What is better , a friend active in the beverage world asked, recycling aluminium cans or recycling glass bottles? Neither, I immediately replied: always reuse, and never use aluminum. As the Dutch national environmental center reports: a deposit beer bottle… Continue Reading
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’… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
This is an extended version of a previous post on linked in, which had a lot of reactions.. {april 2019} When it comes to Embodied Energy, we are used to normalize this over the lifespan of a building (… Continue Reading
Last month I finally visited the ‘2226’ office in Austria near Bregenz. The building, realized about 4 years ago, already won many prizes. What is special about this building: it has no heating system, and in fact no ventilation system,… Continue Reading
Architects love to be able to design and build an iconic tower. And a city counselor can leave his signature with it. Well, it happens that the world is urbanizing, and that we see a lot of high-rises in planning,… Continue Reading
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.… Continue Reading
(letter send to party leaders in parliament) 1 The annual increased installation of solar panels makes CO2 emissions rise. This is because solar panels need about 3 years to compensate for their CO2 during production. So if more solar panels… Continue Reading
Big headlines in Nature last week: [1]” Emissions are still rising: disaster up the cuts “And” Leaders at climate summit get bad news: CO2 emissions are rising again “. Astonishing that may not be, however: if the economy continues to… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading