As the Scientific committee chair of the SBE16 Conference in Utrecht last week, [1] which focussed at transition to 0-energy for houses and buildings, I used the key note occasion to bring materials impacts strongly to the table. Yes, we have to move towards 0-energy houses and buildings, but we…
WHO , assuming continued economic growth and health progress, concluded recently that climate change is expected to cause approximately 250.000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050; 38.000 due to heat exposure in elderly people, 48.000 due to diarrhea, 60.000 due to malaria, and 95.000 due to childhood under-nutrition….
Now and then there is debate about the land use of energy generation, usually around renewable energy. But these are often only addressing the direct ‘ visible’ land use and efficiencies; For instance: A energy Atlas in the Netherlands counts only the land needed for a fossil fuel power plant…
For a while I am trying to understand what the initiatives for a Circular Economy imply. And when I look at the two words , they are in contradiction, from whatever angle I observe this. First of all what is meant by economy in this verb? If money, as in…
This blog has been published as column in a Dutch construction related newspaper (Cobouw) . See here to read it in dutch. About 20 years ago, it was still business as usual. But then, in the nineties, the music industry is shaken, when Napster puts things upside down : sharing…
CO2 budget per capita after Paris: start halving your consumption now! . The problem with political agreements like the Paris climate agreement is that nobody really has a clue what this will imply. What are we talking about? Change for a renewable energy supply system? Yes,…
Its unmistakably a major achievement, to negotiate an agreement with 196 countries. The climate deal is historic for that, whatever the practice of this agreement will be . The parties acknowledge the problem, that’s pure profit (and we did not hear any sceptics last week) , and I really think…
Gates, Branson, Bezos, Ma, and more launched a multi billion plan to develop technology and renewable energy supply to save the world. So the people who encouraged us to consume enormously , which caused our problems , and who got immensely rich with that , will use that money to…
november 2015 (2) (this has been published as a column in Dutch in the buildings sector newspaper Cobouw, see the Dutch version here.) Next week , in Paris , there is COP21, the Climate-conference. And after that, all coal powered plants will be closed, gas distribution builds down, all CO2…
november 2015 Bamboo is a resource hardly known in the industrialized world, that can help sustain our use of materials: its biobased and has a larger yield per functional service as for instance wood. Besides, many developing countries have large bamboo forests, and could use this resource. Which, of course,…
