BCIL – T-ZED Homes

In Bangalore, a new development called T-ZED ( Towards Zero Energy Development ) has been going on. It looks look amazing, as seen in the video. Technologies from ammonia chillers and geo-thermal heating  to the more clichéd solar cells have been implemented. I want to visit this place when I go to Bangalore for summer. I want to see how the delivery process was carried out to see the impact of it on the business end of things.

Also, BBC made a video on this . Check it out.

Original Source

Making the Green Decision

Hi,

Do you want to start greening your house , office, any building ?

I know we have all have our own (mis)conceptions of how much each of these ‘green’ features might cost and its corresponding payback period. So this website gives us a heads up on all these information and lets us make a cost/benefit analysis. It gives us information like the percentage saved and the rate of return on green investments.

Link

In the news!

Got this from Bear Market Investments. Its a little selfish on my part( see the bold letters). Anyway looks like a light in the end of the tunnel to me.

Link

The 2009 economy and your wallet

Your strategy if you’re young: The U.S. economy is probably going to need fewer investment bankers and mortgage brokers for a long while. Younger people can invest in very different kinds of skills. If Obama’s New Deal 2.0 takes root, this would be a good time to be studying civil engineering or green building design. Health care and education were always relatively recession-proof; Obama’s plan would help to keep them that way.

Your strategy if you’re mid-career: Your way ahead is tougher. You can’t just quit your marketing job and start installing solar panels. But it certainly makes sense to look out for new kinds of business opportunities you can bring to your employer or perhaps new fields you can become the in-house expert on. For example, if you’re in finance, you might start learning about public works financing or what’s happening in the alternative-energy sector.

Useful links

My cousin sent me these links related to sustainability. Hope you find these useful.

http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/

https://www.openeco.org/

A video from TED:

USGBC turns 15

The people behind the LEED game turns 15. They have put out a series of videos on green building and sustainability.Its pretty interesting with some LEED glorification, which I feel is absolutely warranted.

Watch it here:

http://in.youtube.com/user/wwwusgbc

Calculate Your Footprint

Like most things in the world, you need to know or get convinced on why you need to go green.

So you need to audit yourself. Enter Carbon footprint calculator.

Take your footprint and see how much of impact you make to this world. Of course it might look exaggerated but its not!

http://www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/calculator/

Update:

This seems to be better:

http://www.myfootprint.org

Free Green E-Book

Hi ,

Get your free Green building e-book from

http://www.treehuggerconsulting.com

This company deals with giving ideas for a sustainable construction in three perspectives - owner, designer, contractor.

Head to the site for more information.

Sustainable Innovation Conference - Alex Steffen

Hi,

Presented in the Sustainable Innovation Conference, Sweden last month, Alex Steffen had a lot of ideas on how to make the world more sustainable . While this might take time and lot of political lobbying to become mainstream, I just picked up some points from the the talk which I could gather. Of course watching the video would be the best to gain your perspective of it.

Sustainable Innovation Conference 2008: Alex Steffen from Joel Mulligan on Vimeo.

Points:

• Favorite Quote - " We are destroying the planet and not having fun"
• Human happiness is considerably reduced.
• To think not only of the obvious problems but also of the accompanying usually bigger problems which have to be addressed. Here he gives the example of a car, where he tells that everyone only looks at the exhaust pipe and tries to attack that problem of pollution. But a whole gamut of problems like construction and destruction of the car, infrastructure, water pollution, accidents etc have also to be addressed.( Systems thinking)
• Call for higher population density as opposed to sprawling settlements.
• Walkable urban areas.
• Higher density decreases the infrastructure needed.
• Installing personal energy meters reduces energy  consumption by 7-12%.( works like mileage meter in car)
• Number of trips required for renting a movie from a store (4 minimum) over Netflix(online movie renting) . Amount of time and energy saved. Calls for more innovation like this.
• Sharing resources(like car and other accessories) to share its benefit and impact.
• To setup a portal for easy bartering system - Connect people who want to sell outgrown products to people who want to buy them. Lesser garbage for landfill. e.g http://www.freecycle.org/
• To be wary of greenwashing - hogwashing the environmental way!

Porous Pavements

Hi,

Porous pavements might be well on the way to replace traditional concrete or impervious material in parking , walkways and driveways etc, where structural efficiency of the material is not of priority.

So I have listed the merits and demerits of porous pavements.

Advantages

• You can recharge ground water much better.
• In the winter it doesn't freeze up like regular pavement does.
• Filters the water in much the same way underlying soil in a field or forest does
• Porous pavement tends to collect storm water better, so there is less runoff going into rivers and streams.
• Providing better traction (no water on the surface)

Disadvantages

• It is more brittle than conventional asphalt, so snowplow drivers have to be careful
• On smaller paving jobs, where extensive storm-water controls are not needed, porous pavement tends to cost about 20 to 25 percent more than standard asphalt
• Porous pavement also only works on new projects; repaving impervious asphalt does not reap the benefits of the material's ability to absorb water.

EDISON

Hi,

If you are a net and computer savvy person like most of them in urban earth, you can do your small bit to make yourself environment friendly. A small utility developed by Edison helps us reduce energy consumption of the computer by effectively managing the way your power is used by the system at various times. Power options are flexible suiting to different needs.

It also gives us the annual savings in dollars and energy savings to give the user a tangible satisfaction.

Download : http://www.verdiem.com/edison/

Common Denominators - 1

I have been scouring through articles in my Google Reader and most commonly these data stands out -

• Buildings constitute 30-40% energy consumed in this earth
• Savings up to 30-40% for both water and energy savings due to green implementation.
• Market for eco-friendly materials - +ve sign for industrializing countries( read India)
• Lot of big companies going all the way to a carbon neutral building(extremely expensive as of now) like Google (who have a extremely big bank balance).
• Green buildings cost generally 3-20% more than traditional buildings.
  
• Payback period varies from 3-7 years depending on the intensity of green mplementation.

I hope to continue this series as I see trends in green news!