Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for September, 2007

work on the cool wall

Posted in architecture, climate change, energy, engineering, renewable energy, sustainability, tagged , on September 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

A project I’ve been involved in at XCO2 won the Building Design /100% Detail Cool Wall contest last Sunday. It’s Far End House, set to be the first PassivHaus in the UK (fingers crossed). My involvement has been limited to working through the PHPP spreadsheets – Jayde Austin has done all the hard work – [...]

Read Full Post »

housebuilders, be careful what you wish for

Posted in climate change, energy, engineering, london, renewable energy, sustainability on September 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

David Orr’s comments at the NHF annual conference last Friday have sparked off a row with the Homes Builders’ Federation. In response to Orr’s suggestion that developers won’t hit the governments target of all new homes being carbon neutral by 2016, head of the HBF Stewart Baseley said oh yes we will.
But given that it [...]

Read Full Post »

two steps forward, three backwards…

Posted in architecture, biofuel, biomass, chp, climate change, energy, renewable energy, sustainability, tagged , , on September 27, 2007 | 4 Comments »

The Green Building Council published a response in July to the Draft Statutory Instrument (which comes into force on October 1) for stamp duty exemption as proposed by our now Prime Minister in the last budget. I wish I had read it more carefully at the time…
Colleagues and I have been trying to disentangle the [...]

Read Full Post »

GLA says London schemes are exceeding 10% but that’s not entirely true

Posted in biofuel, biomass, chp, climate change, energy, engineering, london, micro chp, renewable energy, sustainability on September 27, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

In Building yesterday, a study by London South Bank University says a quarter of schemes in London are exceeding the 10% target. The article states:
In total the study, undertaken by London South Bank University, looked at 113 detailed energy statements for schemes that had been given planning approval.
Erm, but none of those scheme has been [...]

Read Full Post »

existing buildings must be greened

Posted in architecture, climate change, energy, engineering, london, renewable energy, sustainability on September 8, 2007 | 7 Comments »

(Spotted by Mel at Elemental) Cyril Sweett have published their research into the potential for improving energy performance of existing building stock. The importance of greening existing buildings is brought home by two facts:

44% of all CO2 emissions in the UK comes from energy use in buildings
According to one of the report’s authors, in 2050 [...]

Read Full Post »

anarchy roundup: CHP and grid emissions

Posted in chp, climate change, energy, engineering, london, micro chp, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities on September 4, 2007 | 8 Comments »

What’s going on?
There’s been a fierce debate among energy bods this summer over the environmental effectiveness of combined heat and power (CHP) and CHP with cooling (CCHP) – a debate closely tied to assumptions about the carbon emissions associated with grid electricity in the UK.
What happened?
As noted in this blog in May, Arup associate director [...]

Read Full Post »