Industrial Revolution 2

DOE: Building Energy Codes – Home

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Energy Codes Program is an information resource on national model energy codes. We work with other government agencies, state and local jurisdictions, national code organizations, and industry to promote stronger building energy codes and help states adopt, implement, and enforce those codes.

The Program recognizes that energy codes maximize energy efficiency only when they are fully embraced by users and supported through education, implementation, and enforcement.

Here’s the site.

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Construction, Building Codes, Green Building Codes

I guess you can tell I’m a fan….

Metropolis Magazine: Part 2: The Green Roof

The California Academy of Sciences balances a commitment to biodiversity with a demand for beauty.

By Belinda Lanks

Posted September 17, 2008

How does a landscape architect cultivate nature without corrupting it? The question goes back at least to the 18th century, when the novelist Samuel Richardson wrote that the ideal was for the artist ‘not to level hills, or to force and distort nature; but to help it, as he finds it, without letting art be seen in his works, where he can possibly avoid it.’ The undulating green roof that sits atop the new California Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park tries to strike a?similar balance. Like the museum it shelters, it is designed to respect the natural world even as it appropriates it, serving at once as a wildlife habitat and a first-rate work of art.

When the roof (along with the building) opens to?the public this month, it will be, at 2.5 acres, the?largest such ‘living’ structure in California. Conceived in 1999 by the architect Renzo Piano (who also designed the building)”

More on this…

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Sustainable Architecture, Green Architecture, Sustainable Construction

Cement and carbon emissions | Concrete proposals needed | The Economist:
“Concrete proposals needed

Dec 19th 2007

The construction industry confronts its carbon footprint

FANS of cement like to point out that it is the most widely used substance on the planet after water. Unfortunately it is also one of the most polluting. The main ingredient in concrete, cement is made by heating limestone and clay until they fuse into a material called clinker, which is then ground up and mixed with various additives. Both the heating, which is normally fuelled by coal, and the chemical reaction it induces release large amounts of carbon dioxide, and so contribute to global warming. By the industry’s own admission, cement-making accounts for some 5% of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases—twice the amount attributed to aviation.”
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Sustainable Construction, Sustainable Economy

Cement Industry Is at Center of Climate Change Debate – New York Times:

“Cement plants account for 5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming. Cement has no viable recycling potential; each new road, each new building needs new cement.

Now, green incentives may be increasing pollution. The European Union subsidizes Western companies that buy outmoded cement plants in poor countries and refit them with green technology. But the greenest technologies can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by only about 20 percent.

So when Western companies revamp Eastern factories, the emissions decrease for each ton of concrete produced. But the amount of cement produced often goes way up, as does the total pollution generated.”

(Via Cement Industry Is at Center of Climate Change Debate – New York Times.)

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Climate Change, Sustainable Construction, Sustainable Economy, Greenhouse Gases