The Green student village at Bradford University is one of the winners of this year’s BREEAM awards for green buildings.
BREEAM is the BRE Environmental Assessment Method.
BRE stands for Building Research Establishment.
I looked out of the window on the 142 bus going up Wilmslow Road and saw a beautiful small wooden eco house. It’s called a Dwelle.ing and was designed by Manchester architect Ric Frankland for the 2011 Greenbuild Expo. It took two days to build, costs £75,000, is zero carbon and built to Passive House standards.
The Biomass Monitor asks “Is Newspaper Coverage of Biomass Energy Biased?” It investigates claims from biomass opponents that reporting in two local newspapers is biassed in favour of proposed, contentious biomass power plant developments.
Interesting info about a London survey of construction sector to find out if builders measure embodied carbon in new buildings (yes) and whether this info affects building design (no).
Inspiring, informative account of a collaborative/social media web based documentary from the Egyptian revolution. Posted here because it’s a “how to” for activist social media, as well as being about an interactive documentary that’s definitely going to be worth seeing.
For phase 2 of Energy Royd, I’ll try and figure out how to adopt some of its methods. If anyone wants to be involved, please get in touch.
Public Water Management Services Need “Committed Citizens” – IPS ipsnews.net.
Interesting news about a book discussing case studies of cities that have taken water supply back into municipal control. Maybe it’s also time to take energy supply back into public control.
The new green team: Local government, sustainable energy, jobs & skills includes outlines of how local councils can create a revolving fund using income from the installation of renewables and FITs to help create a green team that would redeploy local council staff into delivering sustainable energy projects such as energy efficiency retrofits and renewables installation. Calderdale’s Energy Future mentions a new revolving loan fund without saying how it will work – could it be something like this? If anyone knows, please say.
Greener Jobs Alliance (GJA) includes trade unions, student organisations, campaigning groups and a policy think tank. A campaigning group, it has produced a manifesto for low carbon skills development. They are asking for people to email support for the manifesto.
Six primary schools in Calderdale – St Mary’s, Beech Hill, Old Earth, West Vale, Ash Green and St Chad’s – are to install biomass boilers to replace their aging oil and gas boilers. In reply to a Freedom of Information request, Calderdale Council said that the biomass boilers were to be installed over the summer of 2012.
Calderdale Council’s Energy Officer, Daniel Knight, explained to the Calderdale Cabinet Council meeting on 12th March that, “These are the first biomass installations in schools in Calderdale. It makes sense economically and in carbon reduction terms. If successful, it’ll create a precedent for much more biomass in Calderdale.”
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The National Rural Electric Coop Association conference in the USA makes the case for electricity companies that run as cooperatives, putting profit back in the business that is democratically run by coop members. Dame Pauline Green from the International Co-operative Alliance, pointed out that, “The world would be a different place if just a fraction of the public money was put into cooperative development that went to bail out the big commercial banks across the world.”