Buildings

A $370 billion idea for European buildings

Here we go again with a brand new article on Cleantechies. This time, we focus on one of my favorite topics : insulating buildings with a new study on the very matter. Here is the introduction : ” According to a new study presented by the Renovate Europe Campaign, weatherizing European buildings in an important …

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Valenciennes, Northern France

” Plant, baby, plant ” Episode 2, Urban forestry

Today is the second part of my “Plant, baby, plant ” series started last week with agroforestry. We shall delve here on urban forestry and its many advantages. Next week we shall conclude by the Billion Tree Campaign. As we have seen, planting trees among farming fields and gardens provide many advantages. But what about …

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Wood is reaching new heights in buildings

What if we used wood as a construction material for high buildings ? Given how many trees we are planting to fight climate change, we are not going to lack from it any time soon if we manage it sustainably. Back to June the New York Times published an interesting article on how this is …

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Sustainable architecture : Earthship Biotecture

While browsing the Internet I discovered something that is completely in adequation with the topics tackled here, such as sustainability, energy and water use and scarcity and so on. Earthship Biotecture is about : “ radically sustainable buildings made with recycled materials. Earthships can be built in any part of the world, in any climate …

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European Union to tackle housing insulation

I have been advocating housing insulation back to 2006 when I was writing my Master’s thesis at Audencia Nantes Management School. Then I discovered the huge potential of insulating French buildings. Since then I have been dreaming that one day politicians, leaders, and other people in charge would finally understand that weatherizing the million of …

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Towards sustainability, reloaded

Back to 2009, I had started – but not finished – a series due to help you going towards sustainability. I am proposing you to re-publish it this year and finish it. This series’ goal is to help you cut your carbon and environmental footprint. I must have four times more subscribers, so hopefully this …

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Energy efficiency is slowly gaining traction

I reported at the very beginning of this year that 2011 could be the year of energy efficiency. It seems to be the case as I have been witnessing an increasing interest for conservation and efficiency. These are good news as efficiency is the panacea to our energy and climate problems as “73% of global …

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Heating buildings with data centers

The idea might seem a bit far-fetched but recovering the heat produced by data centers could heat buildings. However we have seen similar ideas are extremely cost efficient and environmentally friendly. To ExtremeTech : ” With a temperature of around 40-50°C, the exhaust from a rack of cloud servers could be a very cost-effective way …

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Lafarge pursues its sustainability commitment

According to the WWF : ” WWF and Lafarge, the world’s largest cement maker, today agreed to continue working together to further reduce the company’s greenhouse gas emissions and to help build hundreds of energy-efficient buildings.  ” ” (…) The company has been a member of WWF’s Climate Savers Programme since 2001 and has already …

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A staggering figure on energy efficiency

You know it if you have read this blog for some time : energy efficiency is the single best solution to solve all our energy and climate problems. It can be used literally everywhere and in anything and save huge amounts of money. Now, here comes Dr. Julian M Allwood from the University of Cambridge. …

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