By HDK / Published on Mon, 2009-11-02 06:16
Jean-Paul Hautekeer will explain why innovation, efficiency and sustainability have become such crucial needs for business and how silicon technology can help to meet those needs, particularly in the context of building design and protection. He will begin by discussing some of the factors influencing sustainability, defining sustainable building and explaining its benefits. Looking towards the future, he will reflect on why cities will increasingly depend on sustainable technologies and how silicon will contribute to the needs of urban areas.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Wed, 2009-05-13 05:30
Trade-off between environment and health
When discussing sustainable building services (HVAC, electricity, and water), the main factors that are usually considered are environmental impact, financial cost, comfort, and sometimes safety. Although carbon emission reduction is rightfully dominating the debate nowadays, we must not forget that health can be an important fifth factor when designing sustainable building services. This is made abundantly clear in the PhD thesis 'Healthy Building Services for the 21st Century' of Francesco Franchimon at the Technical University of Eindhoven.
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By Angelo Baggini / Published on Thu, 2008-12-18 10:00
Year: 2007
Policy Status: In force
Since
1 January 2007, a
Green Mortgage Programme has been in place to encourage the
construction and
purchase of homes that are
energy-efficient.
Infonavit, an institution that provides credits to workers for home acquisition, is offering and promoting the programme. Infonavit provides increased financing to families purchasing a green home of between MXN 6000 and 8000, equivalent to approximately
USD 720: this can represent an extra bedroom or more spacious home.
The programme
encourages developers to build greener homes as well, and paperwork for developers planning to build energy-efficient homes is simplified.
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Sat, 2008-12-13 11:11
ASHRAE is hosting a speciality conference on the topic in March in San Francisco.
“We have a reached a time when the building industry is being called to shift to a new level of performance that will reduce our energy and carbon footprint,” Bill Harrison, ASHRAE president, said. “It is time to advance net-zero-energy building knowledge.”
ASHRAE’s Countdown to a Sustainable Energy Future...Net-Zero and Beyond conference takes place March 29-31 at Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.
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By Sergio Ferreira / Published on Wed, 2008-12-10 14:03
The 160 million buildings in the European Union account for over 40% of Europe’s primary energy consumption. Hence energy use in buildings represents a major contributor to fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emission.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Thu, 2008-08-21 05:30
A ranking according to carbon footprint per capita
As centres of energy consumption, the US metropolitan areas should play a leadership role in fighting climate change. That was the starting point for the report 'Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America' by The Brookings Institution. The report investigates
- the contribution of US cities to carbon emissions
- their potential to reduce this contribution
- the federal policy actions that are needed to achieve such a reduction
The starting point for this investigation is a calculation of the average carbon footprint per capita for the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. This ranking takes road transportation and residential energy use into account. The city with the largest greenhouse gas emissions turned out to be Knoxville, Tennessee, while the least emissions per capita were found in Honolulu, Hawaii.
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By David Chapman / Published on Wed, 2008-04-23 18:45
Homes in the UK are responsible for 27% of carbon emissions so improving their environmental performance is very important. Currently, about 170 000 homes are built each year in the UK – about 0.77% of the existing stock – while the number of households expands at a rate of 240 000 households per annum. Although the very high rate of expansion of households is probably temporary, being due to an ageing population, changes in social structure and population movement from new EU states, it is clear that the replacement rate is very low and homes built today will be in use for a very long time.
Two streams of actions are required, addressing standards for new-build and refurbishment measures for existing stock.
For new build, the UK Government has set building construction standards defining a path towards so-called ‘zero carbon’ or ‘zero energy’ homes by 2016. For the present, the ‘Code for Sustainable Homes’ is voluntary for private builders (~75% of the market) but mandatory for public sector housing, housing associations and for homes built on land released by Government.
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By David Chapman / Published on Wed, 2008-04-02 14:17
A report by a UK Parliamentary Committee on Communities and Local Government criticises the UK Government’s concentration on improving the energy performance new homes and paying too little attention to existing housing stock.
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By Hans Nilsson / Published on Mon, 2008-03-24 23:37
Not all ways of being passive are bad. One of them, however, is. Belgium and the United Kingdom will now have to defend their passivity in implementing the buildings directive
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Wed, 2008-03-19 18:42
This discussion webinar takes place on Friday, March 21th, from 14h30 to 15h30.
Content
The UK is taking the lead in sustainable building. In 2007, new housing regulations were agreed upon and go into full force in stages over the upcoming years. The regulations stipulate that from 2016 on, all new homes in the UK will have to be zero-emission for heating, hot water, cooling, ventilation, and lighting. Also ECEEE has issued a statement for new buildings to be net zero energy consumers from 2015.
However, the concept of 'zero-energy' is loosely defined, and zero-energy buildings may be well beyond the cost-benefit balancing point. What about the embodied energy of materials used to reduce the last kWh's of energy consumption? Isn't the answer to these questions dependant on climate conditions? At what stage do other options for fighting climate change become more cost-effective than buildings?
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Thu, 2008-02-07 08:30
UK sets example, will California be next?
The UK is taking the lead in sustainable building. In 2007, new housing regulations were agreed upon and go into full force in stages over the upcoming years. The regulations stipulate that from 2016 on, all new homes in the UK will have to be zero-emission for heating, hot water, cooling, ventilation, and lighting. This corresponds to Level 5 of the Code for Sustainable Homes.
The Code for Sustainable Homes is a new standard that gives new homes a 0 to 6 rating based on their performance against nine sustainability criteria. Level 0 is the base level and means the house meets current regulations. Level 1 includes a 10 per cent energy efficiency improvement over current regulations. Level 6 means a zero-carbon emission house for all energy use. The code was introduced as a voluntary standard in April 2007, and will become a mandatory label in April 2008.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Thu, 2007-10-25 16:19
The sun doesn’t shine on your roof alone
Buildings account for about one third of the world’s energy consumption. This share is likely to grow in the coming decades. This fact, combined with the idea that buildings should be conceived to last for a very long time, stimulated the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) to focus on zero-energy buildings. The aim of their Energy Efficiency in Buildings (EEB) initiative is to draw a roadmap to 'a world in which buildings consume zero net energy'.
But while it is easy to agree on the idea that houses and their appliances should evolve towards higher energy efficiency, one needs to ask why zero-energy buildings should be a goal in itself. Buildings are only one link in the overall electrical system chain. It is the impact of entire system that needs to be minimized, not just one link. From this perspective, domestic electricity production has mixed blessings.
As discussed in a recent blog post (How distributed should our power utilities be?), the sheer economies of scale often make centralized electricity production more efficient. On the other hand however, domestic production can in some cases lower the energy losses of transmission and distribution. But this is only true if the capacity factor of the installation is high enough.
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By Bruno De Wachter / Published on Mon, 2007-07-16 07:30
Zero-energy houses represent the next generation of dwellings. Their total energy needs are generated on site. Today, residential renewable energy systems are still some years away from being cost effective. Through energy efficiency measures, the overall energy demand of the building can be reduced, thus magnifying the potential of renewable energy to provide a high proportion of the energy demand.
Building low-energy houses
The Building Industry Research Alliance (BIRA), part of the Building America Program, established a Zero Energy House (ZEH) programme. At present, 416 low-energy houses have been built in California alone through this program. Those houses have reduced their grid energy consumption by an average of 51 per cent compared to a standard house. 32 per cent of this savings was realized by energy savings and 19 per cent by a photovoltaic system.
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By Hans Nilsson / Published on Fri, 2007-06-15 07:00
Eurima has suggested a "Road Map for Europe" towards "Better Buildings through Energy Efficiency", but this writer could not resist the pun in the heading! The road map (see below) suggests measures both for new buildings and existing buildings, and it roughly spells out Building Codes for the new (with incentives to go above standard performance) and tax credits for the old.
Roadmaps have a tendency to be very simplistic and omit essential factors in describing the business environment, but in this case, it comes closer to the true meaning of what a roadmap would contain.
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Sun, 2007-06-03 13:02
... 457 kg
The result of the Ice Challenge was revealed last week. On April 18th, two blocks of ice were placed in a red (normal isolated) and green (super-isolated) envelope. While the ice block in the red envelope melted after 11 days, 457kg of ice remained when the green envelope was removed May 31st.
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Sat, 2007-06-02 09:03
This webcast describes a number of considerations about for our energy systems when passive houses become the construction technology of choice in the future.
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Thu, 2007-05-10 09:49
On April 18th, the Passiefhuis-Platform put a 1300 kg block of ice in one poorly-insulated envelope and one well-insulated envelope, posing following questions:
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