planted city

‘$4 Gas?’ 

(Source: Ed Stein Ink)

The infographic accompanies the Globe & Mail article, ‘Switch off the lights, here comes the sun’, which highlights a promising solution to increase the energy efficiency of buildings:

Technology being commercialized in British Columbia aims to transform building interiors — providing practical, affordable illumination by harnessing the natural light of the sun. It’s light that will be brighter, more attractive, less expensive and more sustainable than electric light, according to Tony Formby.

Mr. Formby is president of SunCentral Inc., a company developing technology based on breakthroughs made by University of British Columbia physics professor Lorne Whitehead. That technology uses computerized collector panels located on the sun-facing exterior walls of buildings to gather and concentrate sunlight, which is transported and dispersed inside the building by special light guides.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Infographic source: Globe & Mail)

The International Energy Agency’s ‘World Energy Outlook 2011’ Report

From The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:

Carnegie’s Energy and Climate Program hosted the U.S. launch of the World Energy Outlook 2011, the flagship annual report of the International Energy Agency (IEA). Maria van der Hoeven, IEA executive director, Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist who oversees the World Energy Outlook, and Daniel Poneman, U.S. deputy secretary of energy, discussed the key findings of the report and its projections. Carnegie Endowment’s President Jessica Mathews opened the conversation, and Carnegie’s Adnan Vatansever moderated.

Troubling Trends and Increasing Costs of Inaction

The World Energy Outlook 2011 provides insight into global energy markets and trends for today and the next 24 years. The report lays out the urgent need to combat climate change and the dire consequences of its refusal, said Mathews. Economic concerns have diverted attention from energy policy and limited the means of intervention, added both van der Hoeven and Birol.

Birol highlighted several worrying trends from the report:

• To ensure a low carbon future, there is still time to act, but the window of opportunity is closing.
• CO2 emissions rebounded to a record high in 2010.
• Energy efficiency of the global economy worsened for the second straight year.
• Spending on oil imports is near record highs.

Check out the rest of the post here. Below are two key graphs drawn from the report.

(Graphic credit: IEA via The Guardian)

Sustainable Transportation: ‘How the Dutch Got Their Cycle Paths’

From Smart Planet:

The Netherlands is famous for many things — tulips, drug culture, the Hague — and its bicycle infrastructure should certainly be on that list. Its capital city, Amsterdam, is one of the top biking cities in Europe, with 600,000 bikes in a city of 750,000 people, many of the country’s roads have multiple bike-only lanes or paths, and policy requires that every shop have bicycle parking.

Many cities would like to install similar infrastructure to save money, protect cyclists, and encouraging the energy-efficient and healthful activity. But how did the Netherlands get there in the first place?

A short documentary, made by the Dutch Cycling embassy, highlights the history of Dutch cycling and is well worth a watch.

You’ll find more on the documentary here. If this is of interest you may also want to check out the New York Times article, ‘The Dutch Way - Bicycles and Bread’.

(Photo credit: The Guardian)

The House Efficient: ‘Passive Passion’ 

From Charlie Hoxie via Vimeo:

“Passive Passion” looks at the Passive House standard for buildings - a design method from Germany that results in 90% reductions in the energy needed for heating and cooling. Building to the standard is commonplace in many parts of Europe, but has been slow to catch on in the U.S., though a burgeoning community of American Passive House enthusiasts seek to spread the idea and change the fundamentals of how we build.

You can read more about the documentary here. Also, YouTube is hosting four clips from the film. You can watch the first here.

(Image credit: Passive House Institute US)

A Short (Horror) Movie About Energy Waste

From Grist:

David Parker’s “Light” depicts light pollution and wasted energy as a sort of Blob, not necessarily malign but relentless and implacable. In the film, energy-burning lights start dripping goo that covers the ground and finally drives people out of their homes — but it’s all very quiet and eerie, like a Chris Van Allsburg drawing. Showing light as akin to an oil spill draws attention to the wastefulness of using artificial lighting when it’s not needed — wasting energy does basically cover the planet with a gross oily substance, just not necessarily locally and not right away.

From The Guardian:

China’s light bulb moment – a bright idea hovering over its collective head – is a desperately needed glimmer of hope in a world that appears unable to resist its headlong charge into climate darkness.

The commitment by the world’s workshop to end the manufacture of wasteful incandescent light bulbs comes on the same day as a record rise in greenhouse gas emissions was revealed, putting global warming ahead of the worst-case scenarios envisaged by the world’s scientists. The economy may seem to be barely flickering in the west, but globally it is on full beam.

While switching to compact fluorescent bulbs – 75% more efficient than incandescents – has become unremarkable in some developed nations, the significance of China’s move should not be underestimated. Almost 20% of global electricity is used for lighting and the pollution it causes is equivalent to half of all the cars on the world’s roads. And we should be hoping for more light in the world in the future. In India alone, 400 million people live without electricity, condemned to darkness when the sun sets.

With China churning out billions of efficient bulbs, costs will fall further. That means it will be possible to cut carbon emissions from lighting around the world – perhaps by as much as half – without denying the most basic of amenities to the world’s poor.

Lighting is one of the more visible ways that increased energy efficiency can be delivered. Despite being by far the cheapest way of tackling climate change – often paying for itself in months – efficiency measures are too often put in the shade by shinier, more attractive energy technologies.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Reuters)

From the CBC:

1. The number of megacities has doubled.

2. The world is eating 26 per cent more meat.

3. Global temperatures continue to rise, with the last 10 years the warmest on record.

4. World industry is 23 per cent more energy efficient.

5. Plastic consumption has skyrocketed — with annual production reaching a record 265 million tonnes worldwide in 2010.

6. The 1990 Montreal Protocol to limit ozone-destroying chemicals is the world’s most successful international agreement, producing a 93 per cent drop in the damaging emissions since 1992.

7. Cement production is the fastest-growing source of C02 emissions.

8. The Mesopotamian Marshlands, the largest in the Middle East, are recovering from deliberate draining by Iraq in the 1990s.

9. Saudi Arabia has transformed from an importer of food to an exporter due to irrigation.

10. Environmentally protected areas have increased worldwide by 42 per cent.

11. Fish stock depletion is now one of the most pressing environmental issues.

12. Renewable energy has skyrocketed, with solar energy leading the way — up 30,000 per cent since 1992.

13. Biofuel production — up 300,000 per cent — is converting more land from farming to production of fuel.

14. Organic farming is up 240 per cent since 1999.

15. The Amazon rainforest has been largely destroyed due to drought and farming.

16. Tourism and travel is the world’s largest business sector — and ecotourism is the fastest-growing type of tourism, up 20-34 per cent per year.

17. Passenger trips by airplanes have doubled in the past two decades.

18. Clean drinking water access increased to 87 per cent, but widespread sanitation is still slow.

19. 30 per cent more private companies are adopting environmental standards every year.

20. Women’s influence is rising with more 60 per cent more seats in national parliaments.

Check out the rest of the article here. You can check out more about the 1992 Earth Summit here and the 2012 edition here. Also worth a read is a joint statement written by a number of experts in global sustainability in advance of the conference. 

Renewable Energy: A Map of Earth’s Solar Energy Potential 

From e360:

This map illustrates annual energy generation potential using so-called crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) systems. The regions with the largest PV potentials, which include the Himalaya and Southern Andes, have a combination of large irradiation values and low temperatures. Researchers say the Himalayan region is especially attractive since it is located close to countries with large future energy demands, including China and India. 

The map accompanies the article, ‘Earth’s Coldest Regions Have Best Solar Potential, Study Says’.

From Fast Company:

Ever since the invention of the skyscraper, the contest between cities to see who could be home to the tallest building has had a symbolic potency on par with the space race. Now two of America’s “greenest” cities are engaged in a whole new sort of architectural cage match, and in the process they’re inverting the dated priorities of the profligate, fossil-fuel soaked 20th century and instead designing buildings based on the harmonious functioning of ecosystems.

Within weeks of each other, groups in both Seattle and Oregon announced that they were building the world’s “greenest” office building. These structures go way beyond the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Gold standard, aiming instead for the much more stringent and results-oriented Living Building Standard.

The defining feature of the Living Building standard is that, true to its name, a building must behave like a living organism. And not just a wasteful, unsustainable individual, but an entire, self-contained ecosystem. A Living Building must produce all of the electricity it uses, and collect 100 percent of the water it consumes. Both requirements mean that a living building must be extremely efficient with both energy and water in addition to being especially good at collecting both.

So far only three buildings in the world have attained Living Building certification, in part because a structure’s performance must be measured for a full year to establish its bona fides. So it will be some time until we know whether—and by what measure—Seattle or Oregon is home to the “world’s greenest building.”

Check out the details of each building and the rest of the article here.