new info source

BRE this month launched Green Book Live, a free online database designed to help specifiers and end users identify products and services that can help to reduce their impact on the environment. 

Green Book Live brings together listings from a number of organisations and delivers comprehensive information on 'green' products and services, some approved to stringent environmental requirements and others based on information provided by manufacturers and trade bodies.

mass transit is not enough

Although the Reason Foundation is a bit too strong on the side of free markets for my taste, I tend to agree with their director of urban and land use policy that mass transit is not the key to a sustainable approach to urban transportation. Samuel Staley argues:

Is there a future for mass transit? I think so, but it will take outside the box thinking on the part of transit managers and policymakers. Transit lost its way more than four decades ago when it largely ignored the needs and desires of a wealthier and more mobile middle class. The key is to recapture that market by expanding niche services that compete on the things that matter most to the broad base of travelers--fast, reliable, dependable service.

He includes bus rapid transit (BRT) systems in his definition of niche services, but I believe that even BRT won't replace private transport if it is planned as a road-based version of rail services; which it is, in many cases. I am not suggesting that cars are the answer - on the contrary, I think we need to pay more creative attention to how the various transport elements fit together.

São Paulo, Curitiba and Bogotá all have BRT systems that are promoted as models for other cities to emulate, but their success is not a product of the physical infrastructure alone. They have a strong mix of systems, with supporting services. São Paulo has a particularly complex bus system to meet the needs of travellers, 70% of whom do not have access to a car. Despite this, use of public transportation in the city has been declining for decades. To turn this trend around, planners are updating a broader urban development plan that is linked to the transportation plan. Whether this will be enough to ensure that the mass transit system meets the needs of the city's 18 million residents remains to be seen.

Cars are the mode of choice because they offer the ultimate in flexibility. If we want to reduce automobile dependency, we need to replicate that flexibility. Not an impossible challenge, but we'll have to get more creative than relying on one-size-fits-all BRT to provide broad-based mobility.

solar-powered air conditioning

If your architect doesn't understand the concept of designing buildings to reduce the need for mechanical cooling, at least now you can use the sun for air conditioning. Cool.

solar-assisted coal

South Africa's short-term energy crisis is lack of generating capacity to meet peak electricity demand. A two-pronged approach could relieve Eskom of its headache: reduced consumption (adopting more efficient technologies in homes, offices and factories, and using heating and cooling systems with lower energy requirements) and adding distributed generation of electricity. Some aspects of this strategy would be quick to implement, given the necessary political will and incentives to get things going, and the slower aspects shouldn't be any slower than building big new power stations.

But the bulk of electricity is likely to come from large power stations for some time, so the key choice is between coal and nuclear power, each with its inherent risks. If coal remains the dominant fuel of choice for Eskom, then the biggest environmental issue is carbon emissions. Australia's CSIRO is doing research in a number of fields related to energy, including postcombustion capture (PCC), which is a method of captuing carbon dioxide from flue gases. Though not proven at an industrial scale, PCC is said to capture 85% of CO2, which would dramatically reduce GHG emissions (assuming the captured carbon can then be sequestered or used in some other process, another big "if"). A drawback with PCC is that it requires energy, so either the power station must suffer reduced efficiency, or another power source needs to be added to operate PCC. CSIRO is looking into solar thermal collectors to provide that source, which would be an interesting synergy between solar and fossil fuels.

The CSIRO is also looking at solar thermal systems designed for heating, cooling and electricity generation for individual buildings. These are not just for small-scale applications, but for buildings the size of shopping centres.

rating buildings in South Africa

South Africa should soon have a rating system to judge the sustainability of buildings, similar to LEED in the US and Canada, or BREEAM in the UK. The non-profit Green Buildings Council of South Africa (GBCSA), expected to be in operation in 2008, will seek affiliation with the World Green Building Council (WGBC) and work towards establishing a locally-tailored rating system with assistance from the WGBC. This should help government and private developers identify benchmarks and standards appropriate to local conditions.

Engineering News reports this week that the South African government already has plans to retrofit more than 100,000 buildings used by government departments, although targets tend to be focused on energy efficiency, reduced water consumption and reduced wastewater discharge. A comprehensive rating system should take into account the impacts of a building's entire lifecycle from construction to demolition and consider less obvious considerations like socio-economic effects, transport use and indoor air quality.

building codes could transform Seattle

I promise this will be my last post this week looking at what the Americans are doing - but this one is too good to pass up. Seattle building codes have changed to allow for architectural innovations that compensate for the loss of green space that results from higher densities of land use. Horizontal green, vertical green, inside green, outside green, permeable green: it's the Seattle Green Factor and it's the city's strategy to encourage developers to get creative with vegetation by scoring a proposed development based on its combination of strategies that contribute to the ecologically effective area of its landscaping. The key word is "effective", since plants contribute to ecosystem function and habitat whether they are on the ground, on the roof or hanging from a wall; and the score is increased if rain water harvesting and waterwise plants are incorporated. The city even provides a spreadsheet so that scores can be calculated in advance.

plan approvals process may tighten in California

Facing lawsuits challenging Environmental Impact Reports that don't assess the effects on global warming of particular projects, California is under pressure to consider climate change in decisions on land use, transportation, energy production and other projects requiring approval from public planning agencies. New land use policy may soon require, for example, that additional carbon emissions resulting from an energy-inefficient housing project or a car-based commercial development be quantified and considered in the approval process.

I wrote in November 2004 about Western Australia's updated neighbourhoood planning policy that encouraged lot design to allow for climate-responsive dwellings as part of a strategy to reduce energy consumption. The Californian and Western Australian examples are coming at the issue from different angles, and it would be interesting to see whether the two approaches could form components of one strategy.

California power rush

As long as national electricity grids and large sources of power generation continue to be the mainstay of electricity supply, there will be all the negative impacts that go along with megaprojects and high voltage power lines. I don't think anyone is suggesting we do away with national and international distribution systems (which even out the local mismatches between supply and demand), but if all the new power sources to accommodate growth follow the old model, there will be increasing conflict over environmental priorities related to power supply.

California's rush to obtain 20% of its electricity from renewable energy sources by the end of 2010 seems to be going in that direction, with the threat of more power lines cutting through natural areas. A sense of urgency is one thing, but are we running in the right direction? California seems to be leading the American pack, but I don't see an alternative model being suggested by governments as a serious contender in the way power is distributed and used. There is no real effort to install microgeneration facilities, even though they can be put in place immediately (in contrast to the years of lead time needed for big projects), nor to decouple economic development from increased energy consumption.

It's the same old way of thinking that's going to get us nowhere fast. Decommissioning of carbon-heavy power stations won't be enough to achieve a truly sustainable approach: we need decommissioning of the organisations that put them up in the first place.

Bostonians do it bigger

On the topic of Boston, the city seems to be working hard at reclaiming lost space. The Big Dig is moving an elevated highway underground, releasing prime downtown land for the Rose Kennedy Greenway and restoring the connection of the city with the waterfront. The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority provides images, plans and descriptions of how the greenway transformation will be done - while removing the highway frees up 30 acres, the total project will create more than 300 acres of landscaped and restored open space, including over 45 parks and major public plazas. The old Central Artery isn't cleared away yet, but the last car drove the highway last weekend.

Whether the Big Dig was worth its $15 billion price tag is another story, but two spinoff projects provide some compensation. One is the Big Dig House that I mentioned in April. Here's another description of how the house reused material from the Central Artery in a way that could be replicated in other building projects. Small in scale, big in ideas.

The other project is reclamation of a 105-acre waste dump on Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor by covering it with 6 million tons of material from the Big Dig tunnelling, creating a new park complete with solar-powered visitor centre with exhibits and information on the island's history. And can the planners be faulted for installing a composting toilet atop an "80-foot-high mound of trash"? [via Metaboston]

Bostonians do it on foot

In Boston, just over 12% walk to work. This is the largest percentage in any of the 50 biggest US cities, ranked by the size of their workforce, and is quite impressive for a North American city. In Canada, Ottawa has the highest percentage of people walking to work in a big city, at 7.5%. Calgary, which has a reputation for being a walkable Canadian city, is tied for third with Montreal at 5.9%.

The walking advocacy group WalkBoston has seven years' worth of their past newsletters online, providing useful insights for the development of strategies to encourage walking (and cycling).