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Roof-Mounted Wind Turbines Nothing More Than 'Eco-Bling'

80% of the buildings in which we will live in 2050 have been built

Sources: DECC, Energy Saving Trust, Royal Academy of Engineering

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New 'Smart Paint' Could Help Reduce Carbon Emissions

The latest step along the path to carbon neutrality has been developed by Dr Rachel Armstrong, of University College London.

Dr Armstrong has developed a new ‘smart paint’ which could help to turn buildings into carbon sinks, according to a story published in the New Scientist this week.

According to the Energy Saving Trust, carbon emissions from domestic housing currently account for more than a quarter of the UK’s total carbon dioxide emissions.

The paint has been developed by dissolving salts and esters in oil droplets (esters are chemical compounds found in everything from plastic to nitroglycerin). Although it remains to be seen exactly how succesful the new paint will be in practice.

In theory, the paint works by reacting with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to produce calcium carbonate – the main constituent of limestone – and alcohol.

The resulting ‘biolime’ should then provide extra strength and insulation, as well as soaking up carbon emissions, says Dr Armstrong – who has high hopes for her invention.

The new invention is the latest in a range of products that have been developed to try and combat domestic carbon emissions – last year we wrote about a new carbon neutral cement that was being developed by Professor Pal Mangat of Sheffield Hallam University. Whilst London based company Novacem have also been developing a type of cement that actually absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere.

The UK government will certainly be hoping that these developments prove to be succesful, as they aim to meet their target of a 34% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020.

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Architects, engineers and artists have collaborated to propose a highly ambitious structure called the Cloud – which is intended to serve as both a monument and a real-time digital display for the London 2012 Olympics.

The size of the cloud will depend on the level of funding that is received; as it is intended that the structure will be built with money raised only through donations, and could be completed with as little as £5m or as much as £50m – and as you can see by the images that have been released, the structure could well end up dwarfing the stadium as well as other well known London landmarks including the London Eye.

The landmark structure will create a spatial, three-dimensional display that will be seen from all over London and fed by real-time information from all over the world. As an updated, high-tech version of the traditional observation deck, the Cloud engages visitors to participate in its creation with a vast collective energy-harvesting effort and invites everyone around the world to contribute to the Cloud by sponsoring an LED that will transmit messages.

The design team behind this revolutionary structure includes project leader and head of the MIT SENSEable Cities Laboratory Carlo Ratti; artist Tomas Saraceno; digital designer Alex Haw; lightweight-structures expert Joerg Schleich; the companies Arup, Agence Ter, and Google; and team advisers writer Umberto Eco and artist Antoni Muntadas.

Ratti calls this project “a new form of collective expression and experience and an updated symbol of our dawning age: code rather than carbon.” A true exercise in sustainability, this project is intended to reach carbon neutrality. Alex Haw explains that the Cloud will be a huge collective energy-harvesting effort. “People can choose to ascend the Cloud on foot or bicycle; the energy that it would take to descend the Cloud is converted, on the way down, into electricity through elevators with regenerative braking, similar to those that are present in hybrid cars,” he says. “The people’s energy, coupled with solar energy collected through on-site and off-site photovoltaic cells and various energy saving strategies will allow us to reach carbon neutrality, whereby the Cloud produces all the energy it uses.”

Joerg Schleich adds, “Our achievement is the high degree of transparency, the minimal use of material, and the vast volume created by the sphere—all on exceedingly slender columns, stabilized by a cable net.”

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is yet to decide whether or not this proposal will be chosen. If it is, groups set up on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, as well as advertising provided by Google on their search results and on their YouTube website will help to support the global ‘cloud raising’ effort.

For more information on the project, visit the website www.raisethecloud.org.

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President Obama Plans to Attend the Summit Next Week

There was good news at the end of the first day of the Copenhagen summit as America’s Environmental Protection Agency formally declared that greenhouse gases endanger human health – a decision which will give President Obama the power to regulate emissions with or without the backing of Congress.

There had been fears Mr Obama would arrive at the conference almost empty-handed after Congress held up attempts to pass new legislation, but the EPA’s watershed decision will inject fresh optimism that Copenhagen can now set meaningful climate control targets which will include the US.

Environmental campaigners hailed the news as a sign that the US, second only to China among the world’s biggest polluters, was “serious” about signing up to stringent targets on cutting carbon emissions.

Mr Obama, who plans to attend the conference late next week, has made energy reform one of his top priorities but has until now been held back by strong opposition from Republicans and some Democrats, who argue that the proposed “cap and trade” system for carbon emissions will be too costly for industry.

Although he will still hope to win the backing of Congress for his plans to cut emissions by 17 per cent by 2020 and about 80 per cent by the middle of the century, the EPA’s so-called endangerment finding is likely to act as a spur to legislators and will enable Mr Obama to bypass Congress if necessary.

Meanwhile the Copenhagen conference’s head negotiator warned that the summit’s target of limiting global warming to 2°C is not enough to save whole nations from “disappearing” beneath rising sea levels.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN climate change negotiations, said an agreement to allow world temperatures to rise by 2°C would amount to a “suicide pact” for small island states, leaving millions of people homeless.

Mr de Boer challenged world leaders to find a way of limiting global warming to 1.5°C rather than the 2°C limit which is currently on the table.

He said: “What the small island nations are telling us here is anything over 1.5°C increase will be a suicide pact for them because it means their nations disappearing.”

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Committee on Climate Change, also said vulnerable people will suffer if temperatures rise by even a small amount.

“Some even question the goal of 2°C as a ceiling because that would lead to sea level rise on account of thermal expansion alone of 0.4 to 1.4 metres,” he said. “This increase added to the effect melting of snow and ice across the globe, could submerge several small island states and Bangladesh.”

Speaking on behalf of the small island states Dessima Williams, the chief negotiator for Grenada, said the group would not accept a “made for TV” solution.

She called for a legal treaty that would commit rich countries to cutting their carbon emissions by between 25 to 40 per cent.

“We are here to save ourselves from burning and drowning,” she said. “We are here to work towards an ambitious outcome.”

In a separate development, Britain’s independent Committee on Climate Change warned the Government that the era of cheap flights must end if the UK is to meet its carbon reduction target.

A report by the CCC called for higher taxes on plane fares to price passengers out of the skies.

“Air tickets are going to get a lot more expensive, but people will become a lot richer over the next 40 years. If you’re going to constrain demand growth, you do need rising prices,” said David Kennedy, the Committee’s chief executive.

The Committee has said that the number of people flying to and from British airports should increase by no more than 60 per cent by 2050 for the Government to meet its target of ensuring that aviation’s carbon emissions are no higher then than they were in 2005.

But the latest projections show that Britain is on course for a rise of more than 200 per cent in passenger traffic, with numbers rising from 230 million in 2005 to 695 million in 2050.

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A Pioneering 'Green' House is to be Built in Bolton

A futuristic home is to be built in Bolton as a national example of how to create carbon neutral, environmentally friendly housing.

The four-bedroom house will be built on the edge of the West Pennine Moors and will be powered by its own wind turbine.

It is one of a series of government pilot schemes which will also see a biomass power station, a geothermal power station and wind farms built in various locations around the country.

The home is in the early planning stages, but it will cover 820 square metres and will, as a minimum, only emit carbon from “unregulated” sources, such as the TV, refrigerator and cooker.

Developers hope the house will be able to become completely carbon neutral throughout the course of the year.

A council spokesman said it was too early give any details about the house, but confirmed that planning chiefs were in the early stages of discussion regarding a planning application.

A spokesman for the Department of Communities and Local Government said consultants would be appointed before December 18.

The carbon neutral home scheme follows a Government announcement that the law is to be changed to allow people to build wind turbines, solar panels and electric car charger points without planning permission.

Housing minister John Healey said: “The people who want to ‘greenproof’ their homes should get a helping hand.

“Our planning rules need to catch up with changing technologies and allow people to take the small measures that make big differences.

“Not only could this save up to hundreds of pounds in fuel bills, they will also help the environment.

“At the same time, we need tough rules so that permitted development does not become a nuisance, so I am putting in place strong safeguards in relation to noise levels, size, location and potential impact.”

The Government is also giving councils a cash boost to help them plan and build green housing and Bolton Council will be given more than £240,000.

The move is intended to reduce the country’s carbon emissions, as 27 per cent of all emissions come from homes.

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The 2010 Football World Cup in South Africa will have a carbon footprint 9 times bigger than the 2006 World Cup

A new study by the Department of Environment and Tourism, conducted by Swedish consultants and the Norwegian embassy, and financed by the Norwegian government has predicted that the 2010 football World Cup, to be held in South Africa, will leave a carbon footprint nearly nine times bigger than that left by the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

And that prediction doesn’t even take into account the carbon that will be contributed to the atmosphere by international travel to the tournament.

The study concludes that 896,661 tonnes of carbon will be produced by the event, with travel associated with the event contributing a further 1,856,589 tonnes.

Although the point of the study, completed in February, was to identify what should be done for a carbon-neutral World Cup, sources involved in the project say they are not aware much has been done.

The study said it would cost between $5.4 million (R40.9m) and $9m for carbon offset projects to counter the effect of the World Cup carbon output.
Certainly President Jacob Zuma did not seem to know whether anything had been done yet. During a press conference with visiting Norwegian King Harald V in Pretoria this week, he thanked the Norwegians for helping South Africa to host a green World Cup.

But when a journalist pressed him for details, Zuma scrum-halfed the question to the king, who frankly admitted he did not know. However, it appears that Norway financed the study and is waiting for a response from South Africa.

“The Fifa 2010 World Cup will have the largest carbon footprint of any major event with a goal to be ‘climate neutral’,” the study found. It attributes the huge carbon output largely to the size of South Africa compared to Germany and therefore the distances players, officials and fans will have to travel between matches.

South Africa’s relatively unsophisticated transport infrastructure is also blamed. The lack of fast trains means most people will fly between cities – notching up large amounts of CO2. And within cities, most people will travel by carbon-heavy car or bus rather than light trains as in Germany.

If international transport is taken into account, the footprint will be 2 753 250 tons.

The study says proposed greening measures “will only affect the smaller components of the carbon footprint” because they deal only with emissions from stadium and precinct energy use and intra-city transport – just 9 percent of the domestic carbon footprint.

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