Elemental

These are my links for February 22nd through February 23rd:

• House 2.0: Dickon Robinson – "(Dickon Robinson) made some interesting observations about social housing, particularly so as he has been so intimately involved in it at Peabody. He recalled that the original council houses, built in the 20s and 30s, were only available to people who had jobs, and that they were regularly inspected by council officials to see that they were being properly cared for — these selection criteria were relaxed after WW2, when many families had to be rehoused. He then suggested that for some, social housing had become "deeply dis-empowering" because tenure was secure, rents were low and thus it "stopped you having to get up in the morning." He also spoke out against pepper-potting, the current practice of mixing affordable with private housing, the logic being to avoid building ghettos. He thought it hadn't been a great success and that, by and large, people were happier living with neighbours of similar social standing. Interesting thoughts, running counter to the prevailing mainstream"
• two roads to solving the refurb crisis – part 2 « carbon limited – Great post from Casey – read both: "Here are my problems with using the SO to fund retrofit:
  1. It’s unfair – everyone pays, while only a small proportion of households get a retrofit in a given year
  2. It’s inappropriate – you’re asking the big energy companies to transform the energy market when their mission is the diametric opposite
  3. It’s a false market – government loves to let the market solve problems (quite right too!) but the supplier obligation isn’t a market, it’s just regulation. Large energy companies may be motivated to find the least cost option but not where the results would threaten their core business. This includes opening up the energy market to new players.
  PAYS on the other hand only affects those whose houses are refurbed and should keep bills steady rather than increase them. And done correctly, it could create a very large market of small and medium businesses, spawning competition and innovation."
• Living with rats: Stop talking about the knowledge economy. Start building a wisdom economy. – As always, a thought provoking post from Julian Dobson: "The knowledge economy is competitive. The wisdom economy is collaborative. The knowledge economy assumes that if we can know that bit more than others, we will get what they have or keep them from getting what we have. It believes in dog eat dog. The wisdom economy says dogs do better when they hunt in packs. It sees knowledge as something to be shared and built collaboratively. It is highly suspicious of the intellectual property industry and the crowd of litigators and branding experts who hang on its coat-tails. Where the knowledge economy is amoral – your disadvantage is of no concern as long as I am succeeding – the wisdom economy accepts at a profound level that your disadvantage is my problem."
• At last the Tories nail their planning colours to the mast – just in time for Bura@20 ! – The Regeneration Blog – Jackie Sadek comments on the Tory Green Planning paper: "Community engagement is really very hard to get right, particularly in areas of deprivation, and almost impossible in areas where there is wide disparity of household income. It just feels a bit naive; "Planning for Real" was always a little fanciful (almost hippie-like) and there now seems to be some sort of romantic notion that we can become like the people in "Passport to Pimlico".
  Frankly the Cameron claim that Open Source Planning "will mend our broken planning system" is really a very strong one. The claim that "it'll help to build stronger communities and help to mend our broken society too" is eye-wateringly ambitious indeed. The ideologue in me (still alive and kicking) would like to think it's worth giving it a go, but this policy is going to have to be implemented by people who really know what they are doing."
• Argument Against Environmental Benefits of Locally-Grown Food – Not unbiased by any stretch, but some valid arguments: "The report explains that linear travel miles are not indicative of total energy use and therefore not necessarily a valid measure of the environmental impact of moving food over long distances. Instead of total miles traveled, the report states that the energy use per unit of food moved paints a more accurate picture of overall energy use…Shipping eggs across then entire U.S. by tractor-trailer to a grocery retailer is still the most fuel-efficient, eco-friendly option, said the report. This underscores the tremendous efficiency achieved through modern transportation systems and economies of scale. While the report did not examine all food products, it does conclude that “food should be grown where the agricultural resources and capacity are most suited to efficient food production,” rather than close to population centers."
• Introduction : Future Venice – I found Rachel Armstrong via TED talks – this looks intriguing: "It is hoped that, since it is possible to design the metabolism of a protocell, a type of protocell might be engineered to capture carbon dioxide from a solution and turn it into its solid carbonate form to produce “pearls” of solid carbon dioxide. This system would form the basis for a new carbon-fixing building material. Early stage experiments to test this hypothesis are currently being conducted."

admin News co2, Economics, food, Housing, Knowledge, miles, PAYS, planning, protocell, refurbishment, retrofit, SO, UK, wisdom

These are my links for January 29th through February 3rd:

• Inbuilt gains official status to approve Passivhaus buildings – Inbuilt has been awarded the highly-prized status of Certifying Body for Passivhaus buildings. Passivhaus is a design methodology for ultra low-energy buildings, promoted by the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt, Germany. There are about 12,500 Passivhaus buildings worldwide, the vast majority of them in Germany and Austria, and the approach is rapidly growing in popularity in the UK as developers and designers consider their options to meet the Government's zero carbon targets.
  Inbuilt is now one of a tiny handful of organisations in the UK, and just 20 worldwide, who are accredited by the Passivhaus Institut to offer certification services. Certification provides a robust assessment of a building’s predicted energy use and allows an architect or builder to claim the 'Passivhaus' tag for a building and to market it as meeting the scheme's very precise performance standards. In the UK, only three individual buildings have been formally certificated so far.
• NGS GreenSpec – Opinion – Quality Assured PassivHaus Buildings – Part 1 – Excellent piece on Passivhaus by Mark Siddall of Devereux Architects (despite the mandatory slightly shrill rant against CSH/BREEAM which detracts from the piece, IMO). Covers the quality assurance aspects very well and explains why PHPP needs to be used. First of two articles – read both.
• Factor 4 efficiency illustrated by contemporary economic statistics 20100117_wf – Interesting analysis from Wolfgang Feist on CO2 vs. GNI and life expectancy.
• Zero carbon definition offers a new practical approach – EC Harris comment on zero carbon definition: "The revised cost of complying with the new zero carbon definition will depend on the value attributed to the ‘Allowable Solution’ and also the renewable strategy adopted to deliver the 45-50% renewables.
  However, the fabric efficiencies have been reported as adding between £2,000 -£6,500 per unit and the renewables requirement is likely to add around £15,000 per unit. This results in an additional build cost of £20,000 per unit but represents half the previous £40,000 estimate to deliver the full Code Level 6 definition.
  Astute house builders will therefore see opportunity in the new definition, with commercial advantage gained by selecting sites and design solutions which allow on site renewable costs to be minimised either through connection with district heating or large scale wind coupled with the use of an ESCO. Renewable availability of a site must now be considered in land acquisition and existing land banks reviewed."
• News analysis – Is aid without climate adaptation a waste of time? – The Ecologist – However, some NGOs have been amending an existing emergency relief strategy, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), to integrate climate science into their work. DRR uses past events to help the community become more resilient to them in the future. Integrating climate science in DRR plans involves taking account of future predictions for a given area, such as flooding or sea level rises. ‘DRR enables humanitarian agencies to extend the time horizon and to mitigate rather than just respond,' says Dr. Mike Edwards, climate change programme development officer CAFOD.

admin News adaptation, aid, change, climate, co2, CSH, GNI, passivhaus, statistics, zero_carbon

These are my links for September 11th through September 19th:

• BREEAM set to cover communities – Building – Unlike existing BREEAM tools, the assessment will take into account regional requirements. Cotter said: “For example, does the development meet the criteria for employment stimulation? It’s about making sure development complements regional local planning requirements.”

  It has not been decided whether the assessment will include existing buildings.

• Rogers and Foster shun nuclear design framework – Building – “Ethically, we wouldn’t get involved in projects like this. We have a fairly strict constitution set up by Richard [Rogers] which prohibits work on military schemes and power stations.”
• NHF demands stricter CO2 timetable for housebuilders – Building – Orr said: “Currently, private developers are not being compelled to meet minimum standards on greenhouse gas emissions at all. In fact, they are being allowed to put their profits ahead of the survival of future generations.

  “It's time that ministers legally locked private developers into the same timetable as housing associations. We have long been calling for the government to ensure that from April 2008 all new private homes emit 25% less CO2. And we would like ministers to make certain that all new privately built homes are zero carbon by 2016, at the very latest.

  “Unless the government compels the private sector to meet the same standards and timetable, private companies will simply try to wriggle out of their environmental duties, saying it costs too much.”

• The Question of Global Warming – The New York Review of Books – "Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful."
• OMNIVORACIOUS: Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria: Author One-to-One – via Ben Casnocha, Friedman takes Zakaria to task on the alleged green revolution: "So you'll know the green revolution is happening when you see some bodies–corporate bodies–along the side of the road: companies that didn't change and therefore died. Right now we don't have that kind of market, that kind of change-or-die situation. Right now companies feel like they can just change their brand, not actually how they do business, and that will be enough to survive."
• Felicity Lawrence: We could slash our CO2 emissions if we ate less meat. What a pity Boris Johnson doesn’t agree | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk – Whilst the article is good, the reason I am flagging this one is the fact that McD's are the Olympics 2012 official caterer. Cognitive dissonance, anyone?
• TALL BUILDINGS OFFER ECONOMIC BENEFITS, SAYS REPORT: British Property Federation – Fascinating study on tall buildings (in response to Boris quashing some of Ken's plans, I strongly suspect) in London: "The exercise was one of changing the distribution of employment, rather than total levels of employment. The economic benefit was equivalent to the annual output for each of those 80,000 workers increasing by £2,500 a year. A second scenario redistributing those 80,000 workers to less accessible parts of Central London produced a decline in output equivalent to £1,600 a year for every one of those 80,000 workers."

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