Categorie: Embodied Land

EU: No Net land Take ?

A new regulation is in the making in Europe: No net land take. PBL ( NL environmental assessment agency) recently organized a meeting on the topic.[1] It’s an interesting approach and wording, but what’s really the point? First, there is the assumption that no more land should be sacrificed to…

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Where to buy 1 ha of sea …

The other day I was thinking, I’m going to invest some money in land, since it has a stable value, or at least, has lasting ‘value’. But then I realized that this has mainly (for the time being) financial value, because the land itself is completely exhausted, exhausted by farmers…

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The ‘Solar Space’, per m2 of living area 2/2

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…

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From EROI to EROLI: energy return on Land investment ? 2/2

In the agricultural project that I described in my previous contribution [1], which was initially about the EROI, the energy return on energy investment, I subsequently calculated the effects back to land’input’. But then the thought soon arised: would is also be possible to develop a LROLI, a Land return…

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EROI and land use of potato crop – a pilot 1/2

In a recent project , ‘Verrijkende Landbouw’ ( Enriching Agriculture) [1], I was able to refine the theory and methodology of MAXergy, using Embodied Land as an indicator [2], thanks to a practical pilot. As follows. Agriculture needs to change. That should be obvious by now. And not only regarding…

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The Bionological House

With vegetables, we’ve been doing it for years: most current vegetables never existed, in an autonomous evolutionary process. We as humans have slowly transformed them so that they grow the way we appreciate them, and want them on our plates. (Or the industry has adapted them the way we want…

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Carbon storage: the land-time relation 2/2

There are many ways you can start “accounting” for CO2 (as comments on the previous article also showed), but at the end of the day what matters are absolute CO2 emissions, from whatever activity. And cutting down a tree and using it as a column (or a table, or a…

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Golf – the decadence in our use of space

For a new book, I explore the space-time relationship of many human activities, as a measure of our system impact, and to see if there are alternatives that can do with less. Space time in the sense that the conversion of solar energy is the basis of life here on…

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light pole materials compared…

I am often amazed at the amount of lights in the built environment, which only seems to be growing. Everyone thinks they have to illuminate everything. Driveways, stairs, gardens, anything you can think of has a light on it. That started yeas ago with the introduction of energy saving light…

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Half the agricultural land for biobased materials…

Last week I published a letter in the Netherlands, in which I indicated that about 800,000 hectares of land would be needed for the construction of new homes. That’s how it works in a transition: We have to significantly reduce the impact of building. And it is becoming increasingly clear…

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