Elemental

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.”"

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These are my links for May 21st through May 24th:

• Two thirds of firms ‘unprepared’ for carbon legislation | ITworld – "At the moment most organisations are just using guess work," he said. "This can't continue. In the same way that financial auditors wouldn't accept guesses as to an organisation's cash position, environmental auditors are unlikely to accept guesses on energy use."
• Scotland should aim higher than clusters of urban lumps, complete with useless ‘gob ons’ – Herald Scotland | Business | Markets & Economy – "What might we better achieve with all this public money?<br />
  Well, in that final leaders’ debate Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg uttered the unfashionable words: “council houses”. Perhaps if we set-aside our prejudiced stereotyped idea of grimy estates, decent quality council houses are exactly what we should be spending public money on.<br />
  Clegg also raised the issue of VAT. Newbuild is zero-rated, but repair and renewal attracts the full 17.5%. This hugely tips the balance towards greenfield building sites, and away from refurbishing our existing stock. There are hundreds of thousands of empty properties lying vacant in our towns and cities.<br />
  Readjusting VAT to encourage the repair of these would deliver more homes for every pound invested, fortify existing communities, reduce car-dependency, and create more jobs (repair being more labour-intensive)."
• Green ArchiTEXT: Flavorpill: Brad Pitt and the Trouble with Vernacular Architecture – Interesting article on an issue I hadn't really been following – the re-building of New Orleans: "Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the designs of the Make It Right (MIR) houses in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward continue to transform the city and influence post-disaster vernacular in America. They also continue to stir discussion, and plenty of critique, from a broad spectrum of architects – certainly from preservationists, who complain the MIR designs are not New Orleans enough, and even from a few sustainability advocates who question whether these unique designs truly offer a cohesive sense of community, even whether they are replicable elsewhere."
• CIRIA survey – CIRIA is co-ordinating a programme that aims to assess the feasibility of identifying a widely acceptable method for construction contractors to effectively measure and report their project-based carbon footprints to clients and principal contractors. The first stage of the programme involves gathering information on current practice across the construction industry. We welcome responses to our questionnaire.
• GRIHA – Home – GRIHA, an acronym for Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment, is the National Rating System of India. It has been conceived by TERI and developed jointly with the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of India. It is a green building 'design evaluation system', and is suitable for all kinds of buildings in different climatic zones of the country.
• Security guard admits he hacked hospital PCs • The Register – Last summer, Federal prosecutors charged McGraw with planning a "massive" denial of service attack on the HVAC system. He allegedly scheduled it for the July 4 Independence Day holiday, when it wouldn't be uncommon for temperatures to exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit. He called it "Devil's Day."
• Green Building Certifications to Cover 53 Billion Square Feet of Space by 2020 « Pike Research – "According to a May 2010 report from Pike Research, space covered by green building certification programs will increase from 6 billion square feet worldwide in 2010 to 53 billion square feet by 2020. While LEED and BREEAM will continue to dominate the North American and European green building markets, respectively, Pike Research anticipates that newly developed programs in China and India will represent about 30% of all certified green new construction by 2020."
• Why Planting Farms in Skyscrapers Won’t Solve Our Food Problems | Food | AlterNet – Cox and Van Tassel decimate the arguments for vertical food. Very good article. As always with these ideas, ask what problem is it that they are trying to fix? What is the intention?
• PLoS ONE: Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America – Interesting paper: "The land-use intensity of different energy production techniques varies over three orders of magnitude, from 1.9–2.8 km2/TW hr/yr for nuclear power to 788–1000 km2/TW hr/yr for biodiesel from soy. In all scenarios, temperate deciduous forests and temperate grasslands will be most impacted by future energy development, although the magnitude of impact by wind, biomass, and coal to different habitat types is policy-specific. Regardless of the existence or structure of a cap-and-trade bill, at least 206,000 km2 will be impacted without substantial increases in energy efficiency, which saves at least 7.6 km2 per TW hr of electricity conserved annually and 27.5 km2 per TW hr of liquid fuels conserved annually. Climate policy that reduces carbon dioxide emissions may increase the areal impact of energy, although the magnitude of this potential side effect may be substantially mitigated by increases in energy efficiency."
• Passivhaus Refurb: Passivhaus and the planning system – Loving this blog: "The UK planning system does not fit well with the Passivhaus approach, which involves much more upfront, detailed design work than a traditional build. Normally, an architect produces an outline design with just enough detail to satisfy the planners; the point being not to commit more resources than necessary until after planning permission has been given. In any Passivhaus project, but particularly in ours, which is much more challenging because we are new to Passivhaus in the UK and because it is a refurb, more work is needed to be sure we would meet the Passivhaus standard before the planning application can be submitted. If we had submitted our plans earlier, we would have locked in window sizes and other variables that have a significant bearing on the building's energy performance. We have found getting down to the key Passivhaus standard for heating of 15kWh/m2 per annum quite difficult, without throwing silly money at some exotic materials."

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These are my links for April 7th through April 8th:

• Bleak and tortured: Kapoor’s Orbit is hardly an Olympic ideal | Building Blog – “the fact that Kapoor’s works seems to have garnered criticism from critics and the public alike renders it, in this regard at least, unique.
  what does it say?
  And this perhaps is Orbit’s biggest flaw and the reason why it has attracted such negative publicity. To the mayor of London and the London 2012 organising committee, who have been gushing profusely about the sculpture since it was unveiled, it clearly provides a big, pop-art symbol of the games that will doubtless look good on TV and divert attention away from the fact the London Olympic Park lacks much of the architectural ‘wow’ factor so clearly evident in Beijing.”
• Self Reliance Myth – Debunking some myths (read the whole post): “I hear people say they are growing 30%, 50%, even 70% of their own food. What they usually mean is that they are growing fruits and vegetables that make up some percentage of the total cost or weight—but not calories—of their food. Vegetables are high in wet weight, but low in calories. If you are growing 100% of your own vegetables, they provide about 15-20% of your daily calories, unless you are living mostly on potatoes or other starchy veggies. Most daily calories come from grains, meat, or dairy products. So if you’re not raising large-scale grains or animals, it’s unlikely that you are growing more than one-quarter of your own food, measured honestly by nutritional content. In that case, it’s not accurate to claim you are “70% food self sufficient.” …. Now we begin to see how difficult, and even undesirable, self sufficiency is. You won’t have time for much else if you are truly food self sufficient, even in a permaculture system.”
• IES » » In Practice: linking Revit to IES – “it is important to note that gbXML is not perfect and limitations transferring information between BIM and energy simulation software still exist. A key issue to understand, when looking to cycle through design options in a timely manner, is that there are some fundamental differences between an energy model for analysis and an architectural model used to generate construction documents. For example, many BIM elements do not support information exchange identifying the thermal performance characteristics that are needed to run energy analysis. …
  At early stages, if you take the perspective of the energy modeler they want to include the minimum amount of information to answer the question at hand, to reduce the variables and the analysis time. If you take the perspective of the architect, the visual character of the overall model is important to convey the design intent, as well as the details to express the layering of the idea(s).”
• marklynas.org | Why no party can afford to be anti-nuclear – “By attempting to be populist but appearing merely outdated, the Lib Dems have produced an energy policy that is by far the least realistic of the plans by the three major parties. On 19 March, the Conservatives launched a sensible plan for a carbon tax on electricity generation to encourage investment in both nuclear and renewable power. After years of dithering, Labour is now on track with its large-scale offshore wind programme, nuclear new-build and major grid upscaling.
  The Lib Dems are left with wishful thinking. The writer David MacKay summarised their approach in his book Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air as “Plan L”, which would leave a zero-carbon Britain dependent on imports for two-thirds of its electricity, and on coal for much of the rest. (This is “clean coal”—a technology yet to be invented on the required scale.)”
• House 2.0: Part G and the Water Calculator – Comment from Nick Grant on Mark’s Part G post: “The calculator approach is inherently flawed (on many levels) but cannot easily be dropped as it was voted on by ‘Stakeholders’ and became policy. There is a critique on my website which led to a review for CLG. Unfortunately the report of the review has not been published as I would rather reference that.
  Many of us find it really draining to have to put so much effort into debunking seriously flawed policies as you regularly flag up on your blog. We would rather get on with designing more sustainable buildings (and renovations) but have to spend huge amounts of time and effort (usually unpaid) arguing against supposedly green policies that are making things worse.”
• Awash in Awareness: Knowing a Product’s “Water Footprint” May Help Consumers Conserve H2O: Scientific American – “Concerns over greenhouse gas emissions have vaulted the term “carbon footprint” into mainstream vernacular. Now, by promoting the concept of a “water footprint” with the goal of including it on product labels, researchers are hoping to draw similar attention to how drastically we’re draining our most precious resource. As the use of a footprint to gauge water use gains popularity, however, researchers are struggling to reach a consensus on how best to measure that footprint so the public understands its full impact.”
• Urban Resilience § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM – Fascinating article on resilience: “From a systems standpoint, what cities are doing is creating a network—which in itself could strengthen resilience. Knowledge generated in one place could be used in another, and experiences and best practices could be shared. But this power shift raises an interesting governance question, as every organization in place today when it comes to global governance—the CBD, the United Nations, the Law of the Sea—is based on the nation state. Now on the sidelines, a very powerful network of cities is growing, sharing information technology, and driving an ambitious sustainability agenda.”

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These are my links for March 19th through March 25th:

• Climate science: Spin, science and climate change | The Economist – "…the ambiguities of science sit uncomfortably with the demands of politics. Politicians, and the voters who elect them, are more comfortable with certainty. So “six months to save the planet” is more likely to garner support than “there is a high probability—though not by any means a certainty—that serious climate change could damage the biosphere, depending on levels of economic growth, population growth and innovation.” Politics, like journalism, tends to simplify and exaggerate. Hence the advertisements that the British government has been running, using nursery rhymes…<br />
  Such an approach may, in the short term, have encouraged some voters to support measures to combat climate change. But implying that Britain’s children face some sort of Saharan future is wrong, and dangerous. This week Britain’s ASA slapped the government for its infantile advertisements. <br />
  Where there is plainly an urgent need for change is the way in which governments use science to make their case."
• Neighbors Oppose Green Label for the Software Mogul Mitch Kapor’s Big House – NYTimes.com – When the house won planning approval earlier this year, many neighbors were surprised — not so much by the size of the house, or by its sleek design, but by the fact that, under Berkeley regulations, the house will qualify as “green.” In Berkeley, building proposals are evaluated on a “green point” scale, earning credit for such eco-conscious features as low-flow shower heads and insulation. A house with more than 60 points is labeled green, regardless of its size.
• News : NDS – Business Minister, Ian Lucas, said “London will be a world-leading centre for energy efficient buildings, specialising in retrofitting activity. The variety of buildings across London means that there will be a wide range of highly exportable skills. This position of global leadership will help create wealth for London and the UK economy by providing market opportunities for businesses and inward investors, and jobs for Londoners. “The opportunity to develop and demonstrate solutions for the refurbishment of homes and commercial buildings will help the construction sector to innovate in order to retain, as well as expand, its current market position.” Initially, the programme will include a range of projects aligning nearly £90million funding already committed by the RDAs involved: the London Development Agency (LDA) will lead the LCEA programme, working in collaboration with the South East of England Development Agency (SEEDA) and the East of England Development Agency (EEDA).
• Sustainability is a RESULT (not a reason) | Simcoe Consulting – 2. Results (like sustainability) can be measured, reasons cannot. I can measure the results of a recycling program, I cannot measure the reasons I had a veggie burger for lunch. Reasons, on the other hand, mainly appeal to your psyche and the the outside influences on you. People will say you the reason you should make your lighting energy-efficient is sustainability. Wrong. The reason you should do it is that it will save you money.
• Emerging Findings | Policies | BIS – Worth reading – easily digestible. "On 17 March the Low Carbon Construction Innovation and Growth Team, chaired by Chief Construction Adviser, Paul Morrell, published its Emerging Findings (PDF, 1.7 Mb)."
• The overpopulation myth « Prospect Magazine – "Let’s look at carbon dioxide emissions: the biggest current concern because of climate change. The world’s richest half billion people—that’s about 7 per cent of the global population—are responsible for half of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile, the poorest 50 per cent of the population are responsible for just 7 per cent of emissions. Virtually all of the extra 2bn or so people expected on this planet in the coming 30 or 40 years will be in this poor half of the world. Stopping that, even if it were possible, would have only a minimal effect on global emissions, or other global threats."
• Challenges for energy and buildings research: objectives, methods and funding mechanisms – Building Research & Information – "This commentary reflects on a series of strategic questions facing the energy and buildings research community and research funding bodies in the UK. These include the problems of research capacity and funding, the need to find a new balance between competition and cooperation between research groups, and a need for a renewed focus on the empirical performance of buildings. The authors argue that conventional distinctions between research, development and the deployment of technologies are inappropriate for the built environment. A wider range of approaches to research is needed to enable researchers to engage more effectively with stakeholders throughout the research, development, and deployment process, to reduce the distinction between research and knowledge transfer, and to reduce the length of learning cycles. "
• Report suggests behavioural changes cancel out green refits – Behavioural economics finally hits UK building research: "The framing of the problem of energy demand and CO2 emissions is crucial to its eventual success. The way in which technical interventions in buildings, such as higher insulation standards, improved boiler efficiencies or integrated renewable energy technologies, can directly affect carbon emissions is in principle relatively well understood. Yet it is an unavoidable fact that, despite many technical improvements to the UK building stock, CO2 levels continue to rise. There are many reasons for this. As well as consumers turning up the heat, some increases in emissions can be ascribed to economic growth, which leads to more or larger dwellings, which tend, over time, to contain more electrical items, and items that are also more energy intensive. There are a number of entangled and interacting economic, technical, social and behavioural factors at play."
• Building4Change : Morrell says industry faces biggest change since Victorian times – "The review of the low carbon construction innovation and growth team (IGT) aims to identify how construction can best deliver the future carbon reduction commitments for 2020 and beyond. It will publish its final report later in the year, including recommendations to government to help inform policy development.<br />
  Issues affecting non-domestic buildings are:<br />
  the specific challenges of addressing the existing stock, and particularly the problem of frequently separate ownership and occupation<br />
  the need to stimulate market demand for products and works (new build and retrofit) designed for carbon reduction<br />
  a linked need for innovative means of financing the transition to low carbon<br />
  adoption of project level decision-making on the basis of appraisals founded on a whole life approach."
• All Party Urban Development Group|Home – The All Party Urban Development Group’s new report "Next Steps: A Regeneration Agenda for the Next Government" has been released. It sets out four important measures which a new government needs to implement if it is to safeguard regeneration over the next 10 years.<br />
  Based on research, the report recommends that:<br />
  1. Public sector investment should be focused on the areas that need it most.<br />
  2. Business rates should be localised and tax increment financing (TIF) should be introduced.<br />
  3. Planning reform should be limited after the first year of the next government and planning performance agreements (PPAs) should be used more.<br />
  4. There should be a focus on increasing the housing supply and adjusting stamp duty to encourage greater investment in the private rented sector.
• Socialreporter | Green Valleys show the way to Mass Localism – NESTA's guide to Mass Localism:<br />
  # Establish and promote a clear, measurable outcome<br />
  # Presume a community capacity to innovate<br />
  # In the early stages, challenge and advice is more valuable than cash<br />
  # Identify existing barriers to participation and then remove them<br />
  # Don’t reward activity, reward outcomes

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

• Resisting Dickensian Gloom | Planetizen – I often read stuff I don't agree with, just to keep myself in check. This article is pretty much the opposite of everything I believe. I don't even know where to start. Suffice to say, statistics can be manipulated to back up *any* theory. I'm still a big fan of cities though…
• No more niches – we need sustainable innovation at scale (Jonathon Porritt) – "I spent a day last week at Ecobuild – ‘the biggest event in the world for sustainable design, construction and the built environment’. That absolutely wasn’t a claim that could have been made at the first Ecobuild, five years ago, which attracted no more than 1000 visitors. This year, there were more than 50,000 people there. Earls Court was flush with exhibitors, from some of the biggest companies in the UK to distinctly ‘alternative’ start-ups taking a massive gamble on enough people falling for their particular ‘breakthrough innovation’. There were countless meetings and debates going on the whole time, and the kind of buzz that one doesn’t always associate with events of this kind.<br />
  For the politicians who’d dropped in, and wandered around looking a bit bemused, it all said one thing: no more niches. This was about scale. New orders. Expanding markets. Innovation (in the construction industry!). And even, dare one say it, new jobs."
• Making the connection with sustainable development – The Regeneration Blog – Spot on Jackie – read the whole thing: "We got onto discussing whether "sustainability is the new regeneration" in terms of being the new emerging exciting industry to be part of, for the Noughties and the Tens, in the same way as regeneration was the party-to-be-at for the Eighties and the Nineties. And our verdict was: well, yes!<br />
  The parallels are all there. Environmental jobs are created on the fringe and (at least in the general perception) are still not mainstream. Despite a pretty coherent case, environmentalists still seem to be outsiders, banging on the door of the establishment. Those who choose the environment industry tend to be as messianic and passionate, as pointy-headed, as we were when we "invented" urban regeneration, in London Docklands (among other places) all those years ago.<br />
  Environmental projects tend to need the same skills that we deploy in urban regeneration…"
• Official figures show construction output falling again, but devils lurk in the detail | Brickonomics – More doom from Brian Green: "If you do a crude breakdown of the work sponsored by the public sector, doing your best to include PFI, and the work that is properly private sector, then you find that the public sector underpins close to half the work currently under construction. That compares with less than a third before the credit crunch (see graph 2).<br />
  For me that graph in one picture illustrates the increased level of risk in the construction market given the likely pattern of future public spending."
• Fewer redundancy in construction, but the future remains bleak on jobs | Brickonomics – Well reasoned doom (as ever) from Brian Green: "underemployment is, to some extent, becoming the new unemployment.<br />
  Broadly, the proportional cost of overhead per person increases with the reduction in hours. This makes each person, theoretically, less productive financially from the employers’ perspective.<br />
  Firms may be prepared to carry this cost for a limited period, but if they see no sign of an upturn the likelihood is of a further wave of job cuts. With people working fewer hours and proportionately carrying larger overheads, this (proportionately) increases the numbers of jobs likely to go."
• Feed-in tariff ‘killing off’ burgeoning UK small turbine industry | Environment | guardian.co.uk – Not that I'm necessarily standing up for wind, but the capital cost in this example is half that of the solar: "This will allow a 1.5KW turbine, producing an average of 800KWh a year in windy conditions – less than a fifth of the average UK household's electricity needs. By comparison, UK panel installer Solarcentury has estimated that the typical 18 metre square domestic solar panel installation would on average generate just over 2,000KWh – nearly half the average household's electricity consumption."
• 2009: EPCs in numbers | National Energy Services – Data, data, data! At last some figures which might indicate how many Part L non-dom properties built per year.<br />
  ND EPC (non-dwellings) 111,312<br />
  The post focuses on domestic market, but this is the first time I've seen *any* data on numbers of non-dom EPC's.
• The Archdruid Report: Energy Follows Its Bliss – Via Chris Tweed, a druid(?!?) explains exergy. Very long post – worth reading the whole thing: "In a very small way, as you sit there considering your cold coffee, you’re facing an energy crisis; the energy resources you have on hand (the remaining heat in the coffee) will not do the work you want them to do (warming your insides). Notice, though, that you’re not suffering from an energy shortage – there’s exactly the same amount of energy in the dining room as there was when the coffee was fresh from the coffeepot. No, what you have is a shortage of the difference between energy concentrations that will allow the energy to do useful work. (The technical term for this is exergy). How do you solve your energy crisis? One way or another, you have to increase the energy concentration in your energy source relative to the room temperature environment."
• SuDoBE — Sustainable Design of the Built Environment – Good to see Chris blogging again: "In the context of heated buildings, the ability of a source of energy to “do work” can be interpreted as delivering warmth to occupants. But as the post on exergy suggests, the concentration of heat is important and concentrated sources of warmth indoors are only available from fossil fuels. The erroneous assumption often made about warmth is that it doesn’t matter how it is delivered as long as it is capable of creating a comfortable environment. However, we know thermal comfort depends on the recent experience. If I return home on a cold day, what I want is not a uniform level of heating, which is increasingly the norm in new, highly insulated dwellings with small heating systems, but a high temperature heat source that will help me recover from the outside conditions quickly. There is an aesthetic pleasure to this which should not be underestimated."
• Creating excellent primary schools: A guide for clients | Publications | CABE – Helping primary school clients, working in either the local authority or the school itself, to make the most of new capital investment in their buildings.<br />
  There is a clear link between well-designed primary schools and pupil performance and behaviour. Successful school design is the result of hard work and collaboration between designers, contractors and visionary, committed clients.<br />
  Creating excellent primary schools takes readers step by step through the process, offering practical tools and a dozen inspiring case studies to show just what can be achieved.
• Rethinking biomass boilers | News | Architects Journal – "The number of stories reaching the AJ about the shortcomings of biomass boilers is growing daily. Sources say a raft of schools are giving up on their maintenance-heavy wood-chip or pellet-fuelled boilers and are instead relying on back-up gas-fired boilers.<br />
  This does not seem to be deterring design teams working on the new wave of Building Schools for the Future schemes, 86 per cent of which are going down the biomass route. Garry Palmer, director of advanced design at AECOM, which has been carrying out detailed research into biomass boilers, understands why this is. ‘Biomass is almost certainly the cheapest in terms of capital cost, and is the easiest way to get the additional Department for Children, Schools and Families [DCSF] funding available for low-carbon schools.<br />
  ‘However, when you look at lifecycle costs, other routes are more cost-effective… but the DCSF carbon calculator does kind of push you down the biomass route,’ adds Palmer."
• Making better use of Energy Performance Certificates and data: Consultation – Planning, building and the environment – Communities and Local Government – Hurrah – another consultation: "Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) and Display Energy Certificates (DEC) have an important role to play in supporting our carbon reduction aims by providing vital information about the energy efficiency of buildings in England and Wales and advice about measures to improve their energy performance. To enhance their contribution, we are consulting on a number of measures to help improve the effectiveness of EPCs and to make better use of energy performance data."
• Frank Chimero has a blog. (How-To) – Good philosophy: "Why do we look for recipes? Because we’re risk averse. If we fail, it’s because someone else gave us the wrong recipe. We get to skip on the blame, but can claim the success.<br />
  But, there’s money in recipes. If there’s a recipe, that means there’s a secret. And you can sell a silver bullet. The thing is, most people that are giving you a recipe are pandering to your fear. “What if things go wrong?”"
• Facing up the biomass emissions – BSEE – Building Services and Environmental Engineer – "…many biomass installations already use a cyclone or multi-cyclone to remove particles from flue gases. However, cyclones are totally dependent on the mass of the particles for removal, so while they will remove around 50% of the coarser particles they do not remove particles below PM10. This is why the new Directive and its emphasis on PM2.5 has such significance for biomass installations…<br />
  Until recently there has not been a financially viable alternative but Hoval has now optimised a ceramic filter for use in biomass installations – without making the overall cost of a biomass installation prohibitive.<br />
  Capable of removing up to 96% of PM2.5 and PM10 particles, ceramic filters can be used with any type of biomass boiler and can retrofitted to existing installations, so they have the potential to address many concerns (real of perceived) about particulate emissions from biomass."
• Green Building Programs: The Fundamental Flaw! – Michael Anschel – Excellent point, well made (read the whole post): "If we are asking people to think about how everything is connected, how everything goes somewhere, how their actions impact other people, and about their relationship with nature, then why the hell are we telling them to check their brain at the door and pick up a code book? It is almost as moronic as suggesting the LEED AP test (an exercise in minutia), or the NAHB Certified Green Professional test (a joke) have the ability to turn someone into a green expert!<br />
  Green building requires you to think. In green building, there is no easy path or one-size-fits-all solution. The sooner everyone understands this, the sooner we can get back to the business of green building."
• FT.com / UK / Economy & Trade – BAE chief throws spanner in gas fitters’ work – "Gas fitters, photocopier repairmen and other technicians should stop calling themselves engineers, according to the chairman of BAE Systems, the UK’s biggest manufacturing company.<br />
  “Britain suffers from a language problem in that the word ‘engineer’ is applied to a lot of different people who do a range of jobs,” Dick Olver told the Financial Times. “Professional engineers need to take ownership of the brand and keep it for themselves.”"
• Environment Agency – Opportunity and environmental sensitivity mapping for hydropower in England and Wales – "The map is based on a report commissioned by the Environment Agency to assess hydropower potential of our rivers and the impact of developing them on the environment.<br />
  In total over 25,000 sites were identified. These sites represent existing structures within rivers such as weirs and lochs. As well as hydropower opportunities they are barriers to fish movement and migration.<br />
  If a hydropower scheme were built on every one of these barriers they could generate one per cent of the UK’s electricity needs. In reality, only some of these sites could be exploited due to environmental sensitivities, particularly the impact on migratory fish populations such as salmon and eels, as well as practical constraints such as access to the electricity network.<br />
  However, we identified around 4,000 sites where a sensitively designed scheme incorporating a fish-pass could actually improve the local environment as well as generate electricity."
• Office for Renewable Energy Deployment (ORED) – Department of Energy and Climate Change – Note – they have three objectives – carbon reduction is only one: "Office for Renewable Energy Deployment (ORED)<br />
  ORED's mission is “To accelerate the deployment of renewable energy in order to reduce carbon emissions, increase energy security and create business opportunities in the UK”"
• Tories set out plan for local design standards – Building Design – "A Conservative government would introduce a decentralised planning system where local authorities each draw up individual architectural and design standards, the party has confirmed.<br />
  Proposals to fast track schemes that do not attract objection from local people are also included in the party’s long-awaited planning green paper, Open Source, published on Monday.<br />
  “Legislation already requires councils to promote good design, yet many are struggling” Ruth Reed<br />
  The paper dismisses the current system as “almost wholly negative and adversarial” and instead envisages a broad brushstroke national framework of planning policy, combined with more distinctive regional policies.<br />
  But RIBA president Ruth Reed — who is supportive of the paper’s emphasis on design — said “struggling” councils must be given more resources if they are to draw up and maintain local architectural standards."
• IES » » 111 ways to save energy – Interesting statistic: "Buildings in New York City account for nearly 80 PERCENT of its greenhouse gas emissions. More than buses, cars and taxis. And in a city with more than 10,000 cabs alone, the fact that buildings are the largest contributor of greenhouse gases is astounding."
• Ian McEwan: Failure at Copenhagen climate talks prompted novel rewrite | Environment | guardian.co.uk – "He said was happy to class himself as "warmer" — a term increasingly used by climate sceptics to describe those who agree with the scientific consensus that human activity drives warming. "Though I am quite tempted sometimes to be a calamatist. There is something intellectually delicious about all that super-pessimism."<br />
  McEwan added that his research on climate had forced him to reconsider opposition to nuclear power. "We just don't have anything else that can run our cities on a windless night in February." Better nuclear energy than coal, he said. "It is rare that virtue and necessity collide. Sooner or later we're going to have to find a new energy source for mankind.""
• News – dcarbon8 carbon & sustainability consultancy – Well done, and good luck to Guy: "Deloitte, the business advisory firm, has acquired dcarbon8, a leading carbon and sustainability consultancy, as it expands and evolves its environmental and sustainability consulting practice.<br />
  The deal sees Guy Battle, a founder of dcarbon8, become a Deloitte partner and its employees join Deloitte."
• Real Life LEED: FREE Unlocked LEED 2009 Checklists That Don’t Suck! – Does Real Life LEED have a day job as well (I assume so). In awe of how helpful this website is – wish I had time to do similar stuff for BREEAM): "Below you'll find links to Excel checklists for each of the five v2009 (aka v3) rating systems (…if you think I'm going to try to revamp the LEED-Homes checklist you're insane). Each prints to a single page, has an area for notes, and is COMPLETELY UNLOCKED, so if you don't like something you can edit it on your own."
• My biggest mistakes « Scott Berkun – Great advice from Scott – especially if you're in a large multi-dis consultancy: "Not staying with the same boss/group. When I was there (‘94 to ‘03), after a long stint on the IE team, I jumped around Microsoft every couple of years, putting my curiosity and passions ahead of climbing ladders. I wanted a diversity of experiences – I had four different job titles in nine years at Microsoft – but this made it harder to get promoted and, in some cases, to earn respect in the MSFT culture. The advice I give people all the time is pick your manager first. A great manager will negate most other work problems, whereas an awful manager will negate most other work pleasures. Good managers get promoted and often their best people rise with them."
• Why scientists must be the new climate sceptics – opinion – 04 March 2010 – New Scientist – At the risk of opening up a massive can of worms again, NS points out why bloggers and tweeters shouldn't have risen to Amanda's bait (key phrase being unnecessary and ultimately harmful). Good article worth registering onto the site to read: "Last November, architecture journalist Amanda Baillieu wrote a column in Building Design that questioned whether the building industry should support cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. It was tame stuff, yet it prompted a torrent of criticism, some of it offensive. That was unnecessary, and ultimately harmful to the cause Baillieu's critics were fighting for. Now Baillieu is presenting herself as a brave soul, fearlessly standing up to climate science orthodoxy – despite having presented no evidence to challenge global warming."

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These are my links for January 23rd through January 26th:

• Not the last straw: Homes made from straw bales make a comeback | MNN – Mother Nature Network – Volunteer labour makes costing straw bale difficult: "Though the materials used for straw bale buildings – straw & plaster – are typically inexpensive, the special knowledge required to design & build these structures usually means that labor costs can be anywhere between 10 percent and 20 percent higher than for traditional buildings, though some of that cost is made back through energy efficiency.
  “The construction of these buildings takes a person who’s done tons of training to really understand exactly how to get the material to behave,” says Moore. “It just ends up costing the consumer too much money for the benefit it produces.”
  In addition, straw bales can create extra hassle in terms of coordinating their delivery from local farmers, having a big enough job site to store all the bales and keeping them dry during construction.
  One way that people help keep labor costs down is to throw “bale raising” parties where friends & family members help stack bales and plaster walls."
• Forget Sustainability, It’ s Time to Talk Resilience – "There's a new concept infiltrating the climate change conversation, and it has the potential to change the conversation altogether. It’s time to give sustainability a rest and start talking about resilience, Rob Hopkins writes in Resurgence.
  “The term ‘resilience’ is appearing more frequently in discussions about environmental concerns, and it has a strong claim to actually being a more successful concept than that of sustainability. Sustainability and its oxymoronic offspring sustainable development are commonly held to be a sufficient response to the scale of the climate challenge we face: to reduce the inputs at one end of the globalised economic growth model (energy, resources, and so on) while reducing the outputs at the other end (pollution, carbon emissions, etc.). However, responses to climate change that do not also address the imminent, or quite possibly already passed, peak in world oil production do not adequately address the nature of the challenge we face.”"
• House 2.0: The Denby Dale Passive House – "Because of all this, the house down the end of Geoff and Kate’s garden has assumed a significance they cannot have dreamt of when they first contacted Bill Butcher. It’s not just a low energy house, it’s a Passive House. And it’s not just a Passive house, it’s an assault craft landing on the beach that is the Code for Sustainable Homes. By 2016, when in theory the Code should kick in fully and all new homes should be “zero carbon”, you would not be allowed to build this house. For a start, it is going to have a gas boiler — not permitted under Code Level 6. And it will have nothing in the way of home-generated electricity (although the Feed-In-Tariff coming on stream later this year may cause Geoff and Kate to reconsider)."
• Archinect : Views : Victory Gardens, or the Impact of the Financial Crisis on Architecture – Gloomy, but worth reading the whole article: "The hard part is going to be for architects to understand just how this is healthy for the profession. First, architects have hardly raised their productivity since the integration of digital design tools into their work. Sure, designs have gotten much more complex, but more isn’t always more. Many firms have wound up wasting labor on gimmicky designs produced by an army of interns. Now those firms are going to finally begin using technology the way it was meant to be. Watch as fifty-person firms shrink to five or ten core employees. Instead of talking about the cool things that digital technology can make, architects are going to talk about how fast and efficient digital technology makes them.
  That will be a huge paradigm-shift and will lead to more interesting work along the way."
• Sustainability: Carbon reduction – Building – Everything you need to know about CRC: "So is the financial liability placed on organisations by the CRC significant enough to demonstrate a convincing business case for improving energy performance in existing buildings? Not quite. However, the business case becomes more compelling when energy savings are taken into account as shown in the table below.
  Early investment in more energy efficient systems can reap significant savings in terms of reduced energy costs. The example shows the initial investment paid back in less than four years. If early action is difficult due to the current economic climate, then appropriate investment in time for the capped phase (2013) will also significantly reduce CRC liability and generate substantial energy savings. "

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One would have to be living under a rock (or at least, abroad) not to have noticed that there will be a general election in the UK sometime in the next 6 months. What will this mean for the construction industry? Plenty of speculation about, but not much talk about actual political and economic schools of thought, especially when it comes to sustainability.

First things first. There is no standalone discipline of sustainability. Basically, you have to be sustainable at something. Like sustainable construction. But even if you are committed to sustainable construction there is no ‘one correct way’ to practice sustainability. What is one man’s medicine is another man’s poison. Often what differentiates ‘flavours’ of sustainability is the economic and political beliefs and drivers of the actors involved.

Bill McKibben in a post about global warming says:

Most political arguments don’t really have a right and a wrong, no matter how passionately they’re argued. They’re about human preferences…

He does then state that we can’t afford to depend on current political processes to fix global warming, which I agree with, but I’m talking here about sustainability in it’s broadest sense rather than singly focussing on the carbon and global warming issues (the environmental leg, which we have broad consensus on). When it comes to sustainability, there really is no right and wrong. Looking at social and economic factors will inevitably bring in political beliefs.

To illustrate what I mean, and for those who haven’t come across it, there’s a lovely graphic called the Political Compass which plots both economic and politic beliefs on it. Below is the graphic for the main political parties in the UK in 2008.

The Political Compass owes more than a nod to the Nolan Chart which plots personal freedom against economic freedom. The idea of both of these is to expand the old fashioned political notions of left and right.

The usefulness of this when looking at sustainability (think of those 3 legs – social, economic and environmental) has to be huge? If we recognise this now, we will be able to have much more informed conversations about sustainability in construction over the next decade.

My hope for 2010 would be that economics and politics will no longer be neutral factors (or worse, taboo), but rather explicit within sustainability strategies. Any comments?

admin Economics, Opinion Bill McKibben, Political Compass, politics, Sustainability

These are my links for January 3rd through January 7th:

• She Just Walks Around With It: What I Would Tell Any Recent College Graduate – Wise words from Kristy: "That is NOT the same as liking what a company does, seeing a company that has lots of potential and potentially cool jobs, and just not liking some aspects of your current job there. Every job — especially in the beginning, good lord — comes with some "sh*t work": dumb things that just have to get done, and that you just have to do.
  Oh, I could write a manual about Success in the Workplace at the Entry-to-Mid Level.
  My point, really, is that every corporate job is going to suck to some degree. If it sucks and you totally can't see any reason to stay except for the paycheck, look for something else. If aspects of it suck but the long-term (1-3 year) potential is evident, don't screw up a good thing by focusing on the stupid."
• House 2.0: On Housing Benefit – Mark's B&W view of housing: "The problem is essentially that we have created a two-tier housing market. There is the private sector, which is expensive and insecure (esp. for renters), and the social/council sector which is cheap and very secure. And subsidised to the tune of £20billion a year…. It doesn’t strike at the root of the problem, which is that there are two different markets operating and cheap and secure housing is always going to be preferable to expensive and insecure, even more so now as windfall profits from owning private housing have been put on hold.
  A more logical solution would be to have just one housing market. To do that, you have two options. One would be to privatise the social/council house sector, and remove all housing benefit, instead supporting the poor by some other method – for instance, giving them money and letting them decide how to spend it. Alternatively, you could nationalise all housing and have it all rented out by the state."
• The enduring influence of architect Christopher Alexander, author of A Pattern Language. – By Witold Rybczynski – Slate Magazine – Most people discover Alexander through his classic, A Pattern Language, which appeared in 1977. Small and fat (more than 1,000 pages), printed on fine paper, and bound in a plain maroon cover embossed with a gold escutcheon, it resembles a Latin breviary. Its author's ambitious goal was nothing less than to catalog the entire built environment—from towns to bedrooms—as a collection of discrete "patterns," 253 of them. Each pattern was explained, supported by research, and illustrated by sketches and photographs. The patterns were linked to one another, showing which ones worked well together, and arranged hierarchically from large to small. "Neighborhood Boundaries," for example, suggests that strong neighborhoods require clear edges and restricted access. At the other end of the scale, "Ceiling Height Variety" observes that buildings with uniform ceilings are uncomfortable and recommends varying ceiling heights between large and small rooms to create different degrees of intimacy.
• CIBSE > About Building Services > Ken Dale Travel Bursary – The Ken Dale Travel Bursary makes awards available of between £1,500 and £4,000 to CIBSE members in the developmental stage of their career who wish to spend three to four weeks outside their own country researching aspects connected to their field of work and which will benefit CIBSE, their employer, their clients and the profession. CIBSE is especially keen to encourage applicants to take-up the award for research that articulates CIBSE's concern for the environment.

  The Bursary also offers the candidate the opportunity to experience technical, economic, environmental, social and political conditions in another country and to examine how these factors impact the practice of building services engineering.

• David Barrie: A New Deal for urban regeneration – Via Phil Clark on twitter, a great new blog find and a great post too: "Economic productivity today is increasingly linked with social welfare – and there's an ever-increasing recognition of a feedback loop between welfare, natural resources and economic development.
  In other words, sustainability is slowly but surely coming to mean not just environmental justice and intergenerational value but intra-generational value and equity"
• Blog | Yudelson Associates | Australian Efficient Building Scheme Allows Buildings to Trade Carbon Reductions – “An Efficient Building Scheme is identical to an emissions trading scheme except that it recognizes energy efficiency improvements in non-residential buildings, rather than emissions avoided. Simply put, it treats one ton of greenhouse gas emissions that is not emitted because energy is not used, in the same way that a conventional Emissions Trading Scheme treats one ton of CO2 that is not emitted due to a change in energy generation methods.” In other words, it’s far better to reduce demand than to fiddle with what the power plant has to emit to meet the (higher) demand of a building that wasn’t upgraded in terms of energy requirements.
• Anna Minton’s blog: Boris’ ‘Manifesto’ to keep public space public – "Surprised and pleased to see Boris Johnson call for public space to remain genuinely public. In his ‘Manifesto for Public Space’, which goes under the heading, ‘London’s Great Outdoors’, Boris writes that “there is a growing trend towards the private management of publicly accessible space” and that where this “corporatisation” occurs, “Londoners can feel themselves excluded from parts of their own city”. But he makes clear “this need not be the case” pointing to the Kings Cross development where it has been agreed that the local authority will retain control of the streets and public areas – ‘adopt’ the streets to use the jargon. He explicitly states: “This has established an important principle which should be negotiated in all similar schemes.”"
• BBC News – No central heating in new homes – Reading this, it screams of Passivhaus, yet isn't mentioned at all?: "The properties will be made air-tight and will be fitted with triple-glazed windows.
  They will also contain a "whole house ventilation" system which will recover at least 80% of the heat from stale air in the home and redistribute it into a supply of fresh filtered air.
  The executive director of Habitat for Humanity in Northern Ireland, Peter Farquharson, said the ambitious plan would "fundamentally change how people view new homes" and have a "far-reaching impact for the community and the sector"."
• Future Friendly Homes » The Passive House Solution | Certified Passive House Consultant | How Passive House works and why it matters – Passivhaus taking over the world? A good overview from an accredited practicioner stateside: "It is now available in the US. Consultants, projects or building components that have obtained the right to carry the logo have committed themselves to design excellence and the Passive House energy performance criteria. I am a Certified Passive House Consultant, one of 200 in the US and the first in the state of CT to provide this service."

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

• Is global warming unstoppable? – Another nutty theory or not?: "Garrett says his study's key finding "is that accumulated economic production over the course of history has been tied to the rate of energy consumption at a global level through a constant factor."
  That "constant" is 9.7 (plus or minus 0.3) milliwatts per inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar. So if you look at economic and energy production at any specific time in history, "each inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar would be supported by 9.7 milliwatts of primary energy consumption," Garrett says….
  "Economists think you need population and standard of living to estimate productivity," he says. "In my model, all you need to know is how fast energy consumption is rising. The reason why is because there is this link between the economy and rates of energy consumption, and it's just a constant factor.""
• Kevin McCloud is a Big Hit at TGR/RIBA Conference – "The challenge of combining sustainability and conservation issues were thoroughly debated at the conference with input from conservation officers, architects and engineers. Some questioned the need to debate this issue when there are ‘only’ 380,000 historic buildings in the UK – perhaps we should be concentrating on the many thousands of non-historic buildings that are below current standards of sustainability.
  Others wanted to discuss what should be tackled first and what makes most carbon sense. The contrast between the photovoltaic panels at the nearby Heelis project costing £450,000 and only contributing 10-15% of the building’s electrical needs and Kevin McCloud’s modest but effective eco-refurb of a terraced house in Manchester reducing carbon emissions by over 30% but only costing just over £2,000 could not have been sharper."
• ‘Sustainability’ is a dangerous mirage – Building Design – Owen's on top form: "It’s the very term “sustainability”, which has enabled even Dubai to present itself as if it is touching lightly upon the earth, that is at fault. What exactly is it that we want to “sustain”? Humanity? Nature? Capitalism? As a slogan it’s as awful as “save the planet”. The planet is safe, it’s we who are in danger.
  The problem with the rhetoric of sustainability is that, as a buzzword, it serves to fill the ethical void in the apocalyptic capitalism of the last 30 years. So, we get sustainable supermarkets, green-roofed car parks, carbon neutral desert cities, all of which are a kind of architectural offsetting as moronic as its economic equivalent. A hundred new industrial towns can have the mirage of Dongtan projected onto them. The recent demise of the British “eco-towns” is the pettier version of the same failure."
• Controlling dew point – 2009-11-19 10:00:00 | Consulting-Specifying Engineer – Excellent article (ASHRAE/US bias) which explains the principles of designing to dew point rather than relative humidity: "Not so long ago, HVAC designers did not have to be especially concerned with humidity. With plenty of cheap energy, the industry could afford to wallop the air with heavy-duty cooling to dry it, then fry it with reheat to keep it from freezing the occupants."
• Building4Change : European research gives blueprint for social sustainability – "Tools, instruments and metrics to foster sustainable communities are biased towards environmental sustainability, a European research project has found. The research, carried out by Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development, provides a blueprint for policymakers on incorporating social sustainability into European urban redevelopment initiatives.
  The report recommends greater integration of socially responsible investment and local authority indicators, alongside increased investment in data gathering to improve understanding of social sustainability. It highlights valuable monitoring systems such as the FootprintR sustainable investment policy, created by developer Igloo"
• Abu Dhabi to set school building eco standard – Building – "A new sustainable building standard is being developed for Abu Dhabi's schools.
  The system is being drawn up by Estidama, the organisation behind the emirate's local sustainability code for the the Abu Dhabi Education Council."
• Futerra Sustainability Communications – leading thinking – Another great guide to communicating sustainable futures from Futerra: "In this guide we argue that climate change is no longer a scientist's problem, it's now a salesman's problem. We call upon government spokespeople, climate campaigners and business advertisers to stop selling visions of hell. Instead we must all create and sell a new vision of a' low carbon heaven'.
  This guide is a new approach for us. Most of our previous thought leadership has been very practical – this is stronger, more opinioned and more controversial. There's still a lot of guidance and original research. But we're not pulling our punches."
  From the report: "Dates, percentages and figures come in action plans, not visions. A 20% cut by 2020 isn’t a vision, it’s a target. Put all the targets together and imagine what the world would be like if we met and exceeded them: that’s a vision."
• Land Securities chief executive accuses Government of lacking courage on sustainability – Modern Building Services – "On the need to dramatically improve the poor energy efficiency of the UK’s existing building stock, he said, ‘Unlike in the USA, the UK always seems to have a reluctance to use carrots and sticks in the tax system to drive behaviour and redirect capital investment. There is good evidence that tax allowances change investment decisions — and these allowances can be temporary.
  ‘I would certainly advocate a much higher level of Enhanced Capital Allowances for investment in energy-saving plant and building adaptations. However, I think the simplest route may be to use the property rates system to reward those who occupy energy-efficient buildings .’"
• Leeds given more power over regeneration – Building – "Rosie Winterton, minister for local government, has signed a programme to give Leeds and its regions more power over housing, planning and regeneration.
  The Leeds City Partnership pilot programme brings together 11 councils, regional partners and central government to create a devolved housing and regeneration board."
• Building4Change : New plant produces energy by mixing fresh water and sea water – "World's first osmotic plant opens, but commercial version will not be available for several years.
  European renewable energy producer Statkraft this month opened the world's first power plant generating energy by mixing fresh water and sea water in Norway.
  The energy is based on the natural phenomenon of osmosis, the transport of water through a semi-permeable membrane. When fresh water meets salt water, substantial amounts of energy are released, which can be used to generate power.
  At the osmotic power plant, fresh water and salt water are guided into separate chambers, divided by an artificial membrane. The salt molecules in the sea water pull the fresh water through the membrane, increasing the pressure on the sea water side. The pressure equals a 120 metre water column, or a significant waterfall, and can be used in a power generating turbine."
• Design Activism: Coming across chemicals: in plastics and in schools – "the main problem with the chemicals is that not enough of them have been properly tested for health effects, and the result is that we only regulate chemicals that we know about. A classic example is BPA, a chemical additive found in bottled water containers, baby bottles and the like. Last year mounting evidence about adverse health effects from BPA caused it to be withdrawn from the market.
  The long term solution to this problem is hatching in the Green Chemistry movement, which is aiming to put the burden of proof of safe chemicals on the manufacturers. Currently a chemical is innocent until proven guilty, however, there are simply too many chemicals and, based on the evidence we do have, no reason to assume their innocence. Proposed green chemistry policies also recognize that health problems might arise for interactive, multiple exposures."
• Ben Casnocha: The Blog: 10 Easily Implementable Life Problem-Solving Strategies – Some great thoughts on procrastination from Ben: ""Can I fail at this?" It's like Raymond Chandler said: there is no success without the possibility of failure. Therefore, something I can't fail at is also something I can't succeed at. I can fail at conducting an interview, writing an essay or making a video. I can't fail at meandering around the internet in search of "neat stuff to read." In a recent tweet, I defined procrastination "the temporary displacement of tasks at which it is possible to fail with tasks at which it is not possible to fail." I suspect I'm less far off the mark than ever, especially regarding why procrastination is not a productive tendency."
• ippr – Institute for Public Policy Research – Left foot forward – "Increased birth rates and an ageing population, coupled with a fall in net immigration into the UK means that natural change, births and deaths – is now responsible for a greater component of the UK’s population increase, rather than immigration.
  But what should a progressive UK population policy look like? It will have to deal with issues such as family size, retirement age, population distribution across the UK, as well as immigration control.
  Attempts to restrict immigration to a zero net immigration level… will have major economic consequences. At present younger immigrants make a greater fiscal contribution than do the older UK-born population. Big restrictions on labour immigration would result in higher taxes, among other outcomes. Fiscal deficits could be alleviated if everyone worked longer… Family impacts on population size, but how would British adults react to being told to stop at two children? What incentives could be offered to families who stop at two?"

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