FULLY SUSTAINABLE TAFE BUILDING

http://coolmyplanet.org/environmental-sustainability/fully-sustainable-tafe-building/

CENTRAL Tafe is home to WA’s first Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) six star-rated public GreenSkills building, a teaching facility in East Perth for students studying environmental monitoring and technology.

The centre, which was built by architecture firm Woodhead, with Aecom as the electrical, mechanical, structural and hydraulic consultants, has a predicted greenhouse gas savings of 134, 495kg Co2/year, as reported to the GBCA. Central Tafe GreenSkills Centre facilities manager Ann Bona says the building is not only energy and water efficient, but has lower operating costs and is considered to be fully sustainable.

“Energy is generated via 210 roof-mounted and 130 photovoltaic façade-mounted panels,” Ms Bona says. “Rainwater is harvested and stored in two underground water tanks with a capacity of 150 kilolitres for re-use in the building [toilet cisterns and urinals], and a blackwater system has also been installed to recycle the building’s waste water.”

LED lighting has been installed throughout, as well as an air displacement system, in-floor heating, a solar hot water system, and a ‘peel back’ construction that exposes the structure, services and mechanisms used during the build. “This allows students and building users to see first-hand how components of the building fit together and eventually, can be disassembled,” Ms Bona says.

“A building disassembly plan is required to meet six star criteria, and therefore the structure of the building has been designed to be capable of disassembly at the end of its life and components to be recycled.”

GREEN SPACES SUPPORT LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

The building also incorporates biophilic urbanism, which involves bringing nature into buildings, in that it has a green roof as well as terraced seating leading up to the main roof area. “The green roof was included as a way of demonstrating the building’s energy and water systems,” Ms Bona says.

“The adjacent teaching spaces have both a physical and visual connection to the roof to promote these initiatives, being an extension of the learning environment. Mr Bona says the centre was designed using Building Information Modelling (BIM) software, which produces 3D imagery rather than traditional two-dimensional drawings.

“The advantage to using this technology is that the efficiency of a building can be determined prior to construction and architects/engineers have the opportunity to incorporate improvements and changes to the design to achieve the best possible outcome.” Ms Bona says BIM will be used in a course soon to be on offer at Central Tafe.

POSTED BY: Science Network / Lily Yeang

Last great regions of pristine wilderness from Asia to Amazon under threat from massive road-building projects, scientist warns

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/last-great-regions-of-pristine-wilderness-from-asia-to-amazon-under-threat-from-massive-roadbuilding-projects-scientist-warns-10238746.html
STEVE CONNOR

The last great regions of pristine wilderness – from Asia to the Amazon – are threatened by an unprecedented road-building programme financed by aggressive development banks with little interest in protecting the natural world, a leading environmental scientist has warned.

Massive infrastructure and road-building are at the heart of huge development projects around the world, justified as vital attempts at helping the poorest attain a higher standard of living.

Scientists claim that we are living in the most explosive era of road and infrastructure expansion in human history – from the plains of the Serengeti to the rainforests of Sumatra. By 2050, they estimate, there will be an additional 25 million kilometres (15.5 million miles) of new paved roads globally, enough to circle the Earth 600 times.

Approximately 90 per cent of these new roads will be built in the developing world, and many of these will result in the first deep cuts into areas of pristine tropical rainforests to service the building of new mines and hydroelectric dams in some of the remotest places on earth.

Loggers truck carries illegally harvested wood near Arariboia Reserve in Brazil (Getty Images)

However, experience has shown that the first roads mark the beginning of the end for the natural habitats where they are built, according to William Laurance, a distinguished research professor in environmental sustainability at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia.

“The best analogy I can use is that deforestation acts like a cancer. When the first road is built into a forested or wilderness area, deforestation tends to spread contagiously along the road route,” Professor Laurance said.

“The example I often cite is the first road to be built in the Amazon, which originally linked the city of Belem with Brasilia , the national capital,” he said. “It began as a razor-thin cut through the forest, but today has grown into a 400km-wide slash of forest destruction across the eastern Amazon.

“Because of such realities, the only real solution for limiting road impacts is to ‘avoid the first cut’ – keep roads out of wilderness areas, protected areas, and the remnants of rare ecosystems,” he added.

During his time as a scientist working in the Amazon, Professor Laurance saw how road-building triggered much wider environmental destruction. In the Amazon, some 95 per cent of forest destruction has occurred within 5km of a road, and for every 1km of legal road, there were another 3km of illegal roads spreading off it, he said.

“In most developing nations the rule of law, especially in remote frontier areas, is limited. In these contexts roads tend to open a Pandora’s box of environmental problems – such as illegal deforestation, logging, fires, poaching, mining and land speculation,” Professor Laurance said.

“We are living in the most dramatic era of road and infrastructure expansion in human history. The world’s last surviving wildernesses – the Amazon, Congo basin, Siberia, boreal areas of Canada – are being penetrated and cut asunder by roads now. We have already crossed the Rubicon in this sense,” he said.

“To give a non-tropical example, the forests of Alberta, Canada, now have 800,000km of roads, and the road network there is increasing by 25,000km per year,” he added.

The Congo rainforest is reeling from a road-building “spree” with more than 50,000km of roads bulldozed into the rainforest, bringing loggers and poachers in their wake, he said.

In the last decade alone, this has resulted in ivory poachers killing around two thirds of the forest elephants that have lived safely among the trees for millennia.

International banks are helping to finance some of the 29 “development corridors” that will criss-cross sub-Saharan Africa, opening up many wild and inaccessible places to human pressures such as ivory smuggling, logging and the bushmeat trade.

“Yet many economists would look at these trends and applaud them,” said Professor Laurance.

“They say the developing world is simply developing and we should support this.” He cited the $60-$70 trillion to be spent on new infrastructure by the G20 nations over the next 15 years.

“This staggering sum will come from a variety of sources, such as public-private partnerships, pension funds, bilateral aid and the major development banks.

“This will be the single biggest financial transaction in human history and the environmental impacts will be Earth-shaking,” Professor Laurance said.

There are ways of minimising the impact of infrastructure development by, for instance, using existing waterways for transport rather than building the first roads, or by concentrating on road improvements in areas already settled. But he believes environmental concerns are being brushed aside in the drive to exploit natural resources.

He is particularly worried about two development banks, the new China-dominated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) based in Beijing, and the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES). Both banks allegedly operate to different environmental standards than the more traditional development banks, he claimed.

“My main concern is that the AIIB and BNDES will force the traditional lenders to loosen their environmental and social concerns in order to remain competitive,” he said.

“The BNDES has funded a range of highly damaging infrastructure projects, notably including some massive Amazonian dams that have flooded vast areas of forest and promoted a spate of associated road and power line building and deforestation,” he explained.

“Regarding the AIIB, it hasn’t actually begun functioning yet but two things are clear. First, it is hugely capitalised, especially by China – already having at least half of the capitalisation of the World Bank and IMF,” he said. 

“China has been notorious for placing a low priority on environmental and social concerns in its many dealings internationally.

“In such senses it tends to be agnostic –leaving these concerns to the local governments to deal with. All it cares about is getting the natural resources it desires, in whatever way is necessary.”

This year, France and Germany decided to follow the UK’s lead in becoming members of the Chinese-led bank, the AIIB, which has shocked other countries, including the United States which sees the bank as a rival to the western-dominated World Bank.

A spokesman for the BNDES said it has a “series of mechanisms” designed to evaluate projects, ranging from “meticulous analysis of any social and environmental impacts in any project receiving financial support, to financing for investments that generate direct benefits to boost environmental quality and to reduce social and regional inequalities in the country”. The AIIB did not respond to a request for comment.

Critics argue that the new European members will give the AIIB credibility that it doesn’t deserve. However, others have suggested that Britain and the other western nations could work on the inside trying to tighten up the bank’s environmental standards – although the sheer size of the bank’s development fund will undoubtedly mean more road-building in areas of pristine wilderness.

“The only way I would see a real change of tack is if nations such as the UK, Germany, France, Australia and New Zealand have the courage and influence to take a strong stand and demand social and environmental safeguards,” Professor Laurance said. “But will they? And if they did, would China respond? I have my doubts.”

How To Make Your Own Solar Power Generator (It’s Quite Simple!)

http://www.trueactivist.com/how-to-make-your-own-solar-power-generator-its-quite-simple/
by Amanda Froelich 

Not only does securing renewable energy help to lessen the collective carbon footprint, but it’s a sustainable – and intelligent – choice to reduce energy costs long-term as fossil fuels phase out. For this reason and more, implementing clean, green energy has become a priority for eco-conscious individuals around the world.

Just in the United States, demand and capacity for solar power grew a whopping 418% between 2010 and 2014. And recently in France, a new decree was passed mandating new roofs to have solar power or oxygen-producing plants.

But did you know that you can actually build your own solar power generator at home? Really. Just by obtaining a few pieces of equipment and following the guidance of Rapid Online, you can have a DIY green energy machine operating in no time.

The awesome infographic below explains which components you need, provides a step-by-step guide to assembling a photovoltaic system, and contains a ton of of useful facts about solar generators – as well as some safety precautions to be mindful of.

5 Ways to Reduce the Drivers of Climate Change

http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2015/03/18/5-ways-reduce-drivers-climate-change?cid=EXT_TWBN_D_EXT


Bus rapid transit has reduced traffic and increased connectivity in Guangzhou, China
Benjamin Arki / Creative Commons

We have to decouple economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim told students in a lecture at Georgetown University on March 18, 2015. He spoke about development challenges created by climate change and actions to reduce the drivers of climate change and the impact.

Climate change is fundamentally a development issue. It threatens to exacerbate poverty and hurt economic growth. At the same time, how countries grow and the investments they make to meet the energy, food and water needs of an expanding population can fuel climate change, raising risks worldwide, or contribute to solutions.

In a lecture to students at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., on March 18, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim laid out five key areas where policies and growth choices can help reduce the drivers of climate change.

“We have to keep the economy growing – there is no turning back on growth,” President Kim told the student audience. “What we have to do is decouple growth from carbon emissions.”

Put a price on carbon

Cutting emissions starts with clear policy signals.

Carbon pricing systems – such as emissions trading systems that cap emissions or carbon taxes that charge per ton – send a long-term signal to companies by creating an incentive to reduce polluting behaviors and to invest in cleaner energy choices and low-carbon innovation.

Close to 40 countries and more than 20 cities, states and provinces now have or are preparing to implement carbon pricing through emissions trading systems or carbon taxes, and their numbers are growing. Korea launched the newest carbon market in January. China, with seven pilot carbon markets in cities and provinces, saw its emissions drop last year and plans to launch a national emissions trading system as early as 2016.

“A price on carbon is the single most important thing we have to get out of a Paris agreement. It will unleash market forces,” President Kim said when asked about expectations for the international climate agreement expected in December 2015 in Paris.

End fossil fuel subsidies

Fossil fuel subsidies send a different signal – one that can encourage waste and discourage low-carbon growth. By phasing out harmful fossil fuel subsidies, countries can reallocate their spending to where it is most needed and most effective, including proving targeted support for the poor.

Nearly $550 billion went into direct fossil fuel subsidies worldwide in 2013, taking up large percentages of some countries’ GDP to artificially lower energy prices. Yet, “the evidence shows that fossil fuel subsidies are not at all about protecting the poor,” President Kim said. Studies show the wealthiest 20 percent of the population captures six times the benefit from fossil fuel subsidies as the poorest 20 percent.

Reforming subsidies is never easy. Often, the population is unaware of the true costs of energy, and support for the poor must be phased in as the subsidies are phased out. The World Bank is providing support for fossil fuel subsidies reform through a $20 million facility that will help countries design and implement subsidy reform and accompanying social protection systems.

Build low-carbon, resilient cities

Getting prices right is one part of the equation. Another piece is building a sustainable future, because all development happens in the context of climate change.

There will be more infrastructure built in the next 20 years than in the past 6,000, the president told the audience.  Cities are growing fast, particularly in the developing world. Just over half the global population is urban today; by 2050, cities are expected to hold two-thirds of the world population.

With careful planning of transportation and land use, and the establishment of energy efficiency standards, cities can build in ways that avoid locking in unsustainable patterns. They can open up access to jobs and opportunity for the poor and reduce damaging air pollution.

Financing that growth to be sustainable can be a challenge, though. Data show that only about 4 percent of the 500 largest developing countries cities are deemed creditworthy in international markets. The World Bank Group is helping cities improve their strategic planning and fix the financial fundamentals that can prevent them from accessing finance.

Increase energy efficiency and use of renewable energy

When we talk about energy, we have to talk about access. Worldwide, about 1.2 billion people lack access to electricity and 2.8 billion rely on solid fuels for cooking, such as wood, charcoal, and coal, which cause harmful indoor air pollution.

Through the Sustainable Energy for All initiative, the World Bank Group supports three goals for 2030: to achieve universal access to modern energy, double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency, and double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.

Energy efficiency improvements are crucial. Every gigawatt saved is a gigawatt that didn’t have to be produced. Globally, energy use is about one-third lower today than it would have been without the past 20 years of energy efficiency improvements.

Renewable energy, meanwhile, is becoming increasingly affordable as prices fall. In many countries, developing utility-scale renewable energy is now cheaper than or on par with fossil fuel plants.

Implement climate-smart agriculture and nurture forest landscapes

The fifth area for action takes in both mitigation and adaptation. Climate-smart agriculture techniques help farmers increase their farms’ productivity and resilience to the impacts of climate change, such as droughts, while also creating carbon sinks that help reduce net emissions. Forests, too, are valuable carbon sinks that absorb carbon and store it in soils, trees, and foliage.

Attacking climate change in all that we do

Global efforts to reduce emissions are having an effect. Last week, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency announced that global CO2 emissions had been flat in 2014 for the first time in four decades without an accompanying economic downturn, while the global economy grew by 3 percent.

“Is this the beginning of decoupling carbon emissions from growth? We sure hope so,” President Kim said.

Even if we do all of this successfully, we will still see changes, the president said. Scientists believe that about 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming is already locked in through the amount of greenhouse gas emitted and expected in the coming years, so the world will have to adapt while bringing down emissions.

That means building resilience into all development and increasing financial support for preparedness and prevention.

As a major provider of finance, the World Bank Group invests in disaster preparedness, renewable energy, energy efficiency, city planning and development, and providing decision-makers with the tools and data they need to make informed decisions. It tracking financial commitments for climate mitigation adaptation co-benefits, screens for disaster and climate risk, and uses greenhouse gas accounting and a price on carbon.

 “What we really want to do is see how we can attack this problem in just about everything we do,” the president said.

How Costa Rica went 75 days without using fossil fuels for electricity

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/25/8288259/costa-rica-renewables
by Brad Plumer


Rio Aguajitas, Costa Rica
Trish Hartmann/Flickr

If the world ever wants to slow the pace of global warming, we'll likely have to use far fewer fossil fuels and far more renewables.

That's why tiny Costa Rica has been getting so much attention of late — the country recently announced it went the first 75 days of the year using no fossil fuels whatsoever for electricity.

That's right: 100 percent of Costa Rica's electricity came from renewable power in January, February, and half of March, mainly from hydropower and geothermal plants. Most notably, heavy rains helped four big hydroelectric dams run above their usual capacity, allowing the country to make do without fossil-fuel generators. (This was only for electricity; Costa Rica's cars were still running on gasoline.)

It's an impressive feat — and a nice illustration of Costa Rica's incredibly ambitious environmental plans. At the same time, a closer look at the story shows just how difficult it would be for other countries to pull off something similar.

Most of Costa Rica's electricity is from hydro and geothermal

When many people think of "renewables," they tend to think of wind turbines or gleaming solar panels. But that's not what Costa Rica's relying on.

For years, roughly 80 percent of the nation's electricity has come from an old-fashioned technology — hydroelectric dams. Unlike wind or solar, hydropower can run at all hours, making it quite reliable. But the output of these dams also fluctuates with the weather, since you need enough water to keep the turbines spinning.

Back in 2014, Costa Rica suffered a brutal drought, and the dams produced less power, forcing grid operators to rely more heavily on diesel generators. In 2015, by contrast, the country experienced above-average rainfall at its four biggest reservoirs, allowing those hydroelectric dams to meet virtually all of the country's electricity needs.

Another 12 percent or so of Costa Rica's electricity comes from geothermal plants — power plants that tap heat deep in the Earth's crust. In 2014, after the drought, the nation's legislature approved a $958 million geothermal plant, backed by loans from Europe and Japan, that's now up and running. They also played a key role this year.

The remainder of Costa Rica's electricity needs were supplied by wind — which normally makes up about 2 percent of generation — a smaller amount of biomass, and a very minuscule bit of solar.

It's worth emphasizing that it was only Costa Rica's electricity that was coming from 100 percent renewable sources. The nation of 5.7 million people still has plenty of cars, which mostly run on gasoline. It also has two large cement plants that burn coal and petroleum coke in their kilns, producing carbon dioxide emissions.

It's also important to note that Costa Rica is still a very poor country and its per capita electricity consumption is about one-quarter that of, say, France or Belgium. If Costa Rica was richer and used more electricity, then its hydropower and geothermal plants wouldn't be enough to supply all of its needs.

Even so, this year's feat is a reflection of Costa Rica's environmental ambitions. Its state-run utility is currently building dozens of wind farms and small dams around the country, with the aim of zeroing out the use of all fossil fuels for electricity — forever. The country is also planning to balance out other emissions with a program to protect its rainforests and plant more trees. The aim? To become carbon-neutral by 2021.

Why it's harder for other countries to do what Costa Rica did

the Itaipú hydroelectric dam, on the Parana river, Alto Parana, in the Paraguay-Brazil border, which supplies Paraguay's electricity. (Norberto Duarte/AFP/Getty Images)

So if Costa Rica can go 100 percent renewable, why can't other countries do the same?

One obstacle is that the availability of hydropower and geothermal depends on location, and only a few nations are lucky enough to have such rich resources. Iceland gets nearly 100 percent of its electricity from those two sources. Paraguay gets almost all of its electricity from the massive Itaipú Dam. Brazil gets more than 75 percent of its power from hydropower. But those are exceptions. For most countries, hydropower is just one option among many.

The United States, for example, has already dammed up most of its suitable large rivers and still only gets 7 percent of its electricity from hydro. We could maybe eke out another 1 percent by retrofitting smaller dams that don't have power plants, but there's an upper limit here:

As for geothermal, the US could arguably do more to harvest heat deep beneath the ground — we currently only get about 0.41 percent of our electricity from this. But that's also limited by location. It could be a boon for states like California, less so for Wisconsin:

Accessible geothermal resources suitable for electric power production, direct-use systems, and GHP systems in the United States. Adapted from Geothermal: The energy under our feet (NREL, 2006).

Most other countries find themselves in similar situations. Hydropower already provides 16 percent of the world's electricity. In theory, we could try to double this by damming up every last big river on Earth, but that could end up displacing millions of people, destroying habitats, and, in some cases, exacerbating climate change (decaying vegetation in poorly built dams can lead to extra methane emissions). Not so easy to do.

Which means that for most countries, clean energy will largely entail things like solar power and wind power (fast-growing but still a tiny source of electricity worldwide, and faces questions about intermittency). Or nuclear power (reliable but expensive and dogged by concerns about waste). Or fossil-fuel plants that can capture their carbon dioxide emissions and bury them underground (expensive and not yet commercialized).

This isn't impossible, and there are lots of good success stories there — the cost of wind and solar, in particular, have been tumbling all over the world. But it hasn't been easy. There's a good reason why fossil fuels still provide about 87 percent of the world's energy, a fraction that hasn't budged for over a decade. Coal, oil, and gas are environmentally destructive, yes, but also cheap and convenient.

So most countries won't be able to follow the exact same path Costa Rica did. They'll have to find their own ways to clean up.

Further reading

We're damming up every last big river on Earth. Is that really a good idea?

The costs of solar and wind keep dropping around the world.

Clean energy is growing worldwide. But fossil fuels have grown even faster.

Some highlights:

Fossil fuels: When fossil fuels are burned for energy, that produces carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Roughly 25 percent of man-made greenhouse gases came from burning coal, 19 percent from the use of natural gas, and 21 percent from oil.

Land-use change: 15 percent of man-made emissions came from land-use changes. Forests, for instance, absorb carbon-dioxide — so if they're cut down and burned for farmland, that increases emissions in the atmosphere.

Agriculture: Another 7 percent of man-made emissions come from agricultural sources — methane emissions from livestock, say, or changes in the amount of carbon stored in soil.

The world’s top five greenhouse-gas emitters in 2009 were China, the United States, India, Russia, and Japan. There are many more charts — breaking things down by per capita emissions and historical responsibility — here.

Where do greenhouse-gas emissions come from?

The Earth already had greenhouse gases in its atmosphere before humans ever came along, as part of the natural carbon cycle.

But since the Industrial Revolution, humans have been adding even more carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That's through activities such as burning fossil fuels or clearing forests. Carbon dioxide is the most important of these gases and typically persists in the atmosphere for centuries.

This chart from Ecofys breaks down the major sources of man-made greenhouse-gas emissions in 2010:

Some highlights:

Fossil fuels: When fossil fuels are burned for energy, that produces carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Roughly 25 percent of man-made greenhouse gases came from burning coal, 19 percent from the use of natural gas, and 21 percent from oil.

Land-use change: 15 percent of man-made emissions came from land-use changes. Forests, for instance, absorb carbon-dioxide — so if they're cut down and burned for farmland, that increases emissions in the atmosphere.

Agriculture: Another 7 percent of man-made emissions come from agricultural sources — methane emissions from livestock, say, or changes in the amount of carbon stored in soil.

The world’s top five greenhouse-gas emitters in 2009 were China, the United States, India, Russia, and Japan. There are many more charts — breaking things down by per capita emissions and historical responsibility — here.

WATCH: 'A visual tour of the world's CO2 emissions'