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Norway is Entering a New Era of Climate-Conscious Architecture (theatlantic.com)
The European Union has a target of making all new buildings zero-energy by 2020, but in Norway, carbon neutrality isn't enough. From a report: A consortium in Oslo made up of architects, engineers, environmentalists, and designers is creating energy-positive buildings in a country with some of the coldest and darkest winters on Earth. "If you can make it in Norway, you can make it anywhere," says Peter Bernhard, a consultant with Asplan Viak, one of the Powerhouse alliance members.
Bernhard says Powerhouse began in 2010 with a question: Is it possible to not only eliminate the carbon footprint of buildings, but to also use them as a climate-crisis solution? It was a lofty goal. According to the European Commission, buildings account for 40 percent of energy usage and 36 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions in the EU. But after undertaking several energy-positive projects -- building a new Montessori school, retrofitting four small office buildings, building a few homes, and breaking ground on two new office buildings -- Powerhouse has found the answer to the 2010 question to be an emphatic "Yes." In 2019, the collective's biggest project to date will open to the public: Powerhouse Brattorkaia, in the central Norwegian city of Trondheim.
Bernhard says Powerhouse began in 2010 with a question: Is it possible to not only eliminate the carbon footprint of buildings, but to also use them as a climate-crisis solution? It was a lofty goal. According to the European Commission, buildings account for 40 percent of energy usage and 36 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions in the EU. But after undertaking several energy-positive projects -- building a new Montessori school, retrofitting four small office buildings, building a few homes, and breaking ground on two new office buildings -- Powerhouse has found the answer to the 2010 question to be an emphatic "Yes." In 2019, the collective's biggest project to date will open to the public: Powerhouse Brattorkaia, in the central Norwegian city of Trondheim.
It's news for nerds. Science has revealed that we have a planetary-scale crisis on our hands, and the only way to save Earth is to make scientific and technological breakthroughs while evading the dumb bullies trying to stop us, it doesn't get a whole lot nerdier than that!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Oh well I can certainly see how such a trivial issue as the Earth, being the only planet we can currently live on for the foreseeable future, continuing to be habitable wouldn't interest anyone. What's that compared to talking about yet more toys, playing with computers, screwing around with video games, and some science fantasy movie or other? We should just forget all about this silly survival-as-a-species nonsense, that's for the next generation to worry about, who cares if they survive so long as we can play all the time until we drop dead? Live for today! You're more important than everyone else on the planet, past present or future! Some girl might actually let your touch her boobies, what's more important than that! #MAGA! :-(
Also constant wars, famines, refugee crises, and more powerful and frequent natural disasters (contributing to the prior 3).
Elevate yourself 5 inches above that shit, smart guy.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The climate doesn't have to be static but we do have to keep it in a range that works well with our established civilization, so in the far future it may indeed be necessary to geoengineer our way out of natural climate change. There's nothing wrong with that and it's not counterproductive to solve our current problems because of it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It's called a log cabin. Literally TONS of carbon are locked away for the lifetime of the structure. The more carbon you lock away in the form of trees, the more insulation and thermal mass you have as a result.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Actually, yes, I would like more stories like that
Nonsense.
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
https://www.carbonbrief.org/an...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The dire global warnings cause most people with a memory to roll their eyes now.
https://www.wnd.com/2018/12/de...
It's possible and probably helpful to ourselves and the planet to make the world cleaner - I mean who doesn't want to be clean? But tying it end to end of the world warnings is just exhausting. And the more exhausted people are, the less they have energy to care.
It's not being chosen based on any individual's comfort level, it's being chosen based on the last couple centuries of explosive construction and population growth around the world. We have cities and farms in certain regions and we don't want them to be turned into salt marshes or deserts.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Now you just need to build it five to ten stories high with fireproofed wood pulp bricks, include modern HVAC, fiber and telecom, water and sewage, other machinery,...
I think you were being sarcastic but in fact they are planning to build a wooden skyscraper in Tokyo.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually, the most cost effective method of living I have read is living underground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
The trouble is that trying to adapt civilization to the climate causes those wars and refugee crises and famines we're talking about. It will be very bad for non-human life too, ocean acidification could lead to an oceanic mass extinction if unchecked, just for starters. It's easier to fix the climate than to fix the civilization and non-human life, smarter people than us have considered this and come to that conclusion, but I encourage you to consider it for yourself too.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I've heard the most cost--effective place to live, energy-wise, is the desert. It cools off in at night, so you can open up windows and cool a building off, then seal it up during the day and take advantage of swamp cooling, or geothermal, when absolutely required.
Have you ever seen modern rammed-earth homes? I used to have a neighbor in New Mexico with one. It was made by combining dirt on his property with cement and compacting the mixture into forms that created 24 inch think walls. The sheer thermal mass of it all kept the interior at a temperature that was nearly the average during the day. So a high of 95 F and a low of 60 meant the inside stayed below 80 without any additional A/C. The rest of the home was thoroughly modern and with walls that thick, was very quiet inside.
Who are you to decide what the range should be?
The humans who, y'know, live here and grow food here.
When 150 million people start to migrate north to escape warming and famine you can bet the USA and Canada will have to sit up and take notice.
Heating is *much* cheaper, and easier, than cooling.
That may or may not be true, but it also has no relevance to what humans actually require. It is far cheaper to cool down a house in the middle of summer on the equator than it is to heat the same house in the middle of winter in the north.
That's because the temperature differences are massive. The hottest place on earth has a record high of around 57 degrees, which you would need to cool down by about 33 to make it comfortable. The coldest temperature recorded in Toronto was -33 degrees, which you would need to heat up by 51 to make it comfortable. And Toronto is far from being the coldest place in Canada, let alone the world.
The Norwegian in me sneers when you mention 60 cm thick walls. Why would you do that when you could have that wall contain a double layer insulation of Glava(glasswool) and Isopor(polystyrene foam). And still combine that with the extra thick walls?
The entire point of "zero energy houses" as they exist in Norway is to use proper insulating materials to do exactly as you talked about, except this can be applied to any type of home.
The article is also a gigantic black hole, since its all buzzwords.
The building is basically a insulated and sealed office space, where things like AC exchange rate of air is worked out to not impact temperature indoors. This is a buzzword we use called a "zero energy house". Which means that when winter comes the house or office space do not necessarily need heating unless its going to be deserted for some time.
Additional buzzwords include "recyclable materials", which means the entire wood facade and structure is normal wood. If the building gets left behind or needs to be demolished, its actually possible to salvage a lot of nicely coated wood for different types of usage. Or at the least thats the theory, we will see in the next decades if the coating is strong enough to prevent severe UV damage on the outer layers of the building.
"Energy positive" is another. It just means that the sterling engines and solar panels are big enough to supply the building with power, assuming there is a large enough battery in the basement. Being energy positive is a behemoth task, unless the building is a "zero energy house" because heating and AC is suddenly no longer major casts.
I find the buzzword PR article distasteful for failing to present the issue in a simple manner.