zerochampion

Switched on

I'll admit to being in total ignorance of the Switched On London event, now in its second year, until last night. Living and working very close to the area where the event, which consist of a series of light installations in and around London and Tower Bridges, that is somewhat embarrassing. The festival "aims to highlight the importance of sustainable lighting design in the night-time urban environment". It seems an attempt on the lighting industry's behalf to counter the perception that it's a wasteful sector caring little for energy use.

The Green Gauge February 8th

A trawl through the web this week has revealed the Government's new plans for water usage, green gadgets and the new Housing Minister's first banana skin

Government will fluff zero-carbon homes, report warns

As found by Jo Will in the Society Guardian, a report in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, says that the Government should be making Code Level 6 mandatory for all new homes if it wants to deliver zero-carbon homes by 2016. With only housing associations required to reach Code Level 3 at present and no current obligations at all for commercial housebuilders, this is a problem. Another one is 'user error.' Where malfunctioning enregy systems, residents removing the technologies and installing 'low performance alternatives to suit their colour scheme' might be an issue.

Patent Advantage

An interesting concept from corporate membership association cum thinktank the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in the form of a creative commons for eco-patents. This means firms who have come up with creative environmental ideas can share their trade secrets for the greater good.

The warm fuzz of freecycle

I'm about to give away my first belonging as part of the Freecyle community. It's an old ghetto blaster that's collecting dust in my bedroom, and to my surprise there were plenty of takers for it, including a woman who had just dropped and broken the one she was planning to give to her teenage children. To quote recent commentor on this site Ian Kemmish there's a warm fuzzy feeling in both getting rid of something unwanted and helping out someone who needs your item. Surely this is transferable to large scale swapping of materials , products etc?

Cost values

I'm not sure how closely one can compare the supply and the market for food and building materials, but on first consideration there seem obvious parallels. I was drawn to this reading an article written by Organic food provider Abel & Cole I received with a delivery earlier this month. It was on the rising cost of food - the reasons and how consumers would need to change their attitudes to buying food.

Muddled thinking

I'm glad a Building reader has picked up on a bit of muddled thinking from PricewaterhouseCoopers. The firm is urging the industry to buy more products from China, according to a report in the magazine last week. John makes the point that this may be cheaper in pounds, but comes at a considerable price in carbon. This runs counter to PWC's web page on sustainability, which says: "We advise clients that getting on the right side of sustainability will make considerable demands of their time and resources. But that's simply the price of responsible leadership. Is your company ready to assume greater responsibility?" Is yours by rethinking your procurement advice?

BRE under fire

I hear some concern voiced in the marketplace about the BRE from time to time. This is largely down to the fact that the former independent testing government-owned body is now a private outfit and very much in the marketplace with ambitious targets to double in size from a £40m to an £80m business. Perhaps it's just jealousy on the part of consultants losing out on big fee-paying jobs? Well, Ian Abley, an architect who runs a think-tank called Audacity, puts forward a case for concern more than just based on envy in this month's Construction Manager. Abley argues that we are expecting too much to have a growing business work a variety of complicated codes and legislation, or as he puts it: "An £80m business should not be built in partnership with government on the back of SAP chaos and code tinkering."

Don't underestimate embodied energy

One of the most respected firms of quantity surveyors in the globe, Davis Langdon, appear to be doing some valuable work on embodied energy. A piece in the firm's Digging Beneath the Greenwash supplement in Building (pages 12 and 13) gives an indication of the fruits of six months research: "early assessments suggest that embodied energy and associated CO2 equates to between eight and 15 years of operational energy" says partner John Connaughton in the article.

Wolseley's new sustainable centre hit by floods

Global products supplier Wolseley's attempt to create a new sustainable products centre was hampered somewhat by last week's floods. A posting on the centre's site informs us that work continues in spite of inclement conditions in the area. Work started on site at the Leamington-Spa project at the start of the month and the new centre is due for completion in October.

Insulation giant comes to the UK

URSA Insulation recently announced that it will be opening a plant in the UK. The insulation company that specialises in the manufacture of glass wool has scheduled the opening of the plant for the second half of 2009. It is estimated that the factory will employ about 130 people; short-listed locations for the plant are Leeds, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

How you can save rain-water or build your own garden

Increasingly, rainwater harvesting is a key term in sustainability. The benefits are, literally, all too clear: it costs nothing, it’s free from limescale, and is potentially an unlimited resource.

Now two of the biggest names in “rain-harvesting” in the UK have joined forces. Fullflow and Stormsaver have teamed up to provide a “one-stop-shop” for syphonic drainage and water-saving solutions. By pooling their knowledge and expertise, they will only increase their presence in the rain-harvesting industry.

Fullflow will bring their technological know-how to the table. Established in 1986, they have developed a number of systems that use the least number of pipes as possible; laying down fewer pipes means essential savings can be made on construction and underground work.

Cement solutions

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development's site is a mine of information and news. There's an article there looking at the cement industry's attempt to deal with its environmental impact. Given the amount produced and the energy used to create it this is one heck of a challenge. An arm of the Council called the Cement Sustainability Initiative is working on a plan to define emissions and then work up plans to reduce them.

Government researching embedded carbon in imported goods

Some rather better news to come out of Whitehall after this morning's damning NAO report. Environment secretary David Miliband confirmed in a parliamentary answer yesterday that his DEFRA department was "researching ways of calculating the embedded carbon in imported goods and assessing the international biodiversity impact of goods imported to the UK". Miliband also tackled the thorny issue of biofuels when asked how the Government was looking to ethically source them. He claimed that by changing the European common agriculture policy which insists on "set-aside" (where farmers are paid to leave land fallow) provides "potential for us to grow biofuels in this country in a way that does not compromise food or other environmental matters".

Avoid African teak

Disturbing new report released this morning by Greenpeace on the threat to the world's second largest rainforest in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Carving up the Congo claims that European and American industrial logging companies have been systematically buying up an area of forest nearly the size of the UK in order to attract timber, which is largely African teak. The report reckons that if all the forests are felled it could "release" up to 34bn tonnes of carbon - nearly as much as the UK has emitted in 60 years.

The Really useful guide

Here's a list of useful information/websites/events I've spotted in the last week or so:

• Building Design has picked some highlights from last month's Ecobuild conference. It includes a mention of an intriguing new sustainable contract specification website called Greenspec.The magazine also features the first UK building to use an interseasonal heat transfer system at a school in Hatfield.
• BRE/FMB events - The BRE is busy. It's holding a series of events on the SBEM system over the next few months. There's also a course on EcoHomes next month in Wales. The Federation of Master Builder are also holding two environmental workshops in April and May, one on Part L and the other on waste management.

Offsite "70% more efficient" than site-based construction

So says Portakabin subsidiary Yorkon who has just carried out tests on a variety of its buildings. The tests show its steel-framed modular technology "can achieve a higher degree of precision, leading to improved thermal efficiency, lower running costs and reduced carbon emissions". "There are no wet trades so shrinkage and stuctural movement after the building has been sited are also highly unlikely," adds Yorkon director and general manager David Johnson. Have the firm worked out the embodied energy out in its products yet?

Download yorkon_air_permeability_performance_pr_uk.doc

New Biomass for BedZed

There often tends to be some mutterings in the market when a new product or project receives almost universal acclaim as the the trailblazer of its type. Such is the case for BedZed, the housing scheme everyone quotes when it comes to environmentally sound development.

The biomass system hasn't worked, the carpers have claimed. Well that may be true to a degree they're sorting that out, architect Bill Dunster tells me. A new biomass CHP system is due to be installed at the Surrey site in the the next few months. "We've got one coming that's fab and that works," Dunster says. "It means that all the things we said we would do we've done. Everything else has worked."

The Digest

Here's a round-up the most significant sustainability news I've picked up in the last week:

• Valuing sustainability - Last Friday saw a group (gaggle? pride?) of surveyors gather in Vancouver to discuss the link between sustainability and building values, reports Property Week. The story is for subscribers only - I'll follow it up this week
• Curve your enthusiasm - Apparently if you arch the blade of a wind turbine it makes them 5-10% more efficient. Maria Energia (great name) reports on this on her blog
• Micro-renewables farce - Channel 4 News highlighted the fact that the Government's monthly fund for household micro-renewables is running out within hours of it being offered to the general public. The Ends Report also has coverage on the Low Carbon Buildings Programme.

The PVC problem

An insight in the challenge that lies ahead for the newly-formed UK Green Building Council care of its US counterpart. The US-GBC has released a report on the soundness or otherwise of using PVC. The conclusion there is no clear yes or no answer as to whether you should use the substance or not - it is a much more "nuanced" issue than a black or white one. Fudge anyone?

US blogger Preston Koerner on his Jetson Green site has a pop at the USGBC for being spineless in not nailing its colours to the mast. There's clearly a tightrope act being played here by the body between manufacturers (and members) and practitioners, leading to lengthy research and thinking (the USGBC first took up the PVC issue in 2002) as well as potentially muddied conclusions. It will be interesting to see whether the UK version will take on such poisoned chalices.

Is this just snake oil? No

The cynic in me twitched into life whilst pounding the Ecobuild exhibition hall of Ecobuild. A couple of speakers I heard during the conference made less than complimentary references to bold claims and snazzy marketing on display by suppliers and manufacturers at the conference. You have to wonder about the reality behind all the bold promises, comforting imagery and snappy buzz words. In the memorable words of fellow blogger Mark Brinkley has the market been overcome by "green willy syndrome" where firms jump over themselves to prove just how wonderful their particular product is, without a true picture of their impact?

Ecobuild part 1

To Earls Court for Ecobuild. My first visit so wasn't quite sure what to expect. It's a curious hybrid. For a start it has combined this year with four other conferences - Cityscape, Futurebuild, Regenex and Building for Health. Then there's the mix of the core of exhibitors on the floor hawking products, with a whole bunch of seminars in conference and theatres dotted around the hall running alongside.

Not having been before I was struck by how many delegates appeared to me from the general public. Has this always been the case? If not it's an interesting trend to see DIYers checking under floor heating and solar panels systems. Perhaps the message is getting across.

Product watch: the temperature controlling wall

Here's an interesting new product, from an unlikely source. Eggheads at chemical firm BASF have come up with Micronal, a gypsum wall board which incoporates Micronal PCM "a microencapsulated latent heat storer that absorbs excess heat". The theory is that this material absorbs heat when it's hot and releases it when its cold, thus ridding a building's need for airconditioning. Clever eh? Merchant Wolseley certainly think so and are stocking it. I'm told one major contractor is already trialling the product with the material incorporated into blocks. See here and here for more info.

Product watch - nice pane

One of the thousands of exhibitors at the aforementioned BAU event was the Interpane Group. Here's how some the firm's product looks like covering Renzo Piano's so-called 'glass whale' building on Colgne. There's 4,900 square metres of the stuff, called ipasol, used on this project. this is what they term 'solar control glazing'. For more techy info click below.

The BAU house

Was there a better place for product nuts to be in than Munich last month? I maybe pretty ignorant but who else has picked up on the monstrously large BAU 2007 exhibition from 15-20 January? Some stats: 17 trade halls, 209,000 visitors, 2046 exhibitors from 44 countries all showing building materials, building systems and building renovation systems. A veritable Hamleys for specifiers.

Here's more on it:

Download factsheet_bau_engl.pdf

The throwaway culture

I have an ally in Times writer Richard Morrison. His piece yesterday broadened out my thoughts last week on design in housing. Morrison takes the findings of last week's CABE report on housing quality and expands it into how as a culture it is second nature to see products as throwaway (by the way I only stumbled into reading his piece via a discarded Times newspaper left on the Tube - oh the irony). Computers only last 18 months, mobile phones probably about 18 weeks etc. This built in obsolescence exists for housing, says Morrison. Why are rubbish residences being built? "Quick bucks, unscrupulous developers, lax controls" is his pithy reckoning.

How hemp can save the planet

There will be plenty of manufacturers making some bold claims at the upcoming Ecobuild in London at the end of the month. One such outfit is Lhoist, which reckons its new product can save more than 9 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in the UK every years. Yes, that's 9 million. How so? One word - hemp.

Wood for good?

Here's a hoary old debate to kick off the week with. What's the most sustainable building material? We're never shy of tackling the big ishues. The case for good is rather surprisingly put forward by The UK Timber Frame Association (UKTFA), whose chairman Stewart Dalgarno responded to English Partnerships’ latest competition, the Carbon Challenge by claiming that was has the "lowest carbon cost of any mainstream building material".

Could do better

The construction supply chain has a long way to to get to grips with the buying and subsequent disposal of materials. Two reports out this week underline the point powerfully. One from the WWF finds that the UK is the third largest importer of illegal timber in the work, around £712m a year. It reckons 65% of this, a cool £462m, is in construction.

And new figures from website Netregs, which gives advice to firms on waste regulations, claims that two thirds of contractor don't have a site waste management plan and 60% do not realise not having one is illegal.