on a number of assumptions about the mix of energy used to generate electricity – the "generation mix". It tells consumers nothing about the carbon intensity of electricity at a given time.
  Real Time Carbon wants to help energy users see the real-time carbon intensity of electricity so they can avoid consuming at times of high emissions. We look forward to a time when appliances, buildings and factories automatically manage demand according to the carbon being released."
• Our Seven Commitments – Royal Town Planning Institute – Interesting work from RTPI, but it feels a little late? Interested to find out how they do with no.1, behavioural change, and good to see it isn't a "cast-in-stone" mainfesto : "The seven commitments are supported by a living and continuously improved action plan that will deliver practical outcomes, benefiting communities at the global and the local scale."
• U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu: “Global Warming Is the Greatest Challenge Facing Science” « The Dirt – "In the case of energy-efficient buildings, Chu argued local knowledge drives local building development, and needs to be updated to ensure best practices in energy-efficient buildings quickly go global. ”Buildings are local. We don’t ship buildings to Denmark.” He described the type of knowledge needed for creating energy-efficient buildings as a sort of “hands-on,” practitioner’s knowledge –”it’s like a gardener’s craft or like those who know how to cook well.” Still, he thinks it is possible to “teach each other how to capture carbon, how to create more energy-efficient buildings.” To those who argue that any intellectual property (IP) transferred overseas should be protected, Chu added “it’s not about intellectual property (IP), it’s about people.” He also argued that the case for energy efficient buildings is economic — highly energy-efficient buildings can reduce current energy consumption by four-to-five times, putting “more money into people’s pockets.”"
• Ch 13 Page 79: Sustainable Energy – without the hot air – From David MacKay's excellent book:"“it’s better to drive than to walk.” Whether this is true depends on your diet. It’s certainly possible to find food whose fossil-fuel energy footprint is bigger than the energy delivered to the human. … According to a study from the University of Exeter, the typical diet has an embodied energy of roughly 6 kWh per kWh eaten. To figure out whether driving a car or walking uses less energy, we need to know the transport efficiency of each mode. For the typical car …, the energy cost was 80 kWh per 100 km. Walking uses a net energy of 3.6 kWh per 100 km – 22 times less. So if you live entirely on food whose footprint is greater than 22 kWh per kWh then, yes, the energy cost of getting you from A to B in a fossil-fuel-powered vehicle is less than if you go under your own steam. But if you have a typical diet (6 kWh per kWh) then “it’s better to drive than to walk” is a myth. Walking uses one quarter as much energy."
• DOE: Building Energy Codes – News Item – "The decision to create the joint publication resulted from the recent legislation passed by the U.S. Congress, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). The Act establishes an energy efficiency goal of 90 percent compliance with the 2009 IECC and Standard 90.1-2007 in all 50 states by 2017. In establishing this goal, the Federal legislation recognizes the 2009 IECC and Standard 90.1-2007 as the energy efficiency benchmarks for residential and commercial buildings.
  Because the ICC and ASHRAE documents complement each other, publishing them in one book benefits architects, designers, engineers, and code officials. It makes it easier to choose between design options, and helps make sure new and renovated buildings are in compliance with the latest references and local building safety codes."
• Bad British Architecture: BLAR MHOR HOUSING IN CAOL, FORT WILLIAM BY ARCHIAL FOR LORNE DEVELOPMENTS – Very quickly, a firm favourite on my blogroll. Ghost of Nairn in acerbic form as usual: "One helpful rule of thumb, from Nairn to you. When someone presents a masterplan with a perimeter of a line of trees, it means they're trying to hide something. Do not trust these people."

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These are my links for July 1st from 08:46 to 13:54:

• Quarterly Energy Prices – BIS – "Quarterly Energy Prices is DECC's publication covering energy prices. It includes data formerly included in ‘Energy Trends’ (Tables 26 to 30) and the ‘Digest of UK Energy Statistics’ (Chapter 9).
  It contains tables, charts and commentary on industrial, domestic and international prices. "
• ASHRAE Unveils Design of New Building Energy Label – CoStar Group – ASHRAE unveil details of BEQ (Building Energy Quotient), very similar to DEC's: "as many expected, the prototype borrows heavily from the U.K.’s Display Energy Certificate, an energy label that is required for some buildings in England and Wales. Unveiled Saturday by Harrison, it grades energy efficiency on a color-coded letter scale from “A+” to “F”, with the highest grade reserved for net-zero energy buildings."
• BRE :: News – Convergance in standards continues: "These developments will be in line with the work on common metrics which is being undertaken by BRE Global, CSTB and other major organizations such as DGnB, VTT, NIST, ITC-CNR and FCAV within the SB Alliance, as well as the common carbon measurement to be established between BREEAM, LEED, and Green-Star currently being led by BRE Global."

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I’ve been geeking out over my gorgeous faux leather hard bound copy of the 2009 Ashrae Handbook – Fundamentals (SI units) which recently arrived in the post. One of  the perks of ASHRAE membership is an updated copy every year of one of the handbooks on a rolling schedule (something CIBSE have started to do too in recent years).

Anyway, in this year’s tome is a new chapter – Chapter 35 SUSTAINABILITY. Under ‘Characteristics of Sustainability’ is a clarifying few paragraphs on the difference between green and sustainable buildings. For reference:

Sustainability Addresses the Future

Sustainability is focused on the distant future (e.g., 30 to 50 years). Any actions taken under the name of sustainability must address the impact of present actions on conditions likely to prevail in that future time frame.

In designing the built environment, the emphasis has often been on the present or the near future, usually in the form of capital- or first-cost impact. As is apparent when life-cycle costing analysis is applied, capital cost assumes less importance the longer the future period under consideration.

This emphasis on the distant future can differentiate sustainable design from green design. Whereas green design addresses many of the same characteristics as sustainable design, it may also emphasise near-term impacts such as indoor environmental quality, operation and maintenance features, and meeting current client needs. This, green design may focus more on the immediate future (i.e. starting when the building is first constructed and then occupied). Sustainable design is of paramount importance to the global environment in the long-term while still incorporating features of green design that focus on the present and near future.

An interesting way to slice the problem, and makes me realise (by this definition, at least), most of the stuff that I am most interested in is green design, rather than sustainable design, occupant comfort being my raison d’etre. The chapter goes on to point out that HVAC&R engineers cannot by themselves create global sustainability (however, we all need to do our bit and encourage as many others as possible), and that sustainability has many contributors, is comprehensive and that technology plays only a partial role.

As green building rating systems continue to converge (BREEAM and LEED), I find a growing interest in keeping up to date with ASHRAE, which I have always found more ‘engineery’ than CIBSE (in that their technical guidance seems to have many more equations than CIBSE).

Given ASHRAE’s definition, which rating system is more sustainable (rather than green) – LEED or BREEAM? Something I’ll poder a while longer…

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These are my links for February 7th through February 27th:

• Why and how I blog « Robert Kyriakides’s Weblog – Great post from Robert explaining how he manages to blog so prolifically.
• Expedition’s blog » Think Up Mondays – Chris Wise et al are trying to create something useful out of the recession: "For one year, the employees of Expedition will be dedicating their Monday’s to thinking. Thinking about thinking, thinking about what we do, thinking about how we do it, and why. Think Up, the impetus behind this year of Mondays, is an educational company formed within the auspices of the Useful Simple Trust. The remit is large, but so is the ambition: to use the opportunity that the economic downturn has presented us with to think up a new raison d’etre, and modus operandi as engineers, and to train ourselves into shape."
• Study shows 30% above ASHRAE energy efficiency difficult to reach in buidlings, 50% unreachable- 2/24/2009 12:16:00 PM – Building Design & Construction – "Findings show that although significant energy efficiencies can be achieved (varying by climate zone), reaching a 30 percent reduction above the ASHRAE standard is not feasible using common design approaches and would exceed a 10-year payback. The study concluded that achieving a 50 percent reduction above the standard is not currently reachable. "
• buildoffsite – An industry-wide campaigning organisation that promotes greater uptake of offsite techniques by UK construction.
  Buildoffsite is an alliance of clients, developers, designers, contractors, manufacturers, suppliers, government, advisors and researchers.
  Goal – A ten-fold step-change by 2020 achieving a 100% increase by 2010
• Summary — ManuBuild – "The ManuBuild vision is of a future where customers will be able to purchase high quality, manufactured buildings having a high degree of design flexibility and at low cost compared to today. For the first time, inspirational unconstrained building design will be combined with highly efficient industrialised production.
  ManuBuild targets a radical breakthrough from the current "craft and resource-based construction" to "Open Building Manufacturing", combining ultra-efficient (ambient) manufacturing in factories and on sites with an open system for products and components offering diversity of supply in the market. "
• Passive design primer for offices – Building Sustainable Design – Excellent article from an ex-colleague, Doug King: "Finally, I’d like to introduce the idea of “passive survivability”. This is a concept that will become far more important as we start to feel the pinch of declining fossil fuel resources and over-stretched utility infrastructure. One of the first effects of energy demand exceeding supply will be rolling power cuts, as happened in London’s West End during July 2006. While some businesses may be able to operate with emergency generators, for many the impact could be catastrophic as deep plan buildings will be uninhabitable without artificial lighting and ventilation. Some buildings may have to shut down during the power cuts and for a business, having sent staff home, a whole day’s production may be lost. Passive buildings, on the other hand, should continue to be habitable, albeit with reduced comfort levels, and the backup power supply will only be required to maintain the office equipment."
• Le Corbusier – creator of the modern world – Times Online – Great article – I have an aversion to Le Corb after my history of architecture lectures at Leeds Uni, but I'll be pottering off to the Barbican with every other architect and engineer in the UK in the next few months…
• BREEAM: In USE – The successor to the old BREEAM M&O assessment (management and operation) – In Use, has been announced. No sight of the manual yet, so can't really comment. Looks like it will tie up with DEC's…
• What if Jane Jacobs had directed "Slumdog"? | Congress for the New Urbanism – "Despite their appearance of mess and squalor (and struggles with sewage and public health), the world's major ghettoes are in some ways quite green. Residents often live where they work, rolling up sleeping mats each morning and dispensing with petroleum-fueled commutes. Even garbage is picked clean of all reparable items or tradable commodities, making places like Dharavi the world's ultimate recyclers."
• Architecture: Stephen Bayley discerns the shape of things to come | Art and design | The Observer – "The UK's first Passive House, designed by Bere Architects, is now being built in Camden, North London. It will, perhaps, be a little bit like living on the Northern Line: what fresh air there may be is pre-heated through subterranean channels. Other problems? Ecological perfection will demand a quality of detailing hitherto unknown to our native builders. And there will be no flinging open the windows to greet the new green dawn. That way you squander your patiently retained heat."
• Wind turbines on Bahrain WTC start turning – "The BWTC's turbines are predicted to provide 11-15% of the power needed to operate the offices of the 50 storey twin towers."
• 5 Emerging trends from the recession | Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist – "Generation X is the first generation in the US ever that will earn less than their parents. And Generation Y has an incredible amount of debt due to baby boomers pushing up college costs and housing costs while real wages went down."
• Meteonorm – Global Solar Radiation Database – What is it? – METEONORM 6.1 (Edition 2009) is a comprehensive meteorological reference, incorporating a catalogue of meteorological data and calculation procedures for solar applications and system design at any desired location in the world. It is based on over 23 years of experience in the development of meteorological databases for energy applications.
  METEONORM addresses engineers, architects, teachers, planners and anyone interested in solar energy and climatology.
• Imagine – "‘Imagine’ is a database which captures school design best practice from around the world.
  Architects and researchers from the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield [BDR] have conducted a critical analysis of over 150 schools, highlighting excellence in design according to different themes. It considers integrated ICT, environmental design and flexibility for space and learning.
  This resource is aimed at providing inspiration for creating innovative teaching and learning environments called for by the Government’s Building Schools for the Future initiative. Research for this database is sponsored by Balfour Beatty Education and Partnerships for Schools. New research is conducted every three months to ensure the database is kept up-to-date and topical."
• Building Enclosure Technology and Environment Council (BETEC) – JBED: Journal of Building Enclosure Design – Free pdf's of back issues of this US/Canadian publication are available here. In Winter 2007 issue there is a good article on the UK experience of air tightness from Nigel Potter of BSRIA. Lots of good data scattered throughout the issues.
• Unversity funding will be linked to their carbon performance | Education | The Guardian – via lagavulin: "From 2011, Hefce will link the money it doles out for capital projects to universities' carbon performance. The smaller the reduction in carbon, the less funding they will get."

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I felt a little guilty for picking on CIBSE in my last post, so I thought I’d check out the competition across the pond: ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers – almost as snappy a title as Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers).

I’ll give them top marks for having some podcasts available (at a price), but still no RSS, XML or even a way to sign up to the news page.

I did however find a great document called ‘Green Tips‘ (pdf) which could prove useful.

I was surprised that ASHRAE has only 50,000 members – I believe CIBSE has 17,000 which is comparable given the population of the UK vs. population of US.

So I went off on a tangent and wondered where else would have a comparable body – Australia! From what I can gather AIRAH (Australia Institute of Refrigeration Air Conditioning and Heating) is the equivalent of ASHRAE and closely collaborates with it.  This surprised me as CIBSE has a (small) presence in Australia. AIRAH has a membership of around 10,000. What I liked about AIRAH was the superior journal, Ecolibrium, available via pdf on the site.  With the weather we had in the UK this summer, it might be prudent to see how those in hotter climates operate! Again, no RSS, XML or way to sign up for email updates.

Have I missed a really good example of a professional body who does it better than these three?  Let me know in the comments…

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