Elemental

These are my links for December 28th through December 29th:

• BRE Trust reveals the results of DEC data analysis – ‘Energy used in public buildings accounts for 4% of the UK's carbon emissions. Design standards are improving, but we need to demonstrate that this is resulting in improved building performance. This study found that the DEC ratings for some schools recently refurbished to higher energy efficiency standards under Building Schools for the Future and the Primary Capital Programme appeared to be no better than average. If expected savings are not being made, we need to learn the reasons why. DECs are important because they measure the carbon emissions from real buildings as they are used.'
  It has been suggested that DECs should be made mandatory for all non-domestic buildings, to provide evidence of actual emissions and potential leverage for improvements. The BRE study found…DECs were generally giving consistent results. However, up to 9% of DEC data is unreliable as a guide to the energy and carbon performance of buildings because default ratings are being used…
• Engineering consultancy – Grontmij – News archive – 7 More London Riverside achieves BREEAM ‘outstanding’ rating – 7 More London Riverside has become only the third building in the UK and the first office in England to achieve the BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ award. This is the final major building to be completed for More London Development Ltd who are particularly proud of the building’s sustainable credentials.
  The 60,884m², 10 storey building, designed by Foster + Partners, incorporates a range of carbon saving measures, renewable energy provisions and efficient Building Services systems. These include sculpted solar shading, solar hot water panels, green roofs, heat recovery systems and fully automated Building Management Systems and metering facilities.
  The key design aspect that assisted in obtaining the ‘Outstanding’ rating was the implementation of a Bio-Diesel fired Combined Cooling Heating & Power (CCHP) Trigeneration system which has been used to provide a low carbon source of cooling, heat and power to the building. This has resulted in 74% less CO2 than…2006 Part L2 Building Regulations.

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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?"

admin News aesthetics, ashrae, benchmark, beq, building, carbon, cities, COP15, DEC, definition, Economics, Energy, green, growth, planning, policy, socialnetworking, social_media, Sustainability, transport

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 August 31st through September 3rd:

• BBC – Open Secrets: Comparing the energy efficiency of public buildings – In case anyone missed this (over 5000 properties get a G): "until a few days ago, if you wanted to compare all the buildings on the register, you had two somewhat time-consuming and tedious options: you could visit the 28,000-plus buildings, look for the doubtless prominently displayed certificate, and note down the details; or, if you had a means of finding out their reference numbers, you could enter them, one by one, into the database and retrieve the data.
  However, new regulations came into force a fortnight ago which now allow this material to be divulged.
  In response to my request under the Environmental Information Regulations, the Department of Communities and Local Government has sent me a large spreadsheet [MS Excel, 8.14Mb] listing all the properties on the register, their energy efficiency rating and their CO2 emissions, so that it is possible to analyse this to compare all the buildings on it."
• E. O. Wilson Takes a Position – E. O. Wilson, one of the most distinguished and respected scientists in the world, has signed the position on economic growth developed by the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE). The position statement points out the conflict between economic growth and environmental protection and proposes a steady state economy as a desirable alternative. A steady state economy aims for stability in population and consumption of energy and materials — it is a truly green economy that meets people's needs without undermining the life-support systems of the planet.
• Real Life LEED: SRI Values for Copper Roofing – Old vs. New – Credit interpretation rulings for SSc7.2 yielded no inquiries about materials that have a non-stable SRI value. Although this is simple conjecture, given the rapid deterioration in SRI for copper (non-compliant within a year, likely much sooner), I would suggest that this product is not in compliance with the intent of the credit which is to reduce heat islands. Clearly for the majority of the life of the copper roof will help foster heat island issues and not reduce them.
• Some Buildings Not Living Up to Green Label – NYTimes.com – Actual energy performance in use will be flavour of 2010 on both sides of the Atlantic: "But in its own study last year of 121 new buildings certified through 2006, the Green Building Council found that more than half — 53 percent — did not qualify for the Energy Star label and 15 percent scored below 30 in that program, meaning they used more energy per square foot than at least 70 percent of comparable buildings in the existing national stock."

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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."

admin News ashrae, beq, BREEAM, DEC, DGnB, Energy, HQE, LEED, prices, statistics, UK

These are my links for August 18th through August 19th:

• One green energy firm 100% renewable – "Data available on electricityinfo.org shows that Good Energy is the only firm offering its customers energy which is all generated from renewables. Other companies which claim to offer green power, such as Ecotricity and Green Energy, don't even generate half of their power from renewables. And, while Good Energy makes no carbon emissions, the others do."
• Ten tips for cheap and effective eco-refurbishments – Building – Bigging up Inbuilt's recent contribution to Building's sustainability channel…
• STAR Community Index — ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability USA – via Jetson Green: The STAR Community Index is a new tool designed to help local governments plan, track and measure their sustainability programs. Inspired by the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED ® Green Building Rating System ™.
• Plans drawn up for British Embassy in Indonesia – Property Week – I was wondering what use BREEAM International would be with the majority of countries opting for LEED – of course! The FCO will have to have BREEAM on any embassies they build (OGC requirement). Still, not a massive market, I would of thought…
• BREEAM’s green credentials are not what they seem – Property Week – Great article from Property Week on the downsides of BREEAM and how these should change with BREEAM 2008 – links into EPC's and DEC's.
• The Green Workplace: BREEAM – the UK equivalent to LEED – toughens up – Emma Wharton of HOK compares BREEAM 2008 to LEED and wonders what changes LEED will bring in later this year.

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What I’ve been reading about:

• Reader’s Rant – Building Services Journal – "BREEAM is about environmental damage reduction and not about sustainable development. Yet BREEAM is increasingly interpreted within the construction sector as being a metric for sustainable development. Use of the terms ‘very good’ and ‘excellent’ have become misleading because they are hijacked to mean ‘more sustainable’ to one degree or another. In fact, it would be more accurate to call buildings achieving these ratings as BREEAM ‘not as bad as most’ or BREEAM ‘a bit less harmful’."
• IES enters free DEC software market – Building – Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) has developed a free alternative to the Government’s ORCalc Display Energy Certifiacte (DEC) software. The Glaswegian firm is planning on a late-August launch.
  The company said the software allowed users to produce DECs and the attached advisory reports as well as facilitate lodgements.
  Benefits over ORCalc listed by the company include: no restriction on the number of building zones (benchmark categories); user-friendly input Web based access; personal user area to store and manage DEC submissions; and ability to save and move between the different sections of the submission
• Hobbits in a hole – Building Design – My favourite tacky hobbit houses in Oregon are in trouble. I could go and snap one up at a bargain auction price…
• Kevin McCloud’s own ‘grand design’ in chaos – Building Design – Read this article, and especially the comments. As usual when a 'design guru' such as Kevin McHeadintheClouds (or Wayne Hemingway to name another, or indeed Germaine Greer, who isn't even a designer) gets involved in 'real' projects, they get hauled over the coals by those who have considerable more experience and a much more realistic view. Poor Kev.
• Small Scale Wind Energy | Carbon Trust – A new Carbon Trust study into the potential of small-scale wind energy has found that small wind turbines could provide up to 1.5 Terawatt Hours (TWh) per year of electricity (0.4% of total UK electricity consumption) and 0.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) emission savings. This is based on 10% of households installing turbines at costs competitive with grid electricity, which is currently around 12p per kWh.
  The study also indicates that for the UK as a whole, the majority of electricity and carbon savings are available from small turbines in rural areas – four times as much as urban areas irrespective of costs, and considerably more given economic drivers. This is mainly due to wind speeds generally being higher in rural areas. Turbines in some rural locations could provide cheaper electricity than the grid, but it appears that in many urban situations, roof-mounted turbines may not pay back their embedded carbon emissions.
• Expert tells legislators in city the price of oil will drop | NewsOK.com – Todd Buchholz (author of "new ideas from dead economists", former advisor to Bush and technophile predicts:"Oil will peg out two years from now being closer to $50 a barrel, which is still high enough to make those alternative fuels worth pursuing.” He said he wouldn't be surprised if discussions took place two years from now about keeping the price of oil from getting too low so it "doesn't pull the rug out from solar, wind and clean coal technology.”

mel starrs News architects, BREEAM, carbon_trust, DEC, Economics, EPC, hobbit, house, Housing, ies, learned, lessons, oil, Oregon, report, Software, Sustainable_development, wind

What I’ve been reading about:

• Zero carbon targets debated at AECB conference – Discussions on renewables and greenwash
• Models of whole life costing – Building Services Journal – Book review by Hywel Davies of Whole Life-cycle Costing: Risk and risk responses
• BSRIA Infonet: Whole-Life Costing Analysis, Churcher D : Books & Downloads – Publications for the building services industry – Single and site licence software – Free publications – Try before you buy – Presents a simple process in five sequential steps for the practical calculation of whole-life costs for the construction and operation of buildings.
• Assessors in demand as deadline looms – Building Services Journal – CIBSE Certification has accredited over two thirds of all the energy assessors and CIBSE Low Carbon Energy Assessors (LCEAs) to produce Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) and Display Energy Certificates (DECs).
• Carbon targets impossible without post occupancy overhaul – Building Services Journal – BSRIA propose a "Soft Landings" framework
• BD+C’s Top 150 Building Team LEED APs- 7/2/2008 12:31:00 PM – Building Design & Construction – Perkins+Will have over 50% of staff LEED accredited, more than anyone else.

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