The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has released two preliminary reports, “Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Highway Pavements” and “Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Buildings.” Setting a new life-cycle assessment standard for buildings and pavements, the reports establish extended lifetimes for both: 50 years for pavements and 75 years for buildings. MIT has found that most of the carbon emissions from buildings and pavements are released during the use phase, so this phase is a focus of the research. The reports outline the LCA approach, results thus far, and a work plan for the remaining timeframe. Some results so far include a comparison of energy use associated with insulated concrete form construction versus wood-frame, and the effect of concrete pavement versus asphalt pavement on vehicle fuel efficiency and life-cycle carbon emissions. Targeted for scientists, industry leaders, and policymakers, the reports aim to help save taxpayers money on infrastructure updates nationwide. Final versions, along with corresponding cost analysis, will be released in August 2011. For more information, visit web.mit.edu/cshub/.

 

Abengoa Solar’s “Solana,” touted as the world’s largest concentrating solar power (CSP) plant, has received a $1.45 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. The plant will use a CSP system employing parabolic troughs to generate a projected 250 MW, enough to power 70,000 homes. Parabolic troughs are curved mirrors that gather sunlight and reflect it onto a linear absorber through which synthetic oil flows. The troughs are mounted on a motorized base to follow the sun throughout the day and maximize exposure. Located 70 miles southwest of Phoenix, Arizona, the plant is supported in part by a purchasing agreement with Arizona Public Service. For more information, see “Utility-Scale Solar Thermal Growing Fast,”

EBN June 2008. Meanwhile, the plug has just been pulled on another large CSP plant, Tessera Solar’s “Calico Solar Power Project,” which would have used concentrating dish heliostats and Stirling engines. The project was purchased by K Road Power, which plans to build the 850 MW plant using solar panels.

We know that the climate is changing, but until now architects have only been able to design based on

historical climate data. That has changed, at least in the UK, now that Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) and the University of Exeter have released, free of charge, weather files for 35 locations around the UK based on climate predictions 20, 40, and 70 years into the future. The files, part of Exeter’s Prometheus Weather Files Project were created using recent probabilistic projections of future climate. Designers have the choice of two versions for each location depending on what they see as the likely future for planetary carbon emissions: a “high emissions” and a “medium emissions” scenario. Outside the UK, options are more limited but expanding. The University of Southampton has a free tool called CCWorldWeatherGen that modifies current weather files for any location in the world based on predicted trends—but it uses older climate models than the IES/Exeter files. Elsewhere, research initiatives are under way to generate such future weather files. For more on how climate change should be factored into building design, see "Design for Adaptation: Living in a Climate-Changing World" in

EBN Sept. 2009. If you have updates on the status of such efforts, or comments on the usefulness of these predictive files, please comment.

 

Users of LEED Online, the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC’s) Web-based LEED documentation system, are being greeted by a new “Legal Terms and Conditions” agreement when they sign in. That agreement and legal agreements associated with using LEED Online v3, registering LEED projects, and applying for LEED project certification have been revised and shortened by USGBC and the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI). The revisions follow complaints that previous versions were too long, too focused on precise legal issues and not on realities of teams pursuing LEED, and too fraught with legal uncertainty.

The most obvious change to the agreements are the length—the terms of use agreement, for example, is down to four dense pages, from more than 10. Most significant, however, is the addition of an “agency form” that design team members can use on a project to show an “agency relationship” between themselves and the project owner. As USGBC explains, “The form allows the project's owner to appoint the design professional to sign the agreements only as the owner’s representative, thus relieving the design professional and his firm from obligations undertaken by the owner under the agreements.” One such obligation that design teams have been anxious about taking responsibility for is reporting energy and water usage of a completed project, as required by LEED's Minimum Program Requirement #6.

The documents have also been written in “more approachable” language, in USGBC’s words. For this, USGBC received the assistance of a copy editor and feedback from architecture firms, from the U.S. General Services Administration, and from other members of an informal USGBC legal working group.

USGBC also said that it has standardized agreements across various LEED programs and rating systems; provided more transparency in how these agreements are revised over time; further limited and better described how it may disclose project information; and provided clearer guidance regarding how revisions to the rating systems and policy documents will affect projects.

“The dialogue with our many stakeholders that has informed these revised documents is an excellent example of how the market drives the continuous improvement that has been a hallmark of LEED since its inception,” said Peter Templeton, president of GBCI. “Our goal is to continue to seek ways to remove obstacles to our mission of market transformation of the built environment.”

Gina Bocra, AIA, director of sustainability at Ennead Architects, told EBN that the agreement “looked pretty reasonable.” She said, “It appears that this is fairly standard language that one would consent to in using software or other Web-based applications.” Bocra added, “But, of course, I am sending a copy directly to our managing partner and it will be going to our legal counsel.”

GBCI directs anyone with questions about the form to its project certification and registration contact form. At press time, this link was not functioning, however.

– Tristan Roberts

 

The Natural Step US and the Cascadia Green Building Council have announced that they will merge operations.

The two Portland, Oregon-based organizations both offer training, workshops, and other consulting services for businesses wishing to pursue sustainability, with Cascadia focusing on green building and The Natural Step focusing on the systems and communities that affect corporate culture.

By combining these two areas of concern, the organizations hope to streamline resources while widening the scope of their work.

“You can’t get to the place we’re hoping to get to without affecting both the corporate world and the built environment, so it really seems like a great fit to take a more integrated, holistic approach,” said Cascadia CEO Jason McLennan, AIA. The Natural Step has helped a number of large corporations and communities rethink sustainability efforts, while Cascadia, the regional chapter of both the Canada and U.S. Green Building Councils, is perhaps best known for launching the Living Building Challenge.

A competitive environment for sustainability-focused nonprofit groups contributed to the move, according to Sustainable Industries. For more information, see Cascadia's website.

- Paula Melton

 

Beazer Homes USA, Inc., one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, will pay $925,000 in civil penalties to settle alleged Clean Water Act violations in 21 states, totaling 362 sites—20 of which are located in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The Justice Department and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the decision on December 2, 2010, noting that some of the money will help protect the Chesapeake Bay—the largest estuary in North America. Alleged violations include failure to apply for permits, discharging pollutants in stormwater, and a lack of sufficient best management practices at construction sites. Beazer Homes must develop better construction site pollution prevention plans, improve oversight by training managers and contractors, and implement a management and internal reporting system, documenting inspections and reviews to report to EPA. (The Clean Water Act requires construction sites to implement pollution controls such as silt fences, phased site grading, and sediment basins).

Pennsylvania State University researchers recently designed a desalination device powered by exoelectrogenic bacteria, called a microbial electrodialysis cell (MEDC), according to research published in

Environmental Science & Technology. The device uses three chambers separated by two membranes, which allow bacteria to grow on an anode and consume organic compounds in the water. The MEDC incorporates microbial fuel cells; the team found that applying limited voltage to the bacteria enabled them to produce hydrogen gas as a byproduct of organic consumption. During this process, bacteria release electrons, which push sodium and chloride ions toward the electrodes and through the membranes thus removing sodium and chloride from the water. Twice the voltage used to produce this effect is gained back in the form of hydrogen, which can then be used to create the voltage to power the device—creating a self-sustaining process. Future developments of the technology will likely include the use of excess energy for further desalination steps, like reverse osmosis. The researchers see the potential for this device to be paired with conventional desalination equipment to make this energy-intensive process more efficient.

According to an article in

Fast Company, researchers from the University of Bristol in the U.K. have calculated that everyone on Earth will download an average of 3 gigabytes of data per day, on average, by 2030. The power needed to sustain that data flow, the researchers found, would be 1,175 gigawatts, or the equivalent of 1,175 average coal-fired power plants. The solution, according to researchers Chris Preist and Paul Shabajee, is two-fold: improve the efficiency of servers and other equipment, and design websites to be less data-intensive (using medium-resolution images, for example, when high-resolution images are not needed). Industry giants Google and Yahoo! have been making large strides in data center efficiency, which has Preist hopeful (see “Yahoo! Data Center Sets High Mark for Efficiency,”

EBN Oct. 2010). He told Fast Company, “There is still a good chance that broadband connectivity can be provided equitably to the majority of the world.”