Elemental

I’m blogging this so I can easily find the information again (what blogs were originally for). It’s one of those key bits of data I always seem to spend hours looking for. And now it might change anyway.

Ofgem currently defines typical annual domestic consumption as 20,500 kWh for gas and 3,300 kWh for standard electricity for its pricing analysis work, and much of our general market monitoring. We use these figures to feed into a wide range of analysis, including calculating average annual energy bills and the levels of savings available to consumers who switch. These consumption levels are often quoted in the press and used by others in the energy industry.

Given Government’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions, and technological advances that have lead to increasingly energy efficient homes and appliances, it seems reasonable to assume consumption levels will continue to decline. However, the dataset available is not sufficiently large to confidently model either the magnitude of possible annual declines in the future, or how long this trend may continue.

To establish whether the current typical consumption levels are still reflective of actual consumption, we have reviewed consumption data and analysis from other organisations and considered consumption trends over time. Our review suggests that the figure of 3,300 kWh per year still provides a good estimate of typical annual domestic electricity consumption for those with Profile Class 1 meters. However, we consider that 5,000 kWh, rather than the present level of 6,600 kWh, is more representative of typical medium electricity consumption for consumers with Profile Class 2 meters, and that 16,500 kWh, rather than the present level of 20,500 kWh, would be more representative of current medium domestic gas consumption. We also propose changes to typical low and high annual consumption levels for electricity, Profile Classes 1 and 2, and gas.

If you are interested in participating in the consultation, you have until 24th September to contribute.

Does anyone have a rule of thumb for what the typical data looks like if Passivhaus is applied? The gas will go down again, but to what level?

admin Regulation data, electricity, gas, ofgem

These are my links for July 23rd through July 27th:

• Worldchanging: Bright Green: Transition Towns or Bright Green Cities? – Read the whole article: “That sort of casual eagerness for the death of others is appalling. Worse, the strategy implicit in this vision of transitioning — that there can be local soft landings in the event of a global hard crash, that indeed the only proper scale at which to prepare for a soft landing is at the local level, and that perhaps collapse will solve some of our problems — is delusional.
  Collapse is not a tool for social change. …. Anyone who thinks an energy descent plan prepared by a community group future-proofs them against people like Charles Taylor has simply taken a vacation from reality.
  Local efforts can’t protect against the violence of a systemic breakdown. …To plan for the collapse of large-scale systems is to plan for widespread evil and suffering; ethical planning for the collapse is impossible: post-collapse idealism is oxymoronic.”
• All power to the wind – it cuts your electricity bills – opinion – 26 July 2010 – New Scientist – “Insofar as there is a problem, it lies in handing control of industrial policy to marginally priced markets. Market-based decisions are not technology-neutral. They favour short-term profits, and that encourages the building of power stations with low capital costs and high marginal costs. That means gas-fired plants, which are tailored to make a profit whether the spot price is high or low.
  In fact, hardly any nuclear or coal-fired plants have been built in the past 15 years, only gas-fired plants, along with renewables installed thanks to support mechanisms such as feed-in tariffs.
  If those mechanisms had been ruled to be market-distorting subsidies and removed, leaving the market to make all the calls, we would see nothing but new gas plants built. This would leave us vulnerable, wondering where tomorrow’s natural gas, on which we would be utterly dependent, would come from – a scenario that has only been prevented because wind turbines receive support.”
• Linking Green Buildings, Productivity and the Bottom Line | Buildings | GreenBiz.com – Interesting stats: “Indeed, the 2003 California report found average annual employee costs to be 10.25 times larger than the cost of space per employee. The author extrapolates these findings to calculate that a 1 percent productivity increase would therefore have a financial impact over time roughly equal to reducing property costs by 10 percent.”
• More than Passive – Michelle Kaufmann Studio – “Although he is introduced to me as “one of the world’s great Passivhaus experts” (and having designed over 100 built Passivhaus homes, he has earned this title), Walter is quick to respond saying that is not the title he wants. He clarifies in our conversation as well as during his very compelling presentation the next day. While Walter commends the Passivhaus intentions, he says that it is about more than that. It is about good design. “Designing a Passivhaus is easy. But we need to make sure we are designing good Architecture as well.” It is much more than just calculations and scientific numbers. “Good architecture is not a scientific result.” His message resonates strongly, as this is a fear of green rating programs in general (whether it be LEED, or other), that some architects will simply follow the checklist and not innovate or design.”
• A Bold New Model for Sustainable Cities – Robert G. Eccles and Amy C. Edmondson – HBS Faculty – Harvard Business Review – “Unlike the real estate developers doing places like Masdar in Abu Dhabi, New Songdo City outside Seoul, and Dongtan in Shanghai (basically “green” real estate plays with a “let’s build it and hope they come” approach), Living PlanIT’s model is to create an ecosystem of large and small company partners that will focus on creating products and services for sustainable urbanization. The people that the partners bring in to produce those products and services will be the anchor occupants of the model city. The hope is that this activity will then attract other businesses and inhabitants.”
• Commercial Lighting Solutions: Login – With lighting set to be the bete noir of Part L 2010, this looks intriguing (but US based): “The Commercial Lighting Solutions provide actionable “how to” guidance on ways to improve your building interior lighting efficiency and reduce your energy consumption, without compromising quality design criteria. Strategies include the use of high performance commercially available products, daylighting, and lighting controls, all within the context of integrated designs supported by performance specifications.”
• A Reporter at Large: The Island in the Wind : The New Yorker – Fascinating article on renewable energy in Denmark: “The biggest disappointment, though, had to do with consumption.
  “We made several programs for energy savings,” he told me. “But people are acting—what do you call it?—irresponsibly. They behave like monkeys.” For example, families that insulated their homes better also tended to heat more rooms, “so we ended up with zero.” Essentially, he said, energy use on the island has remained constant for the past decade.”
• Building4Change : Are airtight homes good or bad for occupant health? – “There is already strong evidence that energy efficient homes have a positive impact on occupants’ physical and mental wellbeing. Basic improvements in indoor temperature levels in winter and reduction in fuel poverty can have a significant impact. But there is a shortage of evidence to inform decision-making in this area and it is vital that risks to public health are not increased
  There are a number of areas where more knowledge is needed. Although 0.5 air changes per hour is the accepted norm, we lack a definitive assessment of a safe minimum level of ventilation. There is no comprehensive study on the part that home ventilation plays in ensuring health. We have insufficient knowledge of the actual ventilation rates being achieved in UK homes, impacts of ventilation system design, installation and operation, and impacts of occupant behaviour.”
• How to test your decision-making instincts – McKinsey Quarterly – Strategy – Strategic Thinking – This means that to protect decisions against bias, we first need to know when we can trust our gut feelings, confident that they are drawing on appropriate experiences and emotions. There are four tests.
  1. The familiarity test: Have we frequently experienced identical or similar situations?
  2. The feedback test: Did we get reliable feedback in past situations?
  3. The measured-emotions test: Are the emotions we have experienced in similar or related situations measured?
  4. The independence test: Are we likely to be influenced by any inappropriate personal interests or attachments?
• Enough With Jane Jacobs Already | By Andrew Manshel – WSJ.com – An odd article, but it reminded me of the existence of Whyte’s video “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, which can be found online, worth hunting out: “More attention ought to be paid to the finely grained thinking of William H. Whyte and less to Jacobs’s overblown pronouncements and unprovable theories. Whyte was a close observer of people’s behavior in public spaces and emphasized the importance of the many subtle design features that make people comfortable in parks, plazas and public buildings. Following Whyte, designers, planners and community members need to pay more attention to proven, good ideas, to established data and to the fine points of landscapes and buildings.”
• They don’t build them like they used to: Steve Mouzon’s Original Green | Kaid Benfield’s Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC – ‘Original green’ means common-sense things like building with high ceilings, cross-ventilation and shading in warm climates, and building with steep roofs and southern exposure in cool ones. It means using original forms of transportation, such as walking and bicycling, whenever possible, and designing and inhabiting communities that facilitate such self-propulsion. It means growing food nearby, and ‘living local’ as much as possible. It means accepting a wider ‘comfort range’ of temperature; our ancestors, Steve points out, were adaptable and reasonably comfortable within a range of 30 degrees or so Fahrenheit; today people fight over two degrees’ difference in ‘thermostat wars.’ Original green places and buildings have intinsically smaller environmental footprints than conventional buildings and places, especially when lifecycle effects are included, and in many cases even if the conventional ones have the benefit of green technology.
• Theses on Sustainability | Orion Magazine – Worth reading the entire artcile: “THE TERM HAS BECOME so widely used that it is in danger of meaning nothing. It has been applied to all manner of activities in an effort to give those activities the gloss of moral imperative, the cachet of environmental enlightenment.”
• Dynamic Thermal Properties Calculator – Free excel tool, includes decrement, admittance and kappa values: “The motivation for producing this tool is a growing need among architects and engineers for more information about the thermal properties of construction elements other than just their U-value. This is needed to help optimise the passive performance of buildings and ensure a high level of inherent energy efficiency. Going forward, it is likely that far more attention will be paid to getting this right given the forthcoming changes to Part L and SAP. Another driver is the issue of climate change adaptation, which is starting to result in greater scrutiny construction materials and their thermal properties.”
• Climate change weather file generator – CCWeatherGen – Adaptation is flavour of the month: “The CCWeatherGen tool allows you to generate TMY2 or EPW climate change weather files with a few mouse clicks. You can produce ‘morphed’ climate change as well as ‘unmorphed’ present day TMY2 and EPW files from the original CIBSE/Met Office TRY/DSY format files. The CCWeatherGen tool is made available free of charge. However, it is solely distributed WITHOUT the required baseline weather files and/or climate change scenario data!”
• 2degrees : Discussion Topic – “BSI has announced the launch of its new Kitemark® scheme for Energy Reduction Verification (ERV) which will independently verify and certify those organisations that achieve a reduction in carbon emissions through lower energy use. The Environment Agency has approved the scheme as one of the Early Action Metrics that contribute to the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, the UK’s mandatory climate change and energy saving scheme.”

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These are my links for July 6th through July 11th:

• EIA – Press Releases – EIA Assesses Impact of Economic Growth, Oil Prices, and Future Policies on Projected Energy Trends – "World marketed energy consumption grows 49 percent between 2007 and 2035, driven by economic growth in the developing nations of the world, according to the Reference case projection from the International Energy Outlook 2010 (IEO2010) released today by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). "Renewables are the fastest-growing source of world energy supply, but fossil fuels are still set to meet more than three-fourths of total energy needs in 2035 assuming current policies are unchanged," said EIA Administrator Richard Newell….most nations are expected to return to the economic growth rates that were projected prior to the downturn. Total world energy use in the Reference case rises 49 percent, from 495 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2007 to 739 quadrillion Btu in 2035."
• 06/07/2010: EPA Announces Data Centers Can Now Earn Energy Star Label – Datacenters appear to be flavour of the month: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that stand-alone data centers and buildings that house large data centers can now earn the Energy Star label. To earn the label, data centers must be in the top 25 percent of their peers in energy efficiency according to EPA’s energy performance scale. By improving efficiency, centers can save energy and money and help fight climate change.<br />
  <br />
  EPA uses a commonly accepted measure for energy efficiency, the Power Usage Effectiveness metric, to determine whether a data center qualifies for the Energy Star label. Before being awarded the Energy Star, a licensed professional must independently verify the energy performance of these buildings and sign and seal the application document that is sent to EPA for review and approval."
• outsidewrecker: BRITAIN’S GOT TALENT – "But I think this kind of behaviour is incredibly short sighted of these companies. Not only will they lose their competitive edge by having a skills gap in the future, but these bright people, who now happen to be unwanted, will certainly become successful in the years to come. In all likelihood, they’ll be in positions of influence, with a long memory and a dim view of their uncaring treatment. With little or no effort the process of finding a the successful candidate out of many bright young things could be carried out more humanely. How difficult is it, for instance, to be courteous and to offer feedback on the process and how well the applicant did? Instead you get a Simon Cowell style contest that is every bit as brutal as the X Factor."
• environment: YALE magazine – Spring 2010 – Agree with this sentiment 100% – in 5-10 years time, sustainability 'departments' will not exist: "The aim, says Stern, is to embed sustainability in the basic training of architects. But he adds, “I don’t think sustainability is a design aesthetic, any more than having electricity in your building, or telephones, or anything else. It’s an ethic, a basic consideration that we have to have as architects designing buildings.” American architects, designers and builders are “in an early, slightly naive phase” in coming to terms with sustainability, he says, and “we have to get everybody’s attention.” But they will catch up fast enough, Stern argues, so that “in 10 years we’re not going to talk about sustainability anymore, because it’s going to be built into the core processes of architecture.” Advertising sustainability, he says, will be like an architect getting up in front of a room to “proudly proclaim how his buildings didn’t fall down.”"

admin News Architecture, centres, data, Energy_Star, EPA, recruitment, Sustainability

Fascinating report from RICS – 2009 RICS Global Carbon Capacity Index (28pg, pdf). Whilst I often have rants about the meaningless of the phrase ‘zero-carbon’, I concede we are stuck with it and the goal behind the target is sound (even if the semantics around the phrasing of the target are misguided). Anyway, rant over, lets look at the report.

The executive summary is excellent – does what it is supposed to – summarises the report:

To capture the progress that is being made towards a decarbonised built environment at the national level, RICS commissioned the Environment Institute at University College London to develop a new index: the Global Zero Carbon Capacity Index also known as the ZC2 Index). The purpose of this index is to highlight which countries are developing the capacity to make progress towards the aspirational goal of a zero-carbon built environment.

Reducing the carbon emissions from the built environment – both in terms of energy consumption in the built stock and travel – remains a major priority for the property sector. The ZC2 Index is an innovative measure of how well different countries are performing in terms of moving towards a zero carbon built environment.

The Index is based on three measures of energy consumption (in the residential, tertiary and transport sectors, together with an assessment of the decarbonisation of energy supply through the share of renewables in total production and a count of the extent of the policy portfolio aimed at zero-carbon built environments.

The 2009 run of the ZC2 Index confirmed the leadership of Norway in meeting this challenge. The UK is ranked third after Brazil, moving up from fourth place last year. The fourth and fifth places this year go to China and Australia. New Zealand and India fall out of the top five places this year.

The countries that have made the greatest improvements in their ranking are the Slovak Republic, France, Germany and USA. However, the absolute improvement in Index score for the USA is less than that for the other countries, reflecting less movement in the individual indicators.

Analysis of the data for these ‘improvers’ indicates the importance of concerted action across all elements of the index: that is, significant reductions in energy consumption in the residential, tertiary and transport sectors together with substantial investment in renewable energy infrastructure and continued additions to the policy portfolio of zero-carbon built environment measures.

The Index can also be cross-referenced to performance on reducing the carbon intensity of the economy as a whole. This reveals a group of countries that perform relatively well on the ZC2 Index and on carbon intensity: Austria, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. It is notable that, apart from Brazil, these are all European countries, suggesting that the European Union has been at least facilitating shifts towards low carbon living.

There is a wealth of data in the report. I like the simplicity of the Index and the fact that policy is taken into account as well as hard facts and figures. I’ll be looking out for next years update.

admin Economics carbon, data, global, RICS

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

• Some Transition Thoughts on the Energy Bits of the Queen’s Speech » Transition Culture – I'm not a particular fan of the Transition Towns movement (something too insular and regressive about it to sit comfortably with my world view, each to their own and all that), but Rob writes some excellent pieces. This article is well worth a read – he knows his energy policies well and makes some good points about funding, FiT's and CCS.
• Blogs and Comments – Comments – Dan Box – The Government has found a backhanded way to subsidise nuclear power – The Ecologist – Why Huhne's compromise on nuclear could be a good thing (IMO) although Box is obviously not happy: "The way it works is this: European companies currently pay for each tonne of carbon they emit by buying permits, the price of which is determined by the market itself. A floor price will most likely drive this price up…, making pollution more expensive. It will also encourage investors to put money into non-polluting companies by making the market in which they operate more predictable.<br />
  …Driving up the cost of producing polluting energy from coal- or gas-fired power plants, doesn’t just favour renewables. It also makes the costs of nuclear production far more competitive, even without subsidy."
• Guest blog: Goodbye HIPs, Hello EPCs | National Energy Services – "From today, if you intend to sell your house you no longer need to have a HIP in place, but you do need an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). To comply with the new law, you need to have instructed a Domestic Energy Assessor to prepare one, and either to have paid for it, or given a clear undertaking to pay, before marketing.<br />
  If you are selling through an agent, he or she must be satisfied that an EPC has been commissioned before starting to market your home. Both parties must make reasonable efforts to secure an EPC within 28 days, and all of the new duties carry fixed penalties where somebody fails to comply."
• Footprint » Embodied carbon is the next hot topic – "Carbon profiling methodology is clearly explained and applied to a case study of Arup Associates’ Ropemaker Place, a 20-storey BREEAM Excellent office block in the City completed in May 2009. This research, commissioned by British Land’s Sarah Cary who was also on the panel, shows that embodies carbon makes up more than half of Ropemaker’s carbon emissions.<br />
  The next challenge is creating statutory incentives for reducing embodied carbon. Simon Cox of ProLogis described a recent project where planners were willing to reduce the renewables requirement in light of a sustainability strategy which had addressed embodied carbon. Guy Battle of dcarbon8 (and now Deloitte) remarked that the day will come Part L incorporates embodied carbon. Simon Sturgis noted that BREEAM awards less points for retaining a concrete frame than for putting bat boxes on a building."
• Solar energy reduces electricity bills by a third – Modern Building Services – "The installation of solar photo-voltaic panels on affordable homes in Huddersfield has proved even more energy efficient than Kirklees Neighbourhood Housing and supplier Photon Energy expected.<br />
  Not only have the residents benefited from the production of solar electricity on site, but they have also become more economical in their use of electricity.<br />
  The panels have been installed on 30 all-electric bungalows and flats for older people at Fernside Estate in the Almondbury area of Huddersfield."
• The climate-change greenhouse in a datacentre – "When you're building a datacentre, the biggest problem you've got is often getting rid of the heat generated by so many computers running in such a small area. Some data centres just pump it out into the outside world. Others use the excess energy to heat local homes. But TelecityGroup's newest datacentre, Condorcet – which opened in Paris earlier in the year, uses its heat to conduct research into climate change.<br />
  The building's exterior is comprised of a massive arboretum – a greenhouse, which is maintained at the climatic conditions expected to be prevailing in France in 2050. The French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) operates a research centre there, growing plants from around the world to investigate which will be viable to grow when climate change's effects are starting to be felt in the country."

admin News adaptation, carbon, CCS, centre, data, DEA, embodied, EPC, FiT, Huddersfield, kirklees, nuclear, PV, renewables, TT

These are my links for May 26th through June 1st:

• Concentration Solar Power Module Integrates Into Side And Roof Of Buildings – min-CSP – intriguing but no data in the article to back up the theory: "The system, of which the international patent has already been requested, consists of a stationary lens and a linear absorber plate that concentrates sunlight to generate energy. This concentration system reduces the space that until now was needed with traditional plates, which move around in search of sunlight"
• UK Climate Impacts Programme – Socio-economic scenarios – Getting quite old now (Feb 2001) but sets forward 4 potential scenarios for socio-economic situations against which climate change will play out in the UK :
  1. National Enterprise
  2. Local Stewardship
  3. World Markets
  4. Global Sustainability
  At 140 pages, it's not a quick read, but useful resource.
• A glimpse of the future as 56% of surveyors see workload fall (Brickonomics) – More sound commentary from Brian: "But for all the figures on workload, the two bits of data that will probably reflect most the long-term effects of the recession are those for employment and for profit margins. Both continue to look grim.
  It may sound like a management course cliché but one of the biggest weaknesses of the construction industry is one of its biggest strengths, its flexibility.
  And this weakness is exaggerated by the easy willingness of firms to work at below cost.
  My recollection of the 1990s recession was the less damage was done by falling workloads, which the industry's flexibility can absorb without huge stresses, than was done by winning work below true cost or at unsustainable thin margins."
• Monbiot.com » How Much Should We Leave in the Ground? – I had wondered about this before – good to see George has done the math for me: "Even ignoring all unconventional sources and all other greenhouse gases and taking the most optimistic of the figures in the two Nature papers, we can afford to burn only 61% of known fossil fuel reserves between now and eternity." This would result in a 2ºC rise in temperature. Adaptation, here we come…
• Monbiot.com » Crash Landing – Monbiot being unusually level headed: "we were told by both the airline companies and the Confederation of British Industry that business flights were necessary and non-negotiable: civilisation would collapse if executives weren’t able to fly whenever and wherever they wished. The government repeated this creed, insisting that the UK economy was dependent on the expansion of Heathrow. Now we learn that these are the first expenses to be cut when a contraction begins. Businesses are discovering that there are other means of engaging with people overseas, such as email, video-conferencing and an outlandish new device called the telephone."
• ACE – If we can’t count the buildings, how can we plan cuts in emissions? – There's an elephant in the room, and his name is data: "There is no definitive data showing precisely what the carbon footprint of Europe's buildings is. So we can have no confidence we can identify precisely what percentage of the carbon dioxide emissions by end use comes from space heating as opposed to water heating, lights and appliances as opposed to cooking."
• Why Has Globalization Led to Bigger Cities? – Economix Blog – NYTimes.com – Great article on cities with a slant on India: "The right response to the problems of megacities is not to get misty-eyed about village life, but rather to work to improve the quality of infrastructure in those growing urban areas."
• FT.com | The Undercover Economist | Dear Economist: Can you help me to stop procrastinating? – How to cope with procrastination: "The behavioural economists Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch conducted an instructive study of procrastination with three groups of students at MIT. Each group had to complete three assignments over the course of the 12-week course. The first group had a separate deadline for each paper, after four, eight and 12 weeks. The second group had no intermediate deadlines: all three papers were due at the end of the course. Students in the third group were asked to impose their own deadlines.
  Students with well-spaced deadlines – those in the first group and a subset in the third who had spaced out their deadlines – tended to achieve the highest grades. Students who had assigned themselves no intermediate deadlines, or had been assigned none, fared poorly."
• A new era for public health? « – "Yet one group of very important people now admit they too have neglected the issue. The latest edition of The Lancet – probably the world’s leading medical journal – says health professionals “have barely begun to engage with what should be the focal point for their research, preparedness planning and advocacy”. Now doctors see climate change as “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”.
  The Lancet calls for a “new public health advocacy movement” to usher in an unprecedented era of co-operation between widely divergent spheres such as disease, food, water, sanitation, shelter, settlements, extreme events, population and movement.”"
• Prince fails on sustainability – Building Design – A bit late getting to this one – Amanada takes on Charles: "This is where the speech unravelled for in making out “experimentation” to be a terrifying leap in the dark rather than something good based on hypotheses and a body of knowledge he came across as an intellectual Luddite, whose only solution is to retreat into a Hobbit-like world of organic earthy buildings and no cars."
• Carbon-effective refurbishment – Modern Building Services – Ant Wilson calls for an integrated approach to refurbished buildings: "At the same time, the lower metre could be well insulated and fitted with photovoltaics (PVs) and internally lined with phase-change boards. Emerging concentrated photovoltaic energy generation (CPV has around 1000 times less embedded energy than conventional PVs, and its price is falling rapidly, which will improve the cost-effectiveness of building-integrated PV in coming years."

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These are my links for March 11th through March 15th:

• The Building Futures Game – Building Futures – The Building Futures Game is the outcome of 3 years research and development work carried out by the Building Futures team, CABE and architectural practice AOC. The toolkit emerged through a shared desire as to how one might enable communities to think about the future of their neighbourhood, while providing stakeholders with an interactive and alternative way of consulting with a wide variety of groups on their concerns and aspirations.
• Disney Aims for Zero Carbon Emissions, Zero Waste in New Environmental Goals | GreenerBuildings – "The corporate responsibility report lays out seven long-term environmental goals for the company:
  • Zero waste.
  • Zero net direct greenhouse gas emissions from fuels.
  • Reduce indirect greenhouse gas emissions from electricity consumption.
  • Net positive impact on ecosystems.
  • Minimize water use.
  • Minimize product footprint.
  • Inform, empower and activate positive action for the environment"
• T-Zero – "T-ZERO is a free internet tool that provides independent sustainable refurbishment advice to users, with the option of linking directly to the suppliers, manufacturers, and installers of any measures you choose. It is designed for those refurbishing their own homes, homes they manage, or the homes of clients, taking you through a series of simple steps."
• How to Grow Your Own Fresh Air – TED 2009 « GreenSpaces Blog – More 'healthy' plants (I'm slightly obsessed with the original NASA study – spider plants are *good*). Mother in Law's tongue for bedroom, and Areca Palm for living room.
• Welcome to YouCanPlan – via Be2Camp and then EcoBuild: "Our idea is based on the concept of ‘enabled self procurement’ or ESP to help build new sustainable communities. ESP is a process where future residents of communities are supported as the developers of their own homes, combining the choice of self build with the efficiency of speculative development."
• Green for go: sustainability in the JCT contract – Building – "Following an industry-wide consultation, it published Building a Sustainable Future Together, a guidance note which is principally concerned with how sustainability in design and construction is provided for in contract documents. It also includes new contract clauses that extend those currently in JCT contracts, such as the Framework Agreement. The two principal new clauses are:
  1) The contractor is encouraged to suggest economically viable amendments to the employer's requirements which, if instructed as
  a variation, may result in improvement in environmental performance in the carrying out of the works or of the completed works
  2) The contractor shall provide to the employer all the information that he reasonably requests regarding the environmental impact of the supply and use of materials and goods which the contractor selects."
• A second look at solar power on roofspace « lightbucket – Lightbucket doesn't blog often, but when he (she?) does, they're worth reading.
  "Averaged over the year, rooftop PV can exactly match England’s electricity sales, but there is a huge seasonal variation. During the summer, PV output is higher than the full-year average, but electricity demand is lower, so PV can supply more than twice the total demand. The situation reverses in midwinter. In December, the month of lowest insolation, rooftop solar PV can meet only 20% of electricity demand. Additional capacity will be needed to meet winter demand. Energy storage technologies can smooth out variations in output over a 24-hour timecale, and maybe longer, but certainly not over 6 months.
  If we had solar photovoltaics on all roofspace in England, we could comfortably meet England’s summertime electricity use, but only a fifth of wintertime electricity use."
• Ten things to manage in a recession: 4 – executive costs « pwcom 2.0 – Paul illustrates Charles Handy's 'Hollywood' model perfectly: "… some AEC professionals have already opted to work as freelances or as independent consultants, undertaking a succession of contracts of their own choice instead of working for an employer. Particularly in the consultancy sector, just as small firms might combine with others with complementary skills and/or resources, so experienced individual professionals could combine with other independent practitioners to compete for work and then form part of the multi-disciplinary team appointed to undertake the project. …. Being formed of a group of independent ‘e-lances’ or ‘tech-nomads’, the operational overheads of such a multi-disciplinary consortium are also likely to be lower, making their services more cost-effective – an advantage likely to be underlined if the team also uses low-cost collaboration technology to manage and share its data."
• You are the weakest link, goodbye – Joan has a list of funny/tragic redundancy stories.
• cityofsound: Work and The City, Frank Duffy (2008) – Good review of Duffy's book: "In particular, Work and the City convincingly details how this has led to a grossly inefficient under-utilisation of resources with damaging effects on individuals, corporations, and almost all aspects of urban ecosystem."
• Sustainability Consulting: What is it, and am I qualified? Part I « Bright Green Talent Musings (www.brightgreentalent.com) – And I count myself amongst those who say sustainability is NOT a discipline: "As individuals from all kinds of backgrounds and industries push into the field of sustainability consulting, it can become murky as to what that work even entails. This is especially true when considering the different perspectives and methodologies that are employed and adding even more complexity is the variability among clients and their needs. Thus, this quote sums up for me what sustainability consultants are trying to do – they help businesses address and redress the way in which they operate so that they will be better positioned for the market of the future a la decreasing their negative impact on the natural environment. Some argue that like the trends of international business and e-commerce, sustainability will at some point cease to be its own discipline and assume its rightful place within all of business practices."
• » Perpetual beta SuDoBE — Sustainable Design of the Built Environment – Chris makes a great point: "What would happen if we treated buildings as being in perpetual beta state? How would this change things in the construction industry? Perhaps developers and the design team would make a long term commitment to upgrading the building in line with occupants’ (and others’) experiences after the building’s initial release.
  Of course buildings, like most artefacts are in perpetual beta. There are always ‘bugs’ to iron out and features that don’t work. Many of our new low and zero carbon buildings will fail either from the outset or a few months or years down the line. It would be a real step forward if we could admit that now and put in place the mechanisms that will allow us to decide whether they are working as intended, to fix them when they aren’t and to pass on what we have learned to Carbon 2.0. Would the industry allow us to do that? Do we need to ask?"
• Robinson Low Francis to slash staff pay 12.5% – Building – I'm sure this is just the same as cutting salaries by 20-40% – surely they'll just end up doing a similar amount of work, in fewer (probably longer) days (was my experience of working part-time, anyway): "At engineer Scott Wilson, some senior staff have agreed to work three- or four-day weeks, according to Jerome Monro-Lafon, its UK managing director."
• Survey confirms building control officers enforce regs – Building – "The LABC’s survey looked at 2000 projects to see how many potential contraventions would have occurred if a building control officer hadn’t stepped in and enforced the regulations. It found Part A attracted the most enforcement action with building control officers asking for remedial action in 18% of projects followed by Part L at just over 16% and Part B at just under 16%. Part G which deals with hygiene attracted enforcement action in just 1.5% of the surveyed projects."
• Natural lighting and sustainability | Sustainable Building Blog – Building Sustainable Design – "The tightening regulatory allowances placed on artificial lighting are already beginning to push the limits of what lighting technology can deliver. Our regulatory framework must not become unworkable or breed dull, unhealthy and uninteresting visual environments. The lighting community must steer regulation through better government lobbying, but we should not forget the place natural light has in avoiding the need for regulation in the first place."
• Pursuing the Elusive Goal Of a Carbon-Neutral Building by Richard Conniff: Yale Environment 360 – "But Kroon is also a reminder of what even some of the best hearts and minds in the sustainable design movement cannot yet achieve. For a “green premium” unofficially estimated at about 5.7 percent of construction cost, the Kroon design team managed to reduce projected energy use and emissions by 61 percent below the levels for a comparable building of conventional design. The biggest savings came not from sexy new technologies but from figuring out how to make the design function like an old-fashioned cathedral, with a slender profile for maximum daylighting, an east-west orientation for greater solar gain on the long southern exposure, careful use of shading, and plenty of stone and concrete to store thermal energy. A solar photovoltaic array and geothermal wells will supply much of the remaining energy load. “We got damned close to carbon neutral,” boasted a construction manager…"
• Sustainable Cities – The most useful output I've seen from CABE – sustainable cities website. A feast of information and examples: "This website gives expert advice on planning, designing and managing a sustainable place. It cuts through the complexity with clear priorities for action. And it shows which places are getting it right."
• Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment » Blog Archive » Reverting to type (by Don Ward) – Don Ward has a great post: "The industry loves lowest price tendering – it invented it, and back in 1963 codified it in the NJCC’s code of practice for single stage tendering. Large parts of the industry have since conspired with clients over the years to continue with lowest price tendering – it is easy, and it means you don’t have to work too hard to deliver on value. But let’s face it, it usually knowingly sets the project up to fail. It’s a bizarre process – as a questioner said at a conference the other day put on by the Universities of Reading, Loughbrough and Salford, construction must be the only industry that competes to deliver the same thing for the client rather than something different? And is it the only industry that thinks it’s clever to make its money by screwing the client and/or the supply chain?"

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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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These are my links for July 11th through July 17th:

• Kyoto2 Oliver Tickell – Kyoto2 is a framework for a new Climate Protocol under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for 2012 and beyond.
• Steering a sustainable path through GM issues | Forum For The Future – In summary, GM might have a role to play in securing a more sustainable food production system in the future…but, it’s definitely not a ‘silver-bullet’ solution to world hunger, climate change and poverty.
• Food and the G8 (Jonathon Porritt) – "There is a deep, hugely damaging fault-line running all the way through it (Food Matters), captured in a brave but ultimately forlorn attempt to hold both "business-as-usual" and "business transformed" within the same policy framework."
• Beware of hype on the value of green buildings- 7/1/2008 – Building Design & Construction – Use data with caution: "the LEED rating has no effect upon commercial rents, but the Energy Star rating is associated with rents higher by 2.8%"
• Soaring energy costs herald more whole life costing in construction – Building Services Journal – Excellent article on WLC, comparing private and public funded projects. Author is from the improbably named "Davis Langdon Mott Green Wall" which just goes to show the current state of consolidation in the industry…
• Romanian Green Building Council – Romanian GBC have set up a blog to inform peeps of it's movements and developments. Nicely implemented.
• Rethink Your Business Model Around Green – Harvard Business Online’s Leading Green – green businesses are challenging the conventional wisdom that centralized production delivers a sustainable advantage through economies of scale. In fact, in the emerging green economy, many businesses are shifting to distributed models where production i

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