AJ has put together a brilliant map of all the UK Passivhaus schemes on Google Maps.

Click to view the map of certified UK Passivhaus schemes.

Source: Footprint

This map by Camden Cycling Campaign is a brilliant initiative which gives the location and number of cycle stands (not the TFL cycle hire stands) available in any 1 sq. km. area I choose.

The map can be found here.

When you open the map, it is using Google maps as a base and shows a small menu on the right hand side of the screen. There are various options to view different cycling routes throughout London (which is again an awesome thing!). For us, the important one is the ‘Stands (Map)’ link in red.

On clicking the ‘Stands (Map)’ the cursor converts into a red box of 1 sq. km.

Click anywhere on the map where you which to see the number of cycle stands available.

As shown in the screenshot above, it shows the exact location of the cycle stands and with a small number written in between them which is the number of cycle stands.

BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) has been in the limelight for the past quite some time. He has quirkily simple ideas, visualized amazingly well! Here is the official link of the BIG channel on Vimeo where you can find videos of him explaining his concepts with amazingly good effects!

Don’t miss to watch the following videos:

The 8-House

Scala Tower

Danish Pavillion

Google Public Data Explorer is a new tool I found quite by chance which visualizes some very interesting databanks in a useful manner.

For example, the World Developement Indicators obtained from the World Bank include quite a few statistics relating to environment:

Agricultural land (% of land area)
CO2 emissions (kt)
CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita)
Electric power consumption (kWh per capita)
Energy use (kg of oil equivalent per capita)
Forest area (sq. km)
Improved sanitation facilities, urban (% of urban population with access)
Improved water source (% of population with access)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)

All these statistics can be viewed over time for different countries or for the world as a whole and make some very interesting line graphs.

Issues like Population growth (annual %), Population (total), Poverty headcount ratio at national poverty line (% of population) are also present and can be used to solidify your stand on the environmental reasoning in your design.

Taking the case of CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita), this dataset can be viewed as a line graph.

It can also be represented as a bar graph and can be animated to show the CO2 emissions for the specified countries increased over time.

The data can also be visualized overlaid on a map getting a beautiful visual perspective of the data.

There are many more options, datasets worth exploring.

Head to Google Public Data Explorer to start exploring!

Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned their lights off for one hour to make their stand against climate change. Only a year later and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries participating. Global landmarks such as the, Sydney Harbour Bridge, The CN Tower in Toronto, The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and Rome’s Colosseum, all stood in darkness, as symbols of hope for a cause that grows more urgent by the hour.

In March 2009, hundreds of millions of people took part in the third Earth Hour. Over 4000 cities in 88 countries officially switched off to pledge their support for the planet, making Earth Hour 2009 the world’s largest global climate change initiative.

Earth Hour 2010 takes place on Saturday 27 March at 8.30pm (local time) and is a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community throughout the world. It is a call to stand up, to take responsibility, to get involved and lead the way towards a sustainable future. Iconic buildings and landmarks from Europe to Asia to the Americas will stand in darkness. People across the world from all walks of life will turn off their lights and join together in celebration and contemplation of the one thing we all have in common – our planet.

Sign up for Earth Hour here.

Source: Earth Hour

One of the main topics at Ecobuild this year has been building retrofitting. This was triggered by the new government strategy “Warm Homes, Greener Homes”, which sets the ambitious target of reducing carbon emissions from UK homes by 29% by 2020. It is estimated that this will imply thermal upgrades in some 7 million households in 10 years. There was debate about the feasibility of this target, especially regarding the availability of resources from the industry, the tight timeline for training skilled professionals and the founding strategies to convince homeowners of large investments.

The series of seminars “Refurbishing Britain” gave some insights into the topic in general, including market issues, strategies, techniques and performance for different typologies, together with some case studies.

David Weatherall from Energy Saving Trust illustrated one key problem, the lack of interest and/or knowledge from the owners. The importance and the Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) for raising awareness and convincing the landlords was later illustrated by Nick Ridley from NCReal Estate Consulting. The EPCs are however controversial, because they give an idea of the potential efficiency based on “theoretical” (and mostly simplified) calculations and they relate to energy consumption per square meter, which means the bigger your house the more you can pollute. They also only focused on energy consumption, with related to the main topic of thermal retrofitting immediately raises the question of the payback periods.

Gavin Dunn from Elmhurst Energy illustrated the few really cost-effective measures that have an attractive payback period, up to 10 years. In most other cases this figure is omitted, like for the Sheffield Eco-terrace (some 60 years), and it is replaced by the percentage of energy savings (76%). This could seem very unfair and it gives the impression that retrofitting is not worth it, but it is probably the payback concept itself that it is not applicable for these cases.

Paybacks are normally compared with the high and fast returns that we are used to with the cheap oil economy. However thermal retrofitting looks beyond “Peak Oil” into an era of high energy prices scenarios when other investment alternatives will be less attractive. The capital is there in any case and this strategy will deliver far greater savings for the future (and prevent fuel poverty) many other alternatives, including subsidising the car industry. It is an effort we have to do as a society.

On the techniques side, there were new products (like aerogel insulation), but the solutions presented by the suppliers consisted on small improvements from the existing. However, they gave some insights into the practical problems, with a focus on the importance of getting a certified installer, which would also expand their services. The impression given is that any solution is good as long as it is well installed and certified. Any discussion on the potential problems is eliminated by the business dimension and any comparison between products is avoided, fearing legal problems.

From the case studies presented, which is always a pleasure to see, some were severely criticised, which illustrates the point that not everything that claims to be “green” is actually truly sustainable. However, sustainability is a learning process and every experiment is valuable, as long as it is not trying to claim that it is the perfect solution. There are infinite answers because sustainability is not a fixed target and should be defined in each case.

On the stands, the central piece from the entrance was a giant “green” cube. The smaller stands around were also focused on the green roofs and walls, which are more and more related to retrofitting to existing buildings, with solutions for pitched roofs that are extremely lightweight and resistant.

Over the past year, I and other people as well (Treehugger) have noticed the growing confusion over geothermal energy systems and ground source heat pumps. Googling for one gives results about the other and then there is the trouble of non-standard names. People refer to the GSHP as geothermal heat pumps which is NOT the same as a geothermal energy system.

Philip Proefrock at Green Building Elements has cleared up the confusion by writing an article showing the distinct differences between the two systems.

To summerize, as Treehugger puts it:

Geothermal systems use heat directly from natural sources like hot springs, geysers and volcanic hot spots.

Ground source heat pumps are air conditioners that use groundwater or simply soil to cool the condenser instead of an outside coil and fan. It uses electricity to move heat energy from one place to the other. Run it backwards and it provides heat, more efficiently than using the electricity directly.

The article can be viewed here: Green Building Elements

The Ecobuild exhibition is from Tuesday 02 to Thursday 04 March 2010 at Earl’s Court (London). I attended the 2009 exhibitions and it was full of innovative products and stimulating discussions and seminars. If you are in London during this period, don’t miss this exhibition.

Register online for your free invites else be prepared to stand at the end of a REALLY long queue.

To register for Ecobuild 2010, click here.

Welcome to Sustainotect!

This is blog where I will be posting my experiences with scripting and using various environmental tools such as Ecotect, TAS, Radiance, Envi-met. I will be writing tutorials so that students and architects can easily use these hard-to-figure-out tools and use them to develop better buildings/projects! I will be posting from time to time interesting bits of news and tid-bits which may be useful to our community!

Enjoy your stay!

Pushkin