Office building Baumschlager-Eberle: a building without heating

Source: Detail; photo: Jakob Schoof

The architects from Baumschlager-Eberle have built a very special office building in Lustenau, Austria, partly for their own office, partly to be rented.
Although it was not their intention to build a building according to passive standard, it has become a real passive building, since the building has no heating system (and no mechanical ventilation).
More details can be found in Detail and at their website.

New book of the Club of Rome on 'Plundering the Planet'

On June 6th the Club of Rome launched a new report on our misuse of natural resources: Plundering the Planet. How to manage the Earth's limited mineral resources.
Up to now it is only available in German, but more information (in English) can be found here:
- executive summary
- some findings in detail
- background information

TED talk on behavioral sciences to lower energy consumption

A very inspiring TED talk by Alex Laskey on how insights in behavioral sciences can help you to persuade people to lower their energy consumption.

Changing behaviour of energy users

Apart from technological innovations, also behavioural change can lead to reductions in energy consumption. However, the permanence of these changes remains questionable.
The EU-project Changing Behaviour tried to tackle this challenge and focused on the understanding of the role of actors, timing and context of behavioural change, especially in the domain of energy savings.
On their website case studies, best practices and publications can be found.

boek Duurzaam bouwen in Vlaanderen

Source: DO Vlaanderen

Het Departement Duurzame Ontwikkeling van de Vlaamse Overheid heeft een boek gepubliceerd waarin 10 duurzame bouwprojecten beschreven worden die op de ene of andere manier door hen financieel ondersteund werden.
Het is een mooi Voorbeeldboek Duurzaam Bouwen in Vlaanderen - Momentopname in 10 projecten geworden.

Energy Cities' 30 proposals for the energy transition of cities and towns

In the framework of the Energy Cities' Annual Rendezvous 2012, 30 mayors from 30 European countries made 30 proposals for the energy transition of their cities and towns. With these proposals they want to showcase a collection of groundbreaking practices to the Rio +20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development.
Their video message to Rio +20 can be found here.

C2C Islands

  

The Cradle to Cradle Islands project was an Interreg IVB North Sea Region Project with 22 partners from six countries around the North Sea.
Main goal was to develop innovative solutions in the field of energy, water and materials using C2C principles as a guide.
The project just came to its end. All presentations and conclusions can be found on the project website.

Energy online in real time

Several organisations and companies show the energy consumption and energy production of their building or of their products online in almost realtime.
Some nice examples:
- Live heatpump: a monitoring project of 6 houses in Belgium and The Netherlands, 5 of them equipped with an air-water heat pump and 1 with a gas fired condensing boiler. Of course, energy consumption not only depends on the heating system, but also on the insulation level, the occupants' behaviour, etc. And it is a project established by a heat pump producer. It would be nice to also have the real energy consumption figures, but it is already interesting that you can compare the houses on a yearly, monthly, weekly or daily basis.
- Adam Joseph Lewis Center: AJLC is an American academic demonstration building in Ohio that forms part of a larger initiative that aims to be a catalyst for ecological design. Their website is a Building Dashboard, showing quite some real time information on energy consumption, energy production, water consumption, geothermal and solar energy. If you search a little bit on the website, you find quite detailed information on end energy use, water use and others, also historic data. 

Playpumps: kid energy

Kid energy might sound like child labor, but this is completely different. Seen at Worldchanging.com: harnessing the energy of playing kids to pump up water: that is what the Southafrican merry-go-round of Roundabout does. Such a simple, but nice example of a lowtech, sustainable and beautiful technique.