A press release on the SEI website has announced the launch of a new quality mark for wood fuels in Ireland. With a deadline approaching I don't really have time to dissect the details right now, but the programme - known as the Wood Fuel Quality Assurance scheme - will be launched in Tipperary tomorrow.

Various agencies appear to have played a role in drawing up the scheme, including Coford, NSAI, SEI, the Irish Bioenergy Association and Waterford IT.

The press release says the "quality assurance scheme will certify organisations involved in the manufacture / supply of quality logs, chips, pellets and briquettes formed from clean wood. This QA scheme will provide customers with confidence that they are purchasing a quality wood fuel from a sustainable source relevant to their needs."

Unfortunately the press release doesn't appear to list the specific criteria wood fuels will have to meet to get the stamp, nor does the Irish Bioenergy Association website. However the Wood Fuel Quality Assurance scheme website will go live tomorrow, so more details should be available then.

For those of you who haven't already seen pictures of it floating about, I thought I'd post a pic of the design for Manchester United captain Gary Neville's new house, designed by Make Architects. According to Inhabitat, the house will feature locally-sourced materials, a ground source heat pump and PV panels, and is designed to be "zero carbon". The architects say it was inspired by the neolithic settlement of Skara Brae in Orkney, and not the Tellytubby House.

As usual, a few links:

Out of the ruins, a more sustainable Haiti: Treehugger
Why are so many Paul Rudolph buildings being torn down? Treehugger
Car bodies could store energy like batteries: Inhabitat
Top five green gadgets to look for in 2010: mylifescoop.com
Can solar panel mounts cause roof leaks?: GreenBuildingAdvisor.com
World's first personal carbon credit: Guardian
£60m eco-home funding announced in the UK: Energy Savings Trust

 

 

I've come across mentions of aerogel insulation a few times recently - it featured in a few of the buildings from the Solar Decathlon that I wrote about in the current issue of Construct Ireland. The claims made about it are generally impressive: that it's an ultra-light, extremely high performance translucent insulator that was, apparently, developed by Nasa. But I have no real way to verify these claims, so I'm curious to hear what readers know about it. I've certainly yet to see it used in a project in Ireland.

A new article on Jetson Green certainly speaks fondly of the stuff: 

Despite the fact that we are now living in the 21st century, aerogel insulation seems like a material out of science-fiction. It is the lightest solid known, although by volume it is 99% air. It is breathable, but it doesn't absorb water. It is incredibly strong for its weight. But most importantly, it is a fantastic insulator.

There's also an interesting discussion about it on greenbuildingforum.co.uk. 

Anyone know any more? 

As usual, a few links for your perusual:

Code for Sustainable Homes to apply to new UK dwellings from this year: Energy Savings Trust
Tesco opens its first "zero carbon" store in the UK: Guardian (see Construct Ireland's profile of a Tesco Passivhaus-certified store in Waterford)
Demolish Buckingham Palace and replace it with an eco-friendly replica? Guardian
Profile of some new green homes in Portland, Oregon: Jetson Green
Solar roof system unveiled: Jetson Green
Solar Decathlon comes to Europe: Green Buidling Advisor (The US Solar Decathlon is profiled in the current issue of Construct Ireland)
Re-envisioning New York to combat sea level rise: Treehuger
Berlin factory renovated into recyclable live/work space: Inhabitat

We're thinking of making a few changes at Construct Ireland to freshen up the magazine, and we'd love your input. Among the changes we're thinking of introducing in the March issue are:

• More, shorter case studies of new build and retrofit projects. Rather than publishing three to four long case studies (of 5-6 pages each), we're thinking of featuring one big case study along with 3-4 short new builds and a similar number of retrofits (each of about 2-3 pages).
• A letters page, and a one page opinion column on green building and energy issues (written by a different person each issue).
• A 'how to' article in each issue, which would examine a particular green building topic in detail, starting with the basics but getting into a lot of technical detail too. Articles could focus on topics like insulation, air tightness, thermal mass, solar thermal - practically anything relevant to sustainable building really.
• Getting architects and other experts to contribute to our feature on international green buildings by selecting some of their favorite green buildings globally.
• A one-page interview in each issue with a leading figure in a field such as sustainable building, architecture, energy or green economics.

And that's about the gist of it. We'd love to hear your thoughts on these ideas - click 'comment' below and then 'show/hide comment form' to leave a comment.

 

Architect Peter Powell has an interesting post on GreenBuildingAdvisor.com about passive solar design principles. Powell, who say he's designed over 60 "passive solar homes" over the last 35 years, challenges some of the most widely held principles of passive solar design. The full post is here, but I've selected a few snippets and copied them below.

Powell advises against using trees to shade south-facing facades, writing:

Using deciduous trees to shade the south elevation in summer is a major design error. This is a myth that won’t go away. Don’t do it! This theory holds that deciduous trees and vines will shade south-facing windows in the summer and reduce heat gain, while in the winter, when the leaves are down, sun will be able to enter and heat the house. It doesn’t work.

The problem is that the limbs of any tree tall enough to shade the windows in the summer will significantly block the lower winter sun, even with the leaves down. In my area (central Pennsylvania), most of the leaves don’t fall until November anyway, after there have been many cool days and nights when the solar gain would have been useful.

 

He also says that getting your building orientation 100% perfect isn't necessary...

I keep reading articles about how to locate true south, using everything from computer programs to measuring shadows through different seasons. Just get a simple compass and correct for declination if you must.

Orienting a house east or west of true south by up to 20° will have no significant effect on solar performance. For example, I currently live in two virtually identical passive solar buildings, a residence and a studio. The studio faces due south and the residence faces 25° west of south. By the end of a sunny day, the overall solar performance of the two buildings is almost identical, with the house performing slightly better in the spring and fall and the studio doing slightly better in the middle of winter.

...and that it's okay for designers to specify more south-facing glazing than most rules of thumb allow:

The area of south-facing glazing area can comfortably be 15-20%+ of total floor area as long as there is adequate storage mass and “active” movement of the heat into the storage.

To maximize solar gain while minimizing overheating, immediately move the stratified heat into storage. Don’t rely on natural conduction and convection to move the heat.

Most rules of thumb for south-facing glazed area assume that the storage mass is located only in the south-facing rooms, and they assume direct conduction of the solar heat into that storage. This method is relatively slow and inefficient, except for the limited surface areas which are directly in the sun, and often results in overheating. It fails to take full advantage of the available mass in rooms remote from the sun, as well as the advantages that occur when heated air is moved through hollow masonry walls or hollow floor slabs to remote mass storage.

A house with a larger-than-normal glazed area (which could be 30%+ of the floor area of the south-side rooms) can still be comfortable and productive if solar heat is moved mechanically out of these areas and circulated into other rooms and, most importantly, directly into supplemental storage mass.

 

 

 

An article in the Guardian last Wednesday discussed a report by the Royal Academy of Engineering, which concluded that "eco-bling" such as wind turbines and solar panels will not help the UK cut carbon emissions quickly enough to meet the government's ambitious carbon reduction targets. That's hardly news - it's pretty obvious such technology is just part of the solution rather than a total fix.

The report also warns that a major step-up in the retrofitting of old buildings needs to take place.  Interestingly, it said the UK building industry would struggle to meet demands to make all new buildings zero carbon by 2020 because of a lack of skilled workers who understand how energy is used and saved in buildings. The report requested British government funding for a study to examine exactly how many workers would need to be upskilled in order to meet government building energy targets.

Reading the piece reminded of what appears to be a disconnect in Ireland regarding our ability to energy upgrade old buildings and to build low energy new ones. The construction industry clearly sees the retrofitting of old buildings as a major source of potential work in the coming years, and it has stressed time and time again that it has the skills needed to meet this challenge. It also sees the exporting of Irish construction skills as a potentially big area of work - with a green and low-energy reputation as one of the key thngs defining the Irish building brand.

But on the other hand, Construct Ireland has been hearing and seeing for years just how badly energy-related work in buildings can be: insulation not properly installed,  draughty gaps around windows and doors, badly-filled cavities, bad internal insulation jobs that lead to condensation and mould, crude heating systems and controls, building regulations not being met.

These problems are far too common, and to suggest we can immediately begin retrofitting successfully on a massive scale is naive.  The wider industry is still emerging from the property-boom mantra of quick new build with little focus on energy standards or retrofitting. Things are are improving of course, and the sustainable building sector has been at the forefront of the focus on quality.

Nonethless, what's clearly needed is a gradual approach to renovating our building stock with a focus on training, upskilling and standards first and a staggered rise in the number of buildings upgraded each year as standards improve.

The January issue has finally gone to the printers, albeit a bit later then we'd have liked. Still, it should be hitting desks and newstands early next week. In the mean time, here's the usual links round-up.

Skip the daily commute with an OfficePOD: Jetson Green
1850s US house gets green upgrade: Jetson Green
Jerry Yudelson's top ten green building trends for 2010: Jetson Green
Natural bark shingles for external cladding? Jetson Green
Innovative financing for energy upgrades: Green Building Advisor
Recycled weapons used for construction in London: Inhabitat
Are shipping containers an answer to the accommodation crisis in Haiti (including an interesting discussion on providing housing in post-disaster situations): Treehugger

Just a quick post this morning as our January print deadline consumes me. I've mentioned Google's Powermeter home energy monitoring software on the blog before. Now Adam Vaughan gives it a test for the Guardian. He writes:

It's not been an entirely pleasant experience. While I had it setup in 10 minutes – using a small hub and sensor from British company AlertMe to plug into my web connection – seeing my electricity use on an iGoogle page alongside my email, news, RSS and other widgets was sometimes a scary reminder of our profligacy.

Our house typically rests at around 150 watts running a computer, fridge and a couple of lights, but it's not uncommon for that to jump up to more like 3kW (3,000 watts) with the washing machine and dishwasher running simultaneously. In December as a whole, the Powermeter graph reminded my daily, we used a shockingly high 370 kWh – but fortunately December's also probably our highest month for energy use, because it's one of the darkest and the one where we're most frequently at home.

Interestingly, he also suggests:

Ultimately, the really interesting stuff for this technology will come when all this data gets shared socially – and results in the sharing of advice and the application of peer pressure to make people change their habits.

 

 

 

We're back in the Construct Ireland offices, and hard at work on getting our January issue to the printers. Because of that there won't be much action on the website over the next week or two. I've trawled through a variety of websites and picked out various new year stories - many of them reviews of the year gone and predictions for the year ahead. Hopefully something will grab your attention.

From Jetson Green: top ten green stories of 2009, top ten shipping container projects of 2009, 19 green building innovations of 2009, 62 innovative green homes of 2009

From Green Building Advisor:  top ten energy efficiency stores of the past decade, Minnesota retrofit programme's popularity exceeds funding

From Inhabitat: themes from a decade of architecture, green design predictions for 2010, tiny solar PV cells look like snowflakes, Google unveils apps that monitor deforestation and home energy use

From Treehugger: the year in green modern homes, UK ecovillage gets government grant 

Some other interesting stories this morning: some interesting letters to the Guardian about green technology, important milestone reached in national smart meter plan, sales of energy efficient boilers on the increase in the UK

Construct Ireland takes its Christmas holidays from today, we'll be back on January 4. The next issue of the magazine hasn't gone to the printers yet but will do early in January - it'll contain articles on various retrofit projects, the ESB's home insulation scheme, a striking new low-energy build in Sligo, international green buildings and a huge profile of the Cloughjordan ecovillage project in Tipperary, among much else.

Here a few links to keep you going until then. Happy Christmas.

New solar shingle hits the market: Jetson Green

Vacuum insulated windows: Green Building Advisor (note US sites like this use R-values to demonstrate thermal performance instead of U-values - to convert divide one by the R-value and then multiply by 5.682)

When customers challenge the wisdom of smart meters: Green Building Advisor

New York City backs off retrofit requirement: Green Building Law Update

Green roofs suck up CO2: Treehugger

Green building comes of age: CS Monitor

 

 

 

 

 

I blogged last week about plans by the British Conservative Party to introduce a pay-as-you-save scheme that would allow consumers to energy upgrade their homes and pay for the work over time on their bills.

An article in the Guardian by the party's energy and climate spokesperson Greg Clark offers more detail. Clark writes:

That is why I set out our green deal – an ambitious plan to give every home in Britain an entitlement to energy efficiency improvements up to £6,500 in value. Every homeowner would be entitled to an independent assessment of what energy efficiency work is worthwhile and would save money.

They then get an entitlement to have these improvements carried out immediately by a kite-marked installer at no upfront cost. The cost of the work is repaid over 25 years via the home's energy bills.

The assessment will ensure that the measures carried out will be those where savings in energy bills are greater than the cost of repaying the amount borrowed. That means that families will be able to make their homes more efficient, pay back the cost over time, and still save money from day one.

He adds:

Yesterday we took this policy a step further. We announced that the mayor of London and 14 local councils, covering between them more than 6m homes, have agreed to pilot our green deal scheme should a Conservative government be elected next year.

Importantly, these local authorities have local expertise and knowledge, and will help us to roll the green deal out on a street-by-street basis, targeting first those people most in need of cutting their fuel bills and heating their homes.

As well as helping more families, a properly national scheme has other advantages. It could directly create 36,000 jobs in installing and surveying, with a further 42,000 jobs indirectly created in the energy efficiency supply chain. And because we are committed to apprenticeships, we will ensure one in 10 of the new direct jobs created by the green deal are to be "green apprenticeships" – over 3,500 new apprenticeships in total.

Interestingly, Clark criticises the (UK) Labour Party's plans for a pay-as-you-save scheme, claiming it will help only 500 families over two years. And that does seem to be the case - see details of Labour's plans here.
 

Two big home energy upgrade stories to report on this morning.

As the climate change talks continue to stutter in Copenhagen, UK Conservative Party leader David Cameron has pledged to kick start £20bn of home energy retrofits in the UK if his party is elected to government next year. According to the Guardian, six million British households would each be offered £6,500 of energy efficiency measures.

Cameron is proposing a pay-as-you-save type scheme, under which households would pay for the upgrades through resulting savings on their energy bills. Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt report:

Cameron's plans for a multibillion-pound investment in energy efficiency are part of a strategy to make environmentalism relevant. Companies such as Tesco would lag lofts and insulate walls, then share the resulting savings in electricity bills with householders over a minimum 15-20 years.

The councils that have struck deals with the Tories would not only offer insulation packages, but also identify the streets most in need of help. A household with the most basic package of measures could expect to see savings of £360 a year on its heating bills, with an energy-efficiency provider putting in an initial investment of £1,500. Some of the savings would go towards repaying the upfront costs of the improvements. Households saving £360 a year would need to pay £120 towards the £1,500 investment, but would keep the remaining £240 a year for themselves.

Meanwhile Barack Obama has called on the US Congress to provide more financial incentives for homeowners to upgrade, describing insulation as "sexy stuff" - yes I'm serious, see the report. "“The simple act of retrofitting these [old] buildings to make them more energy efficient … is one of the fastest, easiest and cheapest things we can do to put Americans back to work while saving families money and reducing harmful emissions," Obama said. 

As it says on the tin - if you know of any other interesting stories please do share.

Gormley to set targets for carbon emissions reductions today: Irish Times

UK boiler scrappage scheme to help 125,000 householders upgrade their gas boilers to new, high efficiency models - sounds like a much better idea than a car scrappage scheme to me: Guardian

Cloud computing recommended for energy efficiency: Energy Saving Trust

Green architect Malcolm Wells dies at 83: New York Times

Self destructing bacteria could be key to better biofuels: Inhabitat

UK houses spending more on going green: Guardian (some figures on this here)

Copenhagen climate talks should put big focus on retrofitting existing buildings: ereleases

UK cannot meet carbon reduction targets unless commercial sector embarks on massive retrofit drive: Telegraph

Can windows perform better than walls in energy terms?: Green Building Advisor

We all know the three Rs of waste, but reducing and recycling often get a lot more attention than reusing. But now a report from the UK's Bioregional Development Group and construction waste reclamation body Salvo has re-iterated that reusing materials offers greater environmental benefits than recycling.

Via Treehugger.com, BioRegional's Jonathan Essex says: "Pushing reuse clearly shows the benefits that reuse brings over recycling. For example, if we reclaimed 50% of reusable iron and steel the carbon savings would be equivalent to taking 29,000 cars off the road - and that's for just two materials. Yes, reclamation is currently more labour intensive than recycling which makes it more expensive, but it creates green jobs and products that often have a higher value than recycled - for instance reclaimed bricks are worth much more than bricks recycled into aggregate."

The report - available here - makes some key recommendations to British policy makers: create a "reuse champion" to direct investment in new capacity and R&D, provide information to the public and work with government to promote reuse; invest in storage and re-processing capacity for reuse of construction products; set targets for the reuse of construction waste and support reuse through planning policy; incentivise reuse and reclamation by adding materials to the EU emissions trading scheme; and direct landfill revenues to reuse before recycling.

Anyone interested in this topic should check out our article Deconstruct Ireland - it's all about designing buildings for disassembly and reuse.

When I covered the Serve project in North Tipperary for the latest issue of Construct Ireland, one thing struck me: how difficult it is to convince householders to upgrade their homes. Serve is an EU-funded sustainable energy project that is grant-aiding home energy upgrades alongside the Home Energy Saving (HES) scheme in North Tipp - more info on Serve here.

The idea of Serve is to get householders to undertake the basic insulation and heating upgrades under HES -  and then go further with additional measures under Serve. Between HES and Serve homeowners can get up to 70% of the cost of an energy upgrade - but it's still a hard sell.

When I interviewed Paul Kenny from the Tipperary Energy Agency, he said most homeowners were reluctant to upgrade, and that those in houses built post-1990 were particularly disinterested. Many believed their houses to be energy efficient. Of course this generally isn't the case - according to SEI's latest stats, most building energy ratings (BERs) for existing dwellings fall between a C and a G rating.

So how should energy upgrades be sold to householders? If the experience of Serve is anything to go by, even the introduction of Pay As You Save - a scheme that would enable homeowners to energy upgrade their homes and pay for it over time on their bills, spending nothing up front - might not be enough to convince a lot of people.

A first step is to make homeowners aware of the energy performance of their homes. An idea proposed by Construct Ireland, whereby BERs must be displayed on all property advertising, is included in the current programme for government. This would ensure that BERs are prominent in newspapers, on property websites, on street signs and hoardings. It should make us all much more aware of the energy performance of typical Irish homes. After all, if my neighbor is selling her house and I see she has a D, E or F rating, I'm more likely to realise that my own home's performance must be similar and think about upgrading.

But clearly this is just one step towards making people aware of the energy performance of their home and convincing them to renovate. What else can be done to entice homeowners?

You know how that famous old saying goes - there's nothing quite like some green building and energy links on a Friday afternoon.

How Malmo was transformed from a deteriorating city into a model of sustainability: Treehugger

Ecotricity launches a "green gas" derived from landfill waste - I'd be curious to hear readers' opinions and comments on this: Energy Savings Trust

Storing heat with phase change materials: Green Building Advisor

The Guardian's guide to buying a wood burning stove: Guardian

Norwegian firm tests ground-breaking osmosis power plan: Guardian

Replacing ugly construction site barries with living walls: Inhabitat

Global body needed to direct green technology, says G77: Guardian

Meant to post this yesterday but other things got the better of me - the Irish Times yesterday reported on the government's plans for a Pay As You Save type scheme. Pay As You Save is an idea proposed by Construct Ireland that would enable householders to fund energy upgrades by paying for the work on their utility bills over time. The government's proposed scheme is instead termed Save As You Pay - putting the emphasis on the saving rather than the paying.

Harry McGee writes in the Irish Times.

However, the new scheme would vastly accelerate the retro-fitting of the national housing stock, with upwards of 90,000 dwellings a year being retro-fitted over a period of 10 to 12 years.

The funding model would also radically alter in order for change of that magnitude to be achieved. Officials believe that extending the grant scheme would not be feasible or realistic.

Instead, electricity and energy utility companies would be given new obligations to reduce progressively the amount of energy they generate each year.

Their roles would change to allow them to offer retro-fitting services and financing. Homeowners would get an assessment carried out by the utility. After completion, the cost would then form part of the utility bill, to be paid off over a long period of time.

During Plan Expo earlier this month I had a chat with Amanda Gallagher and Eanna Nolan from BRE Ireland. Both raised what I thought was a valid point - that so far the drive towards green building in Ireland has focused a lot on energy use and very little on the embodied energy of building materials. After all, if we're to drastically reduce the carbon footprint of buildings, both must be tackled.

Green building standards in other countries aim to do just that: In the UK there's the voluntary Code for Sustainable Homes, which rates homes based on criteria including water efficiency and use of materials as well as energy efficiency. The BRE's own Breeam rating system (which is just taking off in Ireland) for non-domestic buildings examines a similarly wide range of criteria, as does the US Leed system.

Why have we been comparatively slow to focus on materials and other sustainability criteria here? Is it a result of the dominance of a carbon-intensive building industry - traditional concrete - here, or is it down to something else?