Categorie: assessment

Everything that doesn’t last at least 50 years is a step backward. It signifies a decline in the physical-biological system potential. If that system—Earth—is already fully burdened, beyond regeneration capacity, or I other words: if we are living above our personal resource bubble (beyond our physical-biological means), it becomes extremely…

How to deal with CO2, causes quite a bit of confusion. (See also earlier [1]) No wonder, considering that focusing on an effect rather than a cause leads to such confusion, but more on that in a moment. I was once again triggered by the debate about Carbon Credits. For…

The year 2100: Finally! It’s the year 2100, and for the first time, CO2 emissions from buildings will start going down. It should have been already zero by 2050, but due to spreading emissions over the lifespan of buildings, it’s only mathematically the case from 2100 onwards. Yearly that will…

Last time I wrote about about project development, and how everything was optimized within project borders, but the effects outside the project boundaries were neglected. But between architect and client, it’s just the same, and even worse, as became evident once again when I attended a presentation about a new…

A building is usually assessed sec, as a building. Or as a complex of buildings, within the project development boundary, both energetically and financially. See previous contribution. But that is often at the expense of effects outside the project boundary. A few examples can clarify this. Some years ago I…

This week I was confronted again with CO2 calculations. It was about the (absolute) CO2 budget, the maximum that can still be emitted to keep a chance of staying under 1.5 degrees, and which will be exhausted at the end of next year.[1] The starting point, of course, should be…

Recycled materials, once created their impact on the environment, in many forms, and if that (negative) impact is not repaired or compensated, those materials still carry an impact in a second life. In other words , they cannot be considered impact free resources at the time of recycling, at any…

In many countries there is discussion at the moment about measuring the environmental impact of building ( and living ). [1] On the one hand of course the (operational) energy consumption, and how to deal with limited CO2 emission budgets. But on the other hand even more on the environmental…

There is a lot of discussion in the Netherlands about how to assess buildings, if you integrate material impacts in addition to energy, as well as to somehow include CO2 budgets. There is already an instrument for this, the MPG, (materials performance Buildings) but it is under discussion. Besides, in…

Since we are in an energy transition , in which we completely switch to renewable energy, the energy at building level will mainly have to come from solar energy. We assume that, the more local energy the better, and a ‘0 energy house’, including compensation for material energy, to be…