BuildingGreen.com – EBN: 17:10 – Free Energy Modeling in Google SketchUp

As part of my ongoing studies in planning we have been talking a lot about sustainability, environmental impacts and the like. This plug in was sent to my by way of a couple friends of mine months ago but I haven’t posted it yet as I have been trying to try it out first. However I still have not actually been able to find the plug in itself, let alone install it. So I am going to go ahead and post it anyway and hope that one of our intrepid readers will be able to figure it out and give us an update on how to use and install this plug in.

“Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) has launched a plug-in for Google SketchUp that delivers energy and carbon footprint simulations to inform early-stage design decisions. The free plug-in provides results without any additional software, although owners of IES’s Virtual Environment package or its VE-Toolkits can perform additional analyses, such as daylight or airflow modeling. The plug-in provides functionality from SketchUp that IES previously offered only from Autodesk’s Revit Architecture and Revit MEP, including documentation for the LEED daylighting credit.”

via BuildingGreen.com – EBN: 17:10 – Free Energy Modeling in Google SketchUp

Neighbourhood News Jan 7th

CNBC
How Green Is The White House?

The election of Barack Obama promises a new era of eco-awareness in the US, says Sarah Wachter

These are heady times for environmentalists in America. The initial euphoria of Barack Obama’s White House win hasn’t worn off yet. They say he is the American president with the most clearly-enunciated environmental platform of any in recent memory. Even though the financial crisis has taken centre stage, environmentalists think that’s good news, too, since Obama is talking about creating millions of green jobs to kickstart the spluttering US economy.

“Right now it looks like environment policy is a high priority,” says Bob Bendick, director of government affairs for the Nature Conservancy. “Climate change, the environment, and the health of the planet are interrelated with human welfare and the economy.”
 Read More

The Christian Science Monitor

Cities may sprout vertical farms

This article touches on Dr Despommier’s concept we’ve previously mentioned.

Farming would seem to be a horizontal occupation. Iowa corn or Kansas wheat pokes up from flat fields that stretch to the horizon.

That’s why the idea of “vertical farms” seems ripe for humor. When its biggest advocate appeared on the faux news show “The Colbert Report” earlier this year, comedian Stephen Colbert prefaced the interview by guessing it would have something to do with corn that grows sideways or perhaps “Chia blimps” that float overhead.

Such teasing hasn’t deterred Dickson Despommier, the Col­umbia University professor of public health. He sees putting crops into skyscrapers as a better way to feed a hungry world. Professor Despommier’s website, verticalfarm.com, features architectural concepts of high-rise buildings that could grow fresh produce in urban areas while at the same time being much more environmentally sustainable than conventional agriculture. Read More

Neighbourhood News Jan 5th

The Christian Science Montior
In China, overambition reins in eco-city plans

If all had gone to plan, by now the first residents of China’s newest city would be unpacking boxes. An experiment in sustainable living, Dongtan was billed as a urban center where green technologies and smart design could slash the carbon footprint of up to a half-million people.

On recent rainy afternoon, the onsite view was less electrifying: miles of sodden farms and wetlands, and not an ecobuilding to be seen. It’s unclear if any will be built. The state-owned developer has torn up a timetable to accommodate 50,000 residents by 2010. Some permits for the project have already lapsed.  In a country overloaded with environmental challenges, Dongtan is a symbol of political overreach that straddles nearby Shanghai and Britain, the home base of Arup, the firm that dreamed up Dongtan. Its failings show the limits to getting bold ideas off the drawing board, even in China’s top-down political culture, where outsized schemes get traction. Read more

The New York Times
A Cleaner Way to Keep the City Running

FOR centuries, grist-grinders and sailors have exploited the wind. Now, New York developers, homeowners and city leaders might be coming around. A handful of buildings are already drawing electricity from wind turbines, which typically resemble table fans, or mounted airplane propellers.

Unlike some of the skyscraping versions that dot rural hillsides, small turbines supply power directly to homes without first sending it through a utility company’s lines.

One major sticking point in the city is that densely packed buildings tend to scatter breezes, making it tough to capture steady gusts. Although this and other kinks need to be addressed before the widespread rollout of small turbines is possible, there are signs of gains. Read More

Car sharing just got a whole lot bigger

Car sharing is becoming a much more popular way of having a car in the city. People are trading in the maintenance and costs of being an occasional driver for the convenience of having access to a car when they need it and letting someone else or some other company worry about it when they don’t.

“Carsharing is a model of car rental where people rent cars for short periods of time, often by the hour. They are attractive to customers who make only occasional use of a vehicle, as well as others who would like occasional access to a vehicle of a different type than they use day-to-day.” From Wiki

There have been a couple companies that have offered this service till now; Zipcar, Autoshare, CommunAuto, StattAuto, and others. up until this point Car sharing has been considered a bit of a fringe industry with most people turning up their noses at the idea of ’sharing a car.’ That is likely to change as a number of major car companies have started eyeing car sharing as a way to find profit in this day and age that has been less then kind to the Car companies.

The Hertz Corporation which is considered to be the worlds largest general use rental company recently announced that it has decided to get into the car sharing business as a method of increasing revenue and activity at its non airport locations in particular.  The company has termed the new division ‘Connect by Hertz ‘ and will be the first global car sharing organisation. You could join in Toronto but still have access to a car share in Atlanta.

“Hertz’s vision is to offer total mobility solutions and car sharing is a logical step for the Company. In line with Hertz’s long term growth plans, Connect by Hertz supports Hertz’s diversified business model by providing best-in-class transportation solutions across the spectrum of customer needs,” commented Mark P. Frissora, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Hertz Corporation. “In addition to being environmentally friendly, Connect by Hertz cars can save members thousands of dollars a year in vehicle ownership costs and, by leveraging Hertz’s established infrastructure, we’re the first major car rental company to be able to offer members the first global car sharing program. With aggressive plans for expansion, Connect by Hertz has all the elements to become a successful and profitable part of Hertz.” S

No matter what your opinion on Hertz,  the company’s entry into an industry that has up till now  been dominated by small environmentally conscious co-ops and independent operators signals that the car sharing business is moving from a fringe service to the mainstream.

From sub-urban to urban, Tysons Corner’s 30 year plan

The problem of what to do with suburban edge cities with their mega malls, inhospitable pedestrian environments, and thousands of parking spaces will be one of the biggest challenges facing urban environments in the coming decades. Tysons Corner in Northern Virginia has been used as the perfect example of an edge city, springing from its status as a census designated place, with no discernible center other then its collection of malls and office parks. What makes it different though, is that it is an edge city with a plan, when the Washington, DC metro rail system arrives in the next couple of years the city has laid out a vision for the future that is very different from its present.

“This is your classic drivable suburban place that is anchored by a regional mall, just like Perimeter Center in Atlanta; King of Prussia, outside Philadelphia; Schaumberg, west of Chicago; Newport Beach; and Costa Mesa south of Los Angeles,” says Chris Leinberger, a developer turned academic and urbanist who is now at the Brookings Institution. “This is, however, one of the biggest, if not the biggest concentration of retail, office and hotels in the suburbs, in the country.”
“This is something that we the people wanted very badly,” he says. “What we didn’t know is as you build more of it, you decrease the quality of life.”

The city has woken up to the fact that in today’s world, and more importantly marketplace, people want walkable, livable, urban environments. The city plans to capitalize on its connection to the Washington metro by turning itself into one of these environments, a city in its own right. Building off the success of previous developments like the Bethesda metro center, the city is planning a drastic a redesign of the urban environment.

Bill Lecos, who runs the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce, admits that Tysons was designed for cars, not people.  “About 17,000 live here and about 117,000 — give or take — come to work here every day,” Lecos says. “So that incredible imbalance is why you have the absolute commuter nightmare of trying to get 117,000 people in, in one period of time in the morning, and out again at 5 o’clock.” S

Tysons Corner Today

In order to fix this imbalance the major goal of the plan is to increase residential housing stock in a big way. Plans call for the construction of enough housing units for 100,000 people, but in order to create the livable environment the city will need more than just new housing stock it means a complete redesign of the city with no love for pedestrians. Things like pedestrian lights that are too short, sidewalks to nowhere, and acres and acres of parking will need to be changed.

Tysons Corner's Potential Future

The plan calls for a grid of streets, shorter blocks, and better public transportation linkages. What’s different about this urban plan is that there are no plans to restore the former vibrancy, because in this case it didn’t exist. By the looks of things that entire area will be rebuilt, it doesn’t appear that many structures have made it from the before to the after pictures. However, the city hopes to be a model for how to transform these former edges cities into livable urban environments. Time will tell, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

Murah Khane rises from its own Ashes

Most of the news these days from Afghanistan isn’t all that positive. Standard fare is about war, terrorism, and security issues. However, there are some promising signs in the building sector that helped to restore a little bit of my faith in the future.

In the old city of Murad Khane there are over 200 workers digging the city out from under 2 m of accumulated dust, garbage, neglect, and the rubble of war. In some places the accumulated layers are almost 2 m deep.

Using techniques from traditional building the workers are rebuilding the city with its own ashes. When of the most interesting aspects of this project is that in a city of security in checkpoints, this project has none. The organizers state that the security of the project is based in the fact that it doesn’t look remotely foreign. The funds behind it may be from outside the country but the program itself is distinctly local. As a means of gathering support from the local community the project is not only teaching building techniques, but also the art of Afghan woodworking, ceramics, calligraphy and jewl making. In addition to this the program operates an emergency repair program to out locals fix their own homes that have been damaged by the fighting.

The program has a budget of just 4 million dollars but much like micro lending firms, the project is achieving a lot with a small amount of funds. “The mission is to regenerate Afghanistan’s historic areas and revive the traditional economy,” said John Elliott, a spokesman for the Turquoise Mountain Foundation which runs the project. “We’re working in the middle of Kabul, the very centre of the centre and there’s just a chance that if you can give some kind of economic underpinning to Murad Khane — an economic purpose, an educational purpose — it might act as a catalyst for the rest of the city and the rest of Afghanistan.”

“What we need is a patient approach to development here,” said Elliott. “I think it has to do with having smaller, more discreet projects. And if you could replicate that across the board, rather than having huge programs which cost hundreds of millions of dollars, having smaller, lower risk projects, then you might achieve something.” S

NVS: Ensuring the Future of Food

A Japanese video that takes on the issue of the global food supply and a vision of what Japan needs to do to insure the safety of its own food supply.

Bats Dying in the Wind (Turbines)

It happens time and time again, we come up with a fantastic new technology that will be the solution to many if not all of our problems only to find out that it brings a problem that we were not aware of before. Such is the case with wind turbines. Turns out they are only environmentally awesome and good for the planet if you hate Bats.

Scientists have discovered that wind farms and wind power generating wind turbines are killing bats. It isn’t the obvious thought of, if bat is stupid enough to fly into a spinning blade… see bats detect the propellers just like they detect anything else using ‘echolocation,’ the bats are not actually flying into the propellers, simply by flying too close to them. It turns out that wind-turbine blades create an atmospheric-pressure drop around themselves. This is causing the bats to die of internal hemorrhaging due to barotrauma when they get too close. The bats are unable to see these low pressure pockets any more then we would be able to see a temperature change in the water at the lake.

Image from Gizmodo.com

Turns out that the respiratory systems of bats are more like other mammals, being balloon like with two directional airflow and a pair of thing flexible sacs surrounded by capillaries. When the pressure drops suddenly the sacs (lungs) over expand and often times burst. Bird lungs are much more rigid and therefore able to handle pressure changes much more easily.

The implications are a little frightening when you think about it… as wind power expands in popularity so too could the miquito population, more and more of them don’t get eaten by bats. There are a whole bunch of reasons we don’t want that not least of all the irritation factor and the spread of blood borne pathogens.

Scientists say that there is no obvious way to reduce the pressure drop at wind turbines without reducing their use and effectiveness.

Sustainability -1, Bats -1.  

via Why Wind Turbines Can Mean Death For Bats

Also Why Are Wind Turbines Killing Alberta’s Bats

Put the WeedWhacker and Herbicides Away, Get a Goat

A Study by University of Northern British Columbia professor Annie Booth, tracked the effectiveness and eating habits of a herd of goats over the span of two years in Prince George British Columbia.

Turns out that goats are incredibly effective in clearing weeds;

“As soon as we unloaded them, they turned around and started eating dandelions,” Booth said. “They do their job — which is clear up and clean out the weeds here.”

“We were very pleased to discover that goats do provide a very effective form of weed control, particularly for some tricky weeds that are difficult to eradicate even with the use of herbicides.”

While any farmer could have told you that this was the case, Booth’s study is the first that actually quantifies the lawn management skills of a heard of goats. Another important effect is the lessened environmental impact of the goats on the (munched) environment, unlike weed whackers and herbicides the surrounding area had very little in the way environmental impact. The only detrimental effect would be the fertiliser deposits that goats leave behind.

Booth suggests that municipalities could save themselves some money, and manage their green spaces by leasing herds of goats during the summer months.

Of course Booth isn’t the only one to have this idea, the University of Washington State has also had a heard of Goats running around its campus, In August of 2007 the University’s Integrated Pest Management program hired a herd of goats as an alternative to chemical processes. s

The University of Washington’s Bothell campus hired a number of goats a few weeks earlier, and is considering acquiring a permanent herd. The University has discovered that, not only are goats cheaper than human labor, but they also provide free fertilizer. The university says that  the goats are a way to cut their carbon emissions. s

Yet another reason why European socialism is Evil; bicycle-sharing

First, they invented public health-care, then the notorious welfare state. The latest evil to spread across Europe is Bicycle sharing. The tall athletic socialists who always win sporting events are now trying to surpass even America’s own superman with this endemic.

A red bicycle, a sure sign of commies

The idea is simple, borrow a bike from a central hub, ride it to work. Leave it at a hub, ride it home. Nobody’s going to steal it, because they can just spend 30 euros and buy a card. Read more here