Hammarby & BedZED: The Green Prototypes for One Planet Communities
February 22nd, 2010 | posted by vkam in
"BedZED is perhaps the most influential of all housing projects this century" - UK Solar Awards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFrqRJbC
The Beddington Zero Energy Development, or BedZED, is the UK's largest eco-village. The One Planet Communities program is based upon lessons learned in designing, building, and operaitng BedZED. Creating green neighborhoods is a learning process for most real estate developers - the One Planet Communities program helps transfer knowledge about what worked and what didn't at BedZED to the next generation of sustainable communities.
The multi-award winning development is one of the most coherent examples of sustainable living in the UK.
Initiated by BioRegional, BedZED was developed by the Peabody Trust in partnership with BioRegional Development Group and designed by Bill Dunster Architects.
Located in Wallington, South London, BedZED comprises 100 homes, community facilities and workspace for 100 people. Residents have been living at BedZED since March 2002.
BedZED makes a sustainable lifestyle easy, attractive and affordable. BedZED challenges conventional approaches to housing by tackling sustainability in every area from the outset. It slashes heat, electricity and water demand, eliminating the need for space heating and reducing water consumption by a third. It has designed facilities and services that make it easy to reduce waste to landfill, recycle waste and reduce car use.
SOME BEDZED SUCCESSES
Electricity consumption on average 58% less than London average (saves over 0.4 tons of CO2 emissions per person every year)
Using renewable fuels to generate heat and power at BedZED saves:
538 Tons of CO2 a year from the biomass Combined Heat and Power plant (CHP)
52 Tons of CO2 a year from installed PV
C02 Saving = 2.7 Tons per resident
Average BedZED resident uses 87 liters less water per day
83% of all timber was either reclaimed or FSC certified
Nearly 100% of structural steel was locally reclaimed, saving 82 Tons of embodied CO2
http://www.oneplanetcommunities.org/Bed
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Stockholm Presents Green Future, Today
A plus two-degree world of sorts already exists. It is in Hammarby Sjöstad, a part of Stockholm, and life there shows that we shouldn't be afraid of this world. Positive climate protection is possible. It results from a mixture of intelligent technology and climate-conscious behavior.
The Tiljas -- Henrik, Asa-Viktoria and their young daughter Doris -- live in this world. They haven't had a car in a long time, and they eat organic food. In addition, for the past year they have been living in a stylish, 68-square-meter (732-square-foot), all-white apartment in Hammarby Sjöstad. "We are responsible for only 3.6 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per person," says Henrik Tilja, "which almost puts us at the level of people in a developing country." Using sophisticated environmental technology, city planners have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by almost 40 percent, and yet residents and visitors notice virtually none of the related measures.
The community produces its own gas and heat through a local sewage treatment plant. There is also an ampere meter that can display, minute-by-minute, how much electricity each consumer is using. The knowledge of how to influence one's own power use has reduced consumption by 40 percent. Natural waste produced by residents is also converted into biogas, which in turn powers local busses.
"The gas we use here," says his wife Asa-Viktoria, as she places a teakettle on the stovetop, "is organic." It comes from the city's nearby sewage treatment plant. In a sedimentation tank created by blasting a hole deep into the bedrock, digested sludge ferments and produces methane gas, which the public utility company then pumps into the Hammarby gas network.
Some of the energy the Tiljas use to heat their apartment comes from the residual heat a heat exchanger extracts from the sewage they produce. There is also an ampere meter that can display, minute-by-minute, how much electricity each individual consumer is using. Merely the knowledge of how to influence one's own power use has reduced consumption by 40 percent. "The idea is that people have to be rewarded for environmentally conscious behavior," says Henrik Tilja.
On the nearby playground, four large pipes with flaps on top protrude from the ground next to the sandbox. The pipes are for trash disposal, separated by category, from organic waste to paper. But unlike places with conventional waste disposal systems, there are no sweating garbage collectors and stinking garbage trucks in Hammarby, because vacuum pumps suction off the waste at speeds of 70 kilometers per hour (44 mph). This saves energy and has resulted in an astonishingly disciplined populace when it comes to separating waste. Close to 100 percent of organic waste can be converted into biogas, which powers the buses in Hammarby.
Part of the reason Stockholm as a whole has a relatively small environmental footprint is that 40 percent of its electricity comes from hydroelectric power and 40 percent from nuclear energy. "But none of what is being done here can't be implemented elsewhere," says Ulla Hamilton, the deputy mayor in charge of Stockholm's environmental affairs. According to Hamilton, the investment costs were only two to four percent higher than those for a normal new neighborhood.
A 'CO2-Postive' Neighborhood
Hammarby Sjöstad, an urban redevelopment project in Stockholm, Sweden, is a model of the steps that can be taken to help prevent global warming of greater than 2 degrees Celsius. Families living here produce only 3.6 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per person, almost the level of a developing country. It also boasts fantastic modern architecture.
Planners at city hall are already working on a second Hammarby, a neighborhood in the city's northeast called Royal Seaport, where ferries depart for Finland and the Baltic countries, and where the Swedish capital's oil tanks and gas storage units are located.
Construction is scheduled to begin next year on a residential and commercial neighborhood that will be "CO2 positive." In other words, it will actually serve as a net consumer of carbon dioxide. To achieve this goal, the houses will have to produce 30 percent of the electricity they consume. More importantly, however, they will only be able to consume 55 kilowatt hours of energy per square meter.
Tomas Gustafsson, the chief planner, used to advise government agencies in China, Vietnam and Thailand on how to build cities that don't make their residents sick.
Gustafsson, who now works for the city of Stockholm, and Deputy Mayor Hamilton have hired the electronics company ABB to build a so-called smart grid for the Royal Seaport project. In this system, the electric meter for each house is connected online with the electricity supplier. This allows it to report house-specific information to the central office, such as that a given family's electric car has to be fully charged by 7 a.m. the next morning. The central office then determines the best time to charge the vehicle.
The computer also controls the washing machine, so that it only runs at night, when electricity costs are the lowest. "As a result, some of the peak current is removed from the grid when consumption is high," says Gustafsson. If capacity utilization is distributed more evenly, fewer power plants are needed.
"The goal is to make it as easy as possible for people to behave in an environmentally friendly way," says Gustafsson. His boss, Ulla Hamilton, agrees: "We have to take away their fear that protecting the climate means climbing back into the trees."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spi
(Picture Gallery) http://community.livejournal.com/sustai
(Article Translated in Chinese) http://financenews.sina.com/singtao/0
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Eco Debt: West Dorset UK (Part II & IV)
Part II
Lyme Regis' Town Mill is now run on hydropower. It shows the Mill's renovation and why a Dorset village turned to straw bales to build sustainable homes that are also affordable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DLBpqmP
Part IV
Join a recycling rickshaw in Bridport and hear how it helps recycle four tonnes of waste material every week, including waste vegetable oil. Their idea has reduced Bridport's carbon dioxide emissions by 70 tonnes in two and a half years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b7Gf3Qw
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Machine Turns Office Paper Into Toilet Paper
February 22nd, 2010 | posted by vkamWe’ve talked here before about the importance of choosing recycled toilet paper. There’s really no reason that ancient forests should be wiped out just so we can wipe our behinds.
A new machine from Japanese company Oriental might make choosing recycled easier than ever, or it could be an expensive unitasker. You decide!
The idea is pretty simple: documents go into the machine, and rolls of toilet paper come out. White Goat uses about 40 sheets of A4 paper to make one roll of TP!
At a price of $100,000, this 6 foot tall machine isn’t quite accessible for home use, but it does seem like it could be a great solution for businesses looking to go green. The company says that it costs around 11 cents to produce a roll of TP with the machine and that with regular use each machine could save up to 60 cedar trees each year.
Here’s a quickie video explaining how it works in a little more detail:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i51zo3LA
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White Roofs & Low-Cost Solar Cells May Successfully Cool Cities
February 22nd, 2010 | posted by vkamPainting the roofs of buildings white has the potential to significantly cool cities and mitigate some impacts of global warming, a new study indicates. The new NCAR-led research suggests there may be merit to an idea advanced by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu that white roofs can be an important tool to help society adjust to climate change.
But the study team, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), cautions that there are still many hurdles between the concept and actual use of white roofs to counteract rising temperatures.
"Our research demonstrates that white roofs, at least in theory, can be an effective method for reducing urban heat," says NCAR scientist Keith Oleson, the lead author of the study. "It remains to be seen if it's actually feasible for cities to paint their roofs white, but the idea certainly warrants further investigation."
The study is slated for publication later this winter in Geophysical Research Letters. It was funded by the National Science Foundation, NCAR's sponsor.
Cities are particularly vulnerable to climate change because they are warmer than outlying rural areas. Asphalt roads, tar roofs, and other artificial surfaces absorb heat from the Sun, creating an urban heat island effect that can raise temperatures on average by 2-5 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1-3 degrees Celsius) or more compared to rural areas. White roofs would reflect some of that heat back into space and cool temperatures, much as wearing a white shirt on a sunny day can be cooler than wearing a dark shirt.
The study team used a newly developed computer model to simulate the amount of solar radiation that is absorbed or reflected by urban surfaces. The model simulations, which provide scientists with an idealized view of different types of cities around the world, indicate that, if every roof were entirely painted white, the urban heat island effect could be reduced by 33 percent. This would cool the world's cities by an average of about 0.7 degrees F, with the cooling influence particularly pronounced during the day, especially in summer.
The authors emphasize that their research should be viewed as a hypothetical look at typical city landscapes rather than the actual rooftops of any one city. In the real world, the cooling impact might be somewhat less because dust and weathering would cause the white paint to darken over time and parts of roofs would remain unpainted because of openings such as heating and cooling vents.
In addition, white roofs would have the effect of cooling temperatures within buildings. As a result, depending on the local climate, the amount of energy used for space heating and air conditioning could change, which could affect both outside air temperatures and the consumption of fossil fuels such as oil and coal that are associated with global warming. Depending on whether air conditioning or heating is affected more, this could either magnify or partially offset the impact of the roofs.
"It's not as simple as just painting roofs white and cooling off a city," Oleson says.
MORE COOLING FOR CERTAIN CITIES
The research indicated that some cities would benefit more than others from white roofs, depending on such factors as:
Roof density. Cities where roofs make up more of the urban surface area would cool more.
Construction. Roofs that allow large amounts of heat from the Sun to penetrate the interior of a building (as can happen with metal roofs and little insulation) are less effective in cooling outside temperatures when painted white.
Location. White roofs tend to have a larger impact in relatively warm climates that receive strong, year-round sunlight.
While the model did not have enough detail to capture individual cities, it did show the change in temperatures in larger metropolitan regions. The New York area, for example, would cool in summer afternoons by almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit.
A NEW TECHNIQUE
The study team used a new computer model, developed by Oleson and colleagues, that is designed to assess the impacts of a changing climate on urban populations and explore options for countering rising temperatures. This urban canyon model simulates temperature changes in city landscapes, capturing such factors as the influence of roofs, walls, streets, and green spaces on local temperatures. Oleson has successfully linked it to a computer simulation of worldwide climate, the NCAR-based Community Climate System Model, thereby enabling researchers to study the interactions between global climate change and urban areas.
The new model does not yet have the power to replicate the architecture and design of specific cities. Instead, the research team created abstractions of cities in the model, using classes of population density, urban design, and building construction. Oleson and his colleagues plan to continue refining the model to provide more information for policymakers concerned about protecting urban populations from the risks associated with heat waves and other changes in climate.
"It's critical to understand how climate change will affect vulnerable urban areas, which are home to most of the world's population," says NCAR scientist Gordon Bonan, a co-author of the study.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20
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Yangtze River Dam Endangers Fish Population
February 22nd, 2010 | posted by vkamIn December of 2006 it was announced that the Yangtze River dolphin, commonly known as the baiji, had succumbed to extinction. The dolphin had survived on earth for 20 million years, but the species couldn't survive the combined onslaught of pollution, habitat loss, boat traffic, entanglement in fishing hooks, death from illegal electric fishing, and the construction of several massive dams. Now, another flagship species of the Yangtze River appears to have vanished.
As reported by the BBC last month, a three year quest to find the Chinese paddlefish has revealed not one sighting. The story is remarkably similar to that of December 2006 when a six week expedition failed to find any sign of the baiji.
Reaching a staggering seven meters, the Chinese paddlefish is one of the largest freshwater fish in the world. So little is known about the species that biologists aren't even certain it can properly be referred to as 'freshwater', since the fish may cross between the freshwaters of the Yangtze River to oceanic environments. But no one knows for sure.
The muddy upper Yangtze in northwestern Yunnan. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.
The expedition to find the Chinese paddlefish deployed over 4000 setline and over 900 nets, but couldn't find a single giant fish, which has been classified by the IUCN Red List as Critically Endangered for over a decade. Despite their inability to locate the Chinese paddlefish, expedition leaders like Professor Wei Qiwei, believe there is still a good chance that some survive.
"The individuals born in the late 1980s and early 1990s should survive in the wild, since the Yangtze river system is large and it has some complicated habitats where the paddlefish could hide," Qiwei told the BBC.
If fish do survive, however, Qiwei says that they will need active aid from people to avoid extinction, including modern technology to make reproduction possible in such a small, probably fragmented, population. Of course, first the fish have to be found.
The same factors that devastated the baiji are behind the Chinese paddlefish decline and possible extinction: habitat degradation, overfishing, pollution, and massive dam building.
The Yangtze when it reaches Shanghai. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.
In 2007 a report by China's official State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) found that 30 percent of the Yangtze river's tributaries are "seriously polluted" while 600 kilometers of the river's water is in "critical condition". According to the report the river's annual harvest of fish from the river has dropped 77 percent from the 1950s to the 1990s.
Despite the environmental crisis facing Asia's longest river, Chinese officials are currently considering building another Yangtze River dam. Entitled the Xiaonanhai Dam, its construction would affect the river's only fish reserve and one of the last places where the Chinese paddlefish may survive. In June of this year several environmentalists spoke out saying that the dam could lead to the extinction of even more endangered species, including the Chinese paddlefish.
At the time David Dudgeon, professor of freshwater ecology at the University of Hong Kong, told Reuters: "My guess is that the paddlefish and the Yangtze sturgeon are on the way to extinction already but there are other species that the reserve may be critically important for. The (Xiaonanhai) dam would probably finish off some of the more vulnerable species -- the last nail in the coffin."
With perhaps two flagship species vanishing in a single decade, the Yangtze River is becoming a hotspot for extinction. But it doesn't look as though it will end there: the Chinese sturgeon and the finless porpoise, both suffering from the same impacts as the baiji and Chinese paddlefish, look like probable candidates for the next extinction announcement.
The Yangtze River is also home to the Critically Endangered Chinese alligator, one of the world's most threatened crocodilians.
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http://www.epa.gov/nsr
"Take Out Without" Campaign Targets Take-Out Trash
February 22nd, 2010 | posted by vkamWhen Calgary-based entrepreneur K.B. Lee got fed up with eating Chinese takeout from foam containers, his concern led to the launch of a fast-food trash reduction initiative in Toronto.
Welcome to the just-launched TakeOutWithOut campaign – TOWO for short – with the motto: "Fill your stomach. Not the landfill."
Lee, described as chief visionary on the website, was appalled at the number of polystyrene containers that accumulated when he and his wife ate dim sum lunches in their shared office.
"All of a sudden, every time I see Styrofoam, it just bothers me," says Hong Kong-born Lee, who imports and markets eco-friendly bamboo-charcoal filter products.
Now, Lee and his wife have cut down on takeout; they don't order too much in restaurants to avoid taking home leftovers in disposable containers; and he carries reusable containers in the car in case he picks up something like barbecue pork. He also resolved to launch an anti-foam campaign. (Foam is recyclable in Toronto, but not Calgary.)
When he discussed his new obsession with Toronto communications specialist Lisa Borden, she convinced him to broaden his focus to fast-food packaging in general and all the bags and boxes that remain after the takeout food is consumed.
"I revamped it," says Borden, admitting she can be very bossy. "My office put together the logo, brand, the website, the copy, everything, over the Christmas break." Lee is paying to have the website put on line.
TOWO has its own three Rs: Refuse (Do you really need all of those straws, plastic cutlery and napkins?); Retake (Bring your own containers, cups and bags.); and Reconsider (Take a look at your eating habits, and maybe, like Lee, make some changes.) The campaign also has a handout card with 10 waste reduction strategies for restaurants.
So how big a problem is takeout trash? There are some scary stats out there about our disposable habits. The TOWO website quotes a Clean Air Council tidbit: "Americans toss out enough paper and plastic cups, forks and spoons every year to circle the equator 300 times."
But Stephanie Jones, vice-president, Ontario, for the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, says waste audits in Toronto have shown restaurants' in-store packaging represents about 2 per cent of what goes to landfill. As she points out, though: "It's very visible, so it's always a challenge."
It's also a major concern for the industry. One of the biggest issues is the patchwork of recycling rules across municipalities, which makes it difficult for consumers and a challenge for companies trying to make responsible packaging choices, Jones says.
A paper coffee cup that's compostable in Hamilton, at one end of a GO train ride, becomes trash in Toronto. But all of this is coming into play with the reworking of the province's Waste Diversion Act, now underway, and proposed changes to blue bin programs, to which larger food-service companies contribute.
Meanwhile, restaurants have tried to address sustainability issues, Jones says. Discounts are offered for bringing your own mug at establishments such as Tim Hortons or Starbucks, but food safety concerns are associated with other types of bring-your-own-container initiatives.
In Calgary, Lee is fully aware of the health issues, but suggests bringing your own plates and utensils would work in food court situations where your meal is prepared in front of you. He also objects to excessive disposable containers in fast food outlets – like plastic covers for breakfasts – when he's dining in.
As for Borden, she emphasizes the importance of small steps, like bringing your own coffee cup: "Little things do add up; they do make a difference."
And even if a container can be recycled, like polystyrene foam in Toronto, that still doesn't absolve us. Consider the environmental impact of manufacturing, transportation and then the energy required for recycling. As Borden points out: "Reducing and reusing is always the first line of defence."
Borden learned first-hand just how important environmental issues are, when, at three months, her second child was hospitalized for a bronchial condition and skin allergies. Reluctant to use steroid cream on her baby's skin, she did her research and took all chemical cleaning agents out of her home. The result: "Her skin cleared up, everything was fine."
She has some suggested sources for good reusable food containers: Toronto filmmaker Andrew Nisker's website at garbagerevolution.com offers products, as does goneshopping.ca. Also, kleankanteen.com for drink bottles; laptoplunches.com for meal boxes; glassdharma.com for glass straws; and rumebags.com for bags.
Join the campaign to reduce take-out waste!
http://takeoutwithout.com/
http://www.yourhome.ca/homes/green/arti
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