Video: Greening the Empire State Building

Greening the Empire State Building

Historically, improvements in existing buildings are made on an ad hoc basis, however, much more energy efficiency and savings can be obtained by taking a whole-building approach, when integrated solutions and blended savings bring long-term benefits. A case where this is aptly demonstrated is the iconic Empire State Building in Manhattan, New York, that is now also becoming an example of innovation in building management.

The Empire State Building Retrofit Project is a partnership between the owners, Johnson Controls as the preferred energy service company, Jones Lang LaSalle as the project manager, Rocky Mountain Institute as the peer reviewer and sustainability experts and the Clinton Climate Initiative as a resource and advisor.

The $20 million project will reduce energy consumption by more than 40%, achieve annual energy savings of $4,4 million and save 100,000 metric tons of carbon over 15 years. The work will include a layer of film added to each of the 102-storey building’s 6,500 windows, insulation behind radiators and improved lighting, ventilation and air conditioning. People working in the building will be able to use the internet to monitor how much energy is being used, and where.

A special website, esbsustainability.com, has been created to showcase the tools and processes that resulted from the project, and includes a video, interactive model, and information on best practices for future building retrofits.

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See a short video clip on the process here…

Waste = Input for CleanBoard

The mantra of reduce, reuse and recycle are been taken to a next level by some innovative companies that utilise the waste of others as the inputs in their manufacturing. Not only are their products good for the environment they also employ innovative business strategies to maximise the value they deliver.

One such company is CleanBoard from California. Drywall manufacture is one of the top three building materials in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. It accounts for one percent of all primary industrial energy used in the USA and annual production emits more greenhouse gasses than 6,2 million cars. The gypsum used to manufacture regular drywall is a non-renewable resource that is open-pit mined with significant environmental consequences.

CleanBoard is drywall manufactured from 100% recycled gypsum using power from the sun. The result is a sustainable drywall product with zero carbon footprint. By manufacturing CleanBoard from recycled gypsum that would otherwise be sent to landfills, they help reduce the impact on the environment.

They have also developed ways of eliminating the greenhouse gas emissions by using alternative clean energy sources and are building a drywall factory that is powered entirely by solar energy. In order to deliver on their zero carbon footprint commitment from day-one, they purchase voluntary carbon offsets to cancel out any remaining emissions from the manufacture and transportation of products.

The company works with building contractors to collect all drywall cut-offs thus also saving contractors on waste collection. But, the majority of their board will be made using calcium-sulfate that comes from scrubbing coal-fired power plants. While U.S. power plants are already required to scrub emissions, CleanBoard can offer a financial incentive to plants in China and other developing countries to install scrubbers.

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Masdar city - Paradise built

In 2006, Abu Dhabi’s rulers decided to plough some of their billions of petrodollars into an ambitious plan to build a $22bn carbon-neutral, waste-free green technology centre amid the scrub desert outside the city.

The futuristic Masdar city project is the cornerstone of the Masdar Initiative, which was set up to help diversify Abu Dhabi’s economy away from hydrocarbons and towards what it hopes will be a greener, more sustainable future. Masdar hopes that the car-free city – which is designed by British architects Foster & Partners – will generate 70,000 jobs, house 40,000 residents and add 2 per cent to Abu Dhabi’s gross domestic product, when it is completed in 2016.

In March 2009 Masdar city was awarded the FT ArcelorMittal Boldness in Business award in the Environment category.

All Masdar’s buildings will be elevated above the ground to allow the city’s pod-like automated vehicles to whiz residents around the 6.5sq km development. The elevation will also allow easier access to the various sanitary and technological piping, wires and infrastructure, making them easier to repair and replace.

More than two-thirds of the city’s energy will come from solar farms and photovoltaic panels that will cover the rooftops, and all water will be cleaned and recycled. Sensors will warn when pipes are leaky, and parks will be populated by hardier plants than the water-thirsty foliage that dots the rest of Abu Dhabi. Even the wind will be harnessed. The city will be surrounded by high walls to keep out the sand and grit that permeates the Middle East, but wind will be funnelled through the city’s main entrances, helping to keep the city cool and breezy.

A crucial part of the Initiative is the creation of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, in partnership with MIT, that will be the world’s first graduate level institution dedicated to the study and research of advanced energy and sustainable technologies. Instead of merely engaging in “greenwashing”, the objective is to become a global hub for world-class education and research in energy and sustainability.

Original article: Robin Wigglesworth. Financial Times. 20 March 2009. Read more…

Vertical Farming

According to current estimates, by the year 2050 70% of the world’s population of 9 billion will reside in urban centers. An estimated land area of 20% bigger than Brazil will be required to grow enough food to feed them, if current farming practices continue as they are today. Adding the transport component of getting crops from distant farms to urban centres exacerbates the challenge.

Prof. Dickson Despommier at Columbia University in New York, tasked his students to come up with innovative solutions to this problem. They started studying the idea of rooftop gardening for cities but quickly discarded that approach – too small scale – in favour of something more ambitious: a 30-story urban farm with a greenhouse on every floor.

These high-rises will utilise hydroponic farming and require 4 – 6 times less acreage (depending on crop) than traditional farming, be entirely organic, utilise grey-water and recycle black-water, produce energy via methane generation from composting non-edible parts of the plants and greatly reduce the transport requirements of food.

Valcent, a tech company based in El Paso, Texas, is trying out the process. At their lab, potted crops grow in rows on clear vertical panels that rotate on a conveyor belt. Moving them gives the plants the precise amount of light and nutrients needed, an optimization that lets him grow 15 times as much lettuce per acre as on a normal farm, using 5% of the water that conventional agriculture does. The company aims to finish a commercial-scale facility by early 2009.

Despommier’s plans are even grander. He has drawn up models for a 30-story, city-block-size vertical farm that would have transparent walls to maximize sunlight and would produce enough food for 50,000 people. “With about 160 of these buildings, you could feed all of New York,” he says. His idea has intrigued architects, but Despommier concedes that it would cost hundreds of millions to build a full-scale skyscraper farm. That’s the main drawback: construction and energy costs would probably make vertically raised food more costly than traditional crops. At least for now.

Original article: Bryan Walsh. TIME. 11 December 2008. Read it… or read more here…

The Cement that Eats Carbon Dioxide

Cement, a vast source of planet-warming carbon dioxide (making the 2bn tonnes of cement used globally every year pumps out 5% of the world’s CO2 emissions - more than the entire aviation industry), could be transformed into a means of stripping the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, thanks to an innovation from British engineers.

Making traditional cement results in greenhouse gas emissions from two sources: it requires intense heat, and so a lot of energy to heat up the ovens that cook the raw material, such as limestone. That then releases further CO2 as it burns. But, until now, no one has found a large-scale way to tackle this fundamental problem. Novacem’s cement, based on magnesium silicates, not only requires much less heating, it also absorbs large amounts of CO2 as it hardens, making it carbon negative.

According to Novacem, its product can absorb, over its lifecycle, around 0.6 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of cement. This compares to carbon emissions of about 0.4 tonnes per of standard cement. The company is confident the material will be strong enough for use in buildings but acknowledged that getting licenses to use it will take several years of testing.

Original article: Alok Jha. The Guardian. 31 December 2008. Read more…