{"id":32333,"date":"2022-01-25T16:03:22","date_gmt":"2022-01-25T16:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsblogsnew.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=32333"},"modified":"2022-01-22T17:16:59","modified_gmt":"2022-01-22T17:16:59","slug":"what-if-old-buildings-are-greener-than-new-new-sustainability-assessment-counts-structures-history-and-future-as-well-as-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=32333","title":{"rendered":"What if Old Buildings Are Greener Than New? New sustainability assessment counts structure\u2019s history and future as well as energy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A new way of assessing sustainability takes into account a structure\u2019s entire history and future, not just its energy bill, reports SLATE<\/em>.<\/h3>\n
image: \u00a9 User:Colin and Kim Hansen\u00a0\/\u00a0Wikimedia Commons<\/em>
\nhttps:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/6\/6d\/
\nCity_of_London_skyline_from_London_City_Hall_-_
\nSept_2015_-_Crop_Aligned.jpg<\/em><\/h6>\n

<\/p>\n

\u2026 Tulip\u2019s \u2018unsustainable whole life-cycle,\u2019\u2026<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n

SLATE writes:<\/p>\n

Even by the standards of London\u2019s glassy skyscraper district, which includes buildings nicknamed for a\u00a0walkie-talkie<\/a>\u00a0and a\u00a0cornichon<\/a>, the\u00a0Tulip<\/a>\u00a0would have been a weird one. The design, by the British architect Norman Foster, featured a 50-foot-wide concrete shaft supporting a multilevel observation deck a thousand feet over London Bridge. There was no office space. No housing. Just a big pole with a view, which, in these times, looked less like a flower than a swab testing the London sky for COVID-19.<\/p>\n

Last month, the U.K. government rejected the design….<\/p>\n

….When planning inspector David Nicholson referred to the Tulip\u2019s \u201cunsustainable whole life-cycle,\u201d he was making a broader assessment of the project\u2019s environmental costs, from the demolition of the site\u2019s existing structures to the concrete in the tower core….<\/p>\n

Embodied carbon is an attempt, in other words, to more fully reckon with the impact of buildings on the planet….<\/p>\n

Accounting for embodied carbon gives a shot in the arm to preservation and conservation movements….<\/p>\n

….Reporters probe the unsavory roots of supposedly eco-friendly products like\u00a0electric cars<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0grim end of life of green infrastructure like windmills<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Asking the same of concrete, steel, and glass has been the project of Myrrh Caplan, the sustainability director at the construction and development firm Skanska USA. Two years ago, she helped develop the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator, or EC3, to assess the carbon impacts of construction, from materials to transportation to on-site energy use. Some of the improvements Caplan counsels can seem picayune, such as insulating on-site work trailers, reducing idling, encouraging construction workers to use transit, and swapping out containers for open-bed shipping….<\/p>\n

So far, the only incentive to use a tool like EC3 and focus on embodied carbon is good PR\u2014and the PR isn\u2019t even that good, since few people know what \u201cembodied carbon\u201d is. Green building awards such as LEED are mostly focused on operational energy. With\u00a0some rare exceptions<\/a>, regulations remain tailored to reducing buildings\u2019 energy bills, with incentives aligned in favor of newer structures, not older ones.<\/p>\n

The hope, says Kim Cheslak, the director of codes at the sustainability-focused New Buildings Institute, is that awareness of embodied carbon will change the way people think about design and construction….<\/p>\n

Read more….<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new way of assessing sustainability takes into account a structure\u2019s entire history and future, not just its energy bill, reports SLATE. image: \u00a9 User:Colin and Kim Hansen\u00a0\/\u00a0Wikimedia Commons https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/6\/6d\/ City_of_London_skyline_from_London_City_Hall_-_ Sept_2015_-_Crop_Aligned.jpg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sector-newsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32333"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32336,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32333\/revisions\/32336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}