biomass-fuelled power stations

Eastern Cape Biomass is planning to build a factory at the Coega Industrial Development Zone in South Africa to manufacture and export biomass fuel pellets made from forest residue, sawmill waste and alien vegetation from the Eastern Cape and part of the Southern Cape as well as some of the scrap wood from the government's Working for Water programme. The pellets are an alternative fuel source for power stations, and are also used in homes in Europe. Similar plants around the world produce a combined four million tons of biomass pellets a year. The Coega plant is to manufacture 10 000 tons a month, all for export.

building codes going green

Edinburgh, Scotland, has taken a bold step, requiring developers who build more than ten flats or houses, or developments with an area of more than 1000 square metres, to provide ten per cent of the development's power through renewable energy sources on site. Edinburgh wants to reduce CO2 emissions by 60 per cent by 2050.

Update: The mayor of Salt Lake City in Utah thinks that an ordinance to provide incentives for private developers to construct buildings to high-performance standards (such as LEED) would be the way to reduce a city's emissions. Salt Lake City has already required buildings using city funds to be LEED-certified.

bringing nature indoors

Dung floors have been around for centuries, and while building with earth floors has not exactly gone mainstream, it does seem to have attained a level of respectability.

get on your bike and ride

The world's first hydrogen-powered motorbike should be in production by the end of this year. Making the hydrogen still produces emissions, but this will change once electricity is produced from zero-emission sources.

salvaging demolished buildings

In the US, up to 40 percent of solid waste is construction and demolition debris, and only 35 to 45 percent of this debris actually makes it into properly designated landfills. The vast majority of this waste is from renovation and demolition, so there is a strong need to deconstruct buildings rather than bulldoze them, so that materials can be reused. This means that buildings should be designed to make deconstruction easier.

In South Africa there is a nascent industry in crushing concrete for reuse, and salvaging bricks for resale. Some of this activity is creating jobs in the informal sector for enterprising individuals who sell bricks at the side of the road, but demolition companies have been selling timber, windows, doors and other building fittings for a number of years. In fact, some of these sell at a premium, satisfying market demand for older building items.

building smarter

LEED certification for buildings encourages developers to incorporate energy-saving technologies, although this doesn't necessarily mean that a certified building will use less energy than a non-certified one. An article in City Limits uses the example of Battery Park City’s Solaire, a LEED-certified high-end apartment building in New York, that has solar panels that don't cover its energy demand. What is important to developers is the certification itself, since a high LEED rating is essential for those who depend on green tax credits and green marketing to meet their bottom line.

So legislative requirements like New York's Local Law 86, which requires buildings to adopt LEED sustainability standards in order to qualify for city funding of $2 millon or more, will not necessarily be the best for energy efficiency. And they may also make building in low-cost markets unaffordable, since certified buildings generally cost more. There are other approaches to building that can do more, while not earning LEED certification. They don't have to be high-tech or more expensive than a standard building - they just require building smarter.

US leads the pack (with George Bush kicking and screaming from behind)

Ernst & Young maintains an index tracking 20 countries for their attractiveness as environments for investment in renewable energy. The US has taken the lead this year, with strong awareness and activity by individual states. California aims to reduce emissions by 25% by 2020, and Texas now has the world's biggest wind farm producing 735 MW. And at the federal level, the US Department of Agriculture is supporting biofuels development and the Department of Energy is supporting development of photovoltaic technology.

South Africa will be added to the index this year, following the country's commitment to developing biofuels and the preparation of an Integrated Energy Plan which takes into account a renewables strategy.

nanoengineering concrete

Cement has been used in construction since the Roman Empire, and according to an MIT report we now manufacture 2.35 billion tons of cement per year. One of the concerns with its widespread use is the huge amounts of energy used in its manufacture.

MIT researchers have found that cement's strength lies in the way its nanostructure is packed, and think it may be possible to find - or nanoengineer - a different mineral to use in cement paste, one that has the same packing density but does not require the high temperatures during production, conceivably cutting world carbon dioxide emissions by up to 10 percent. That would accomplish one-fifth of the Kyoto Protocol goal of a 5.2 percent reduction in total carbon dioxide emissions.

what do you drink when there's nothing else?

Recycling greywater by individual households for irrigation and flushing toilets has generally only been adopted by hardcore greens, but the BBC reports that now the Queensland (Australia) government is looking at drinking recycled waste water. Drought is forcing the situation, but this should help increase awareness of the need for water conservation in the long term. According to the BBC News report, water is already recycled in places like Singapore and the UK, but the idea is still unpopular in Australia.

And another BBC report this week says Sydney faces the threat of severe droughts and other climate-related dangers.