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… Continue Reading
I was asked that question last year by Thomas van Belzen of Cobouw,[1] and it got me thinking. It was an interview in Dutch, but let me return to it in English and in more detail at the beginning of… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
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.… Continue Reading
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.… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
We can develop beautiful so-called scientific methods to calculate all the effects of our impact, but in the end only two data are relevant: energy and material use, and the rest is derived from that: all emissions, to air or… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading