Categorie: biobased
By now its obvious: the way we are currently dealing with climate, environment, raw materials, food, biodiversity, will not help us prevent disasters. But what then? The struggle and discussion on solutions is in full swing currently. Just look at the energy transition. We do not want fossil fuels anymore:…
Biobased resourcing is hot. Which is understandable, of course, they grow by themselves, (its solar energy), they capture CO2, require little energy to process, and know multiple uses. You can built with then, heat, or create high-value resources, like in biochemistry. The high value by the way is relative, its…
The Scottish Island Eigg, with around 100 inhabitants, for some 10 years now runs its own independent electricity network, and functions fine. (see previous article). In part 2: what now? With such a joint electricity network , which works fine (with all its limitations), you would think that that more…
Why didn’t we realize this before… Since a year or two there has been a working group of a number of collaborating researchers in Europe, under the wings of an international NGO (iiSBE) who are investigating what the ‘carbon budget’ implies for the construction sector or the built environment. The…
Some time ago , I was in a meeting for writing a biobased building manifest. Very interesting discussions, which were hardly ever held at the policy level. Although I get signals that the discussion about the impact of materials, as a rebound effect of all energy measures, does penetrate mainstream…
Many colleagues in the field feel frustrated when trying to improve the materials performance of buildings: the lobbying and framing of materials is huge, blurring a real discussion on what materials with best performance and lowest impact should be applied. I have come across these discussions myself many times as…
Currently we are deeply concerned with the energy transition. However, our main problem is not energy, but material. There is enough energy without us having to exhaust it or without having nasty side effects such as global warming. Think of solar radiation, surface water, wind, geothermal energy, hydropower. However lost…
The Trias Energetica is one of the generic guidelines that has a wide adoption in the Netherlands since the nineties: it states that, in order of importance: 1 reduce energy demand, 2 use renewable energy 3 use fossil fuels as effective as possible. But is this still valid? First some…
In principle, its impossible to create a 0-embodied energy house, energy will always be needed. However, in the present time 0-embodied energy it is understandable as 0-fossil embodied energy, exa house exclusively based on renewable energy. 0-embodied energy, if that is fossil-related, is actually 0-embodied CO2. But then , CO2…
It is remarkable that the kg/m2 approach for buildings , as described in the previous article, is nearly completely absent. That is, nowadays. More then 100 years ago it was regularly used a a criterion in architectural competitions, the lower the better. [1] And famous is Buckminster Fuller, who used…
