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France Decrees New Rooftops Must Be Covered In Plants Or Solar Panels
An anonymous reader writes: A law approved in France Thursday now requires all new rooftops in commercial zones to be covered in plants or solar panels. "Green roofs have an isolating effect, helping reduce the amount of energy needed to heat a building in winter and cool it in summer. They also retain rainwater, thus helping reduce problems with runoff, while favoring biodiversity and giving birds a place to nest in the urban jungle, ecologists say." The law was actually watered down from its original version — businesses only have to cover part of their roof.
In other solar power news, reader SpzToid notes that despite earlier worries, the European power grid handled the solar eclipse just fine
A couple of hours of no power input from solar power is not, and never has been a problem for the European power grid. This sort of thing happens extremely regularly, every night. We're used to it, and can cope. Thanks for worrying about us, though; it really was extremely kind of you.
It better be a minimum percentage of the roof otherwise the law will be useless.
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Their firefighters are going to love that.
Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet
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Do commercial buildings in France have pitched roofs, or are they flat like in the US?
To be fair, they do at least require the pitch to be covered with plants.
Here's something I've been curious about. I would expect that if there's a between the solar panels and the roof, this would lead the attic to stay a lot cooler in the summer. Because the sun would be mostly heating up the panels and not the roof. Anyone know if that can significantly reduce the temperature of a home's living spaces?
2017-08-12 - A man fell to his death today while mowing the lawn on the roof of Les Olympiades. Witnesses claim to have heard him shout "Putain d'écureuils de bordel de merde!" while he fell down.
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I'm going to take broken / very old solar panels from all over, and sell them to businesses in France.
After all, the law didn't state the solar panels had to be hooked up to anything...
You probably don't want to know about my new plan to get ride of discarded trees and other vegetation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ugh! That was horrible!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Did you miss the words "commercial zone"?
That all new solar panels must have a house on them.
Mostly random stuff.
Does moss count?
Have gnu, will travel.
...that's only because everyone went to beta.
Sort of like how Windows took over workstations in the '90s.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Sure are a lot of decrees coming from our masters who know what's best for us. Solar panels from the French. Regulated bullets, fracking, coal, networking, and healthcare policies here in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
You're right. Companies should be able to polute the rivers, pump toxins in the soil, everyone should have 50 cal machine gun nests with armor piercing bullets, coal plants should spew as much sulphur as they want, and we should let people die in the street if they can't pay for healthcare.
Hyperbole is fun!
I'll explain it to you, and I'll use small words: We all have to live together on the same planet. So people (and companies) are not allowed to do things to hurt other people. We can disagree about where to draw the line, but some of the examples you gave were stupid.
It consists of spending about half an hour arranging loose dead solar panels on the roof in an artistic pattern.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Which is why attics are ventilated and ceilings are insulated. If a second cover over the roof made much difference most buildings would already have one.
Most of them are flat.
The steel industry in France is gonna love this rule!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Because the bible tells us the French are a bunch of devil worshiping socialists, our only recourse is mandated "Freedom Roofs", each with eternal flames fed by coal, used electronics, hippies, and any stray French we catch at the borders.
Better dead than green.
Here's something for Germany
Looks like it was roughly an hour from the drop to things being back to normal, with a downswing of about 8GW and an upswing of about 13GW.
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It says commercial buildings.
excellent
but some of the examples you gave were stupid.
ALL of the examples you gave were stupid.
Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet
It's a funny line, but probably one of the most accurate looks at science fiction. Ships staffed by people who aren't very good at their jobs, using devices that are cheap and poorly designed, helmed by overlords (both Dark Helmet and President Scroob) who are as concerned about not looking like an idiot in front of their employees as they are about getting anything done.
You can do something similar with aluminum refining, which uses high power electrolysis. If we look around, I'm sure that other processes can be reorganized to make use of varying supply of electricity.
Thanks for the info. I'll add this and "water desalinization" (from a post further down) to my mental list of solutions.
I had *thought* that aluminum refining required the melting of bauxite, which would make it inherently difficult to start and stop, but another poster points out that Alcoa tailors their production in this manner. I'm guessing that a "charge" of ore can be processed in a short amount of time, and that a refinery has a large number of small furnaces which can be individually shut down as needed.
Did you miss the words "commercial zone"?
I've seen skylights / natural lighting in commercial buildings. It may not be common but it is an option. Should it be outlawed?
Not only that, there are already tons of restrictions in how to build a house in many places. How high, how big, how strong. Those are just a few that will apply in many places.
And can imagine this being extended in the future to first cities and later the rest and perhaps even existing buildings.
If I look at cities from above, all I see is a lot of space that could be turned green. Garden places that are not used.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
People made the same comment when the gestapo came for the Roma, and then the Jews. People talk about the slippery slope because it's real. In the mean time, we'll welcome people who want to build out new manufacturing workspace.
Well done, Godwin.
"If you put this murder in jail now, next it'll be the Roma, then the Jews. Argle bargle ``Hitler!''"
Also, manufacturers won't likely be too upset by being required to put some solar panels up, which will eventually save them some money by the time they've depreciated to worthless. Then will continue saving them money on electrical and cooling costs.
Just as I was planning to move to France and buy a house with a roof made entirely of stinky cheese! Guess I'm going to have to rethink my plans!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
My employer used to have a green roof with grass or plants, I can't remember which. The roof ended up leaking and the building had a terrible mold problem. Some of my coworkers couldn't work on certain floors because of their mold allergies. They eventually got rid of the plants, redid the entire roof sans plants and spent a large amount of money remediating the mold problem.
I doubt it will have any impact on the load bearing designs of the roofs. They all are designed to carry heavy plant equipment anyway.
Did you check to see if the regulation bans them? I doubt it does.
Either way, it's up to the people of France. If energy independence is more important to them than skylights, so be it. If Vlad Poutine decides to cut off the supply of energy to Europe in order to gather up more of the ex-Soviet territories, the European nations need to have a way to keep the lights on. It's not a matter of aesthetics, it's an actual power play between Russia and Europe.
Interestingly, when you get a contractor to do something, you can specify conditions on the quality of the work, such as "the roof must not leak". I suspect that may be an easier option.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I'm sure the roof was fine when it was first built. It's the condition of the roof several decades later that was the problem. You can easily and cheaply reseal an asphalt roof. Fixing a plant covered roof is a lot more work.
The weight of a light covering with Sedum (very small, fatty ground-covering foliage that is very robust) will weigh between 50 and 60 kilograms per square meter. If your roof can't hold that, it will have serious trouble with a big snowlayer.
But will it be able to hold that weight PLUS a lot of snow? That's the main issue, you can't just max out the load because you need a margin for other temporary factors to not cross the margins.
It is interesting to say standard shingles would last twice as long not exposed to UV... I would like to see more studies on that, though it sounds reasonable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Germany has similar laws already (albeit locally, I believe), and skylights are all over the place. It simply states that the roof area should be covered by plants or solar panels, and not what features the roof can have (such as skylights, water slides, helipads, etc.). Your faux outrage isn't becoming ;)
Germany has similar laws already (albeit locally, I believe), and skylights are all over the place. It simply states that the roof area should be covered by plants or solar panels, and not what features the roof can have (such as skylights, water slides, helipads, etc.). Your faux outrage isn't becoming ;)
What outrage? Its a simple question and skylights are recognized as a green technology. If anyone is being faux it is the person equating skylights with water slides.
I'm a recently-graduated civil engineer, who studied under someone who I think may be a world expert on green roofs, or close to it. No, most roofs are not designed to carry heavy equipment - most are designed around the idea of "it costs more to make it stronger, so don't do more than you need to." However, the load from a well-designed green roof doesn't need to be drastically greater: extensive green roofs (as opposed to intensive ones) are usually only 100-200 millimetres thick at most, and built with highly-porous, lightweight soil mixtures (e.g. pumice or expanded clay - think the clay equivalent of rice bubbles cereal for the latter). You do need to build a stronger roof, but not much stronger (green roof retrofits are possible on most existing buildings without too much extra strengthening).
Also: yay! Green roofs are awesome (they significantly reduce stormwater volume, especially peak flow, and somewhat reduce stormwater pollutants, reduce urban heat island effect and building air-conditioning requirements, prolong roof surface lifetimes, reduce air pollution...)