Engineers try to lead towards a greener future

The Australian Institute of Refrigeration, Airconditioning and Heating has apparently decided that they can take a leadership position in working towards a low emission future.

It is easy to see any such initiative as simply jockeying to protect livelihoods in an industry that is popularly perceived as the villain in climate change.  But that would be grotesquely unfair for two reasons.

It is all the rest of us who demand the comfort and productivity that increasingly sophisticated environmental controls in buildings can provide.  And the truth is that AIRAH has for years promoted a much more vigourous commitment to upskilling and the spread of knowledge related to sustainability amongst its members, than have comparable organisations such as the Institute of Architects.

So it is in interesting to read what they have to say in their Draft Discussion Paper, Transition to Low Emissions HVAC & R, Issues and Solutions.  It would be fair to say that nothing the paper is really new, or even for that matter any more sophisticated than the concepts taught to undergraduate architecture and engineering students.  A relatively experienced reader would be constantly disturbed by the unavoidable inference that many (or even most) professionals and technical personnel in the industry clearly are not up-to-date with either the rapidly developing technology, or with good practice.  But in spite of that, it is refreshing to have the issues brought out into the open.

For instance, the conflicts of interest associated with advocacy of passive design.  As the paper says: “Changes that reduce the size and complexity of HVAC & R equipment will reduce revenue for the industry. Fees for ‘low carbon’ advice and analysis need to be separated from HVAC & R design activities,” the paper suggests.

Other highlights of the paper include an exhortation for emphasis on systems rather than equipment, placing the emerging skills shortages in the industry in the context of both the longevity of typical building HCVAC systems and the poor connectivity between design and commissioning, and the need to encourage uptake of building information management (BIM).

 For a relatively brief and supportive review, including an interview with Phil Wilkinson, chief executive of AIRAH, try these two articles in TheFifthEstate (from which the image above is taken):

AIRAH's challenge for a low emissions roadmap

AIRAH's Phil Wilkinson: On who's really going to save the planet

For meatier reading, try the real thing here even if it is too late for comments after February 1.

Obscenity makes me turn green

I am planning a quick trip to Mumbai in three weeks to take part in teaching a short course on conservation.  It prompted me to get an update on what should be the most morbidly fascinating building in the world.

The Antilla is a $1 billion family home built for India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, his wife, and three children.It is 27 storeys, but really the equivalent of a conventional 56 storey building approximately 170 m high, because of the owner's ambitious ceiling heights.

Well, apparently the building was completed in late 2010.   Diane Pham writing for Inhabitat to mark the occasion, rightly comments:

Constructed within a country estimated to have one-third of the world’s poorest population, the Antilia truly exemplifies the disease of excessive consumption, extreme wastefulness, and unsustainable living that is permeating today’s society.

My question is: How come in the nearly five years since the original renderings by architecture firms Perkins+Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates represented this obscenity as the 'Greenest of All Buildings', it hasn't been the subject of much more critical comment and deservedly strident condemnation in architectural discourse?  Even in those early rhetorical images, the proposal was typical greenwash covered in gratuitous airborn vegetation, which has clearly been dispensed with in the final steel and glass fantasy.

There is another way of looking at it.  The building employs a staff of 600, and you could say it isn't a bad way to ensure a trickle-down effect, a form of social sustainability. A version of this argument crops up almost every time I get involved in conversations about conservation or sustainability in India.  I am not suggesting that this is a definitive balancing argument, but it does highlight the need to engage in much more vigourous, but also much more subtle discussions of just what we are trying to achieve in the name of sustainability.

Read more: World's Largest and Most Expensive Family Home Completed | Inhabitat

Green building in China

Since it was granted the right to host Olympics in 2001 China has been developing green policies. While this was at first largely a response to the fact that the Sydney Olympics had established environmental sustainability as a ‘third tenet’ of the international Olympics movement, the momentum towards more responsible attitudes to the environment has been building recently.

Green building has been given importance in both China’s 11th Five-Year-Plan and its medium and long-term plan for science and technology development. As noted by Austrade, the Australian agency charged with developing exports in goods and services, some outcomes of this elevated emphasis include:

• The government will invest approximately US$400 billion on energy efficiency projects before 2010.
• The government has launched an ambitious plan to renovate existing buildings to make them more energy-efficient. Twenty-five per cent of the buildings in medium-sized cities and 10 per cent of those in small cities will be refurbished by 2020.
• The government has also indicated it will announce tax rebates and other financial incentives for the construction and purchase of energy efficient buildings in the future.
• There are 11 'Green Cities' and 140 'Green Building' projects under construction. Australian consultants are scrambling to be involved, and their ability to compete with other international consultants is in no small part due to Australia’s relatively long commitment to developing the tools and regulations for energy efficiency and other sustainability measures in buildings.
  

How ironic therefore to contrast the scope of China’s initiatives, with the miniscule spending by the Australian government on its much trumpeted Solar Cities program (see my last post), and how disturbing that Prime Minister Howard has again suggested that Australians will have to choose at the next elections between more stringent green policies put forward by the opposition parties, and economic viability.

China is more usually seen as the dirty bogey man willing to endure environmental degradation. Given that even the Chinese government has realised that environmental degradation and energy waste are obstacles to China’s economic growth, I can only wonder how long it will take our blinkered government to come to the same conclusion.

Read the Austrade briefing here:
http://www.austrade.gov.au/Green-building-to-China/default.aspx.