See on Scoop.it – Twitter & Social Media
In the following post you will find some incredible insights that will help you take results from your social media campaigns to a new level. Contributors to th(…)
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Government, council and retailer-backed report says ban on landfill could save UK £17bn and heat 600,000 homes
>The ambition is to save the UK economy over £17bn a year through the reduction of food wasted by households, businesses and the public sector, preventing 27m tonnes of greenhouse gases a year from entering into the atmosphere.
The new study, Vision 2020: UK Roadmap to Zero Food Waste to Landfill is the culmination of more than two years’ work and has the backing and input of local authority and industry experts. It sets the framework for a food waste-free UK by 2020.
Last week official figures revealed the average UK family was wasting nearly £60 a month by throwing away almost an entire meal a day. A report from the government’s waste advisory group Wrap showed Britons were chucking out the equivalent of 24 meals a month, adding up to 4.2m tonnes of food and drink every year that could have been consumed. Almost half of this is going straight from fridges or cupboards into the bin, Wrap found. One-fifth of what households buy ends up as waste, and around 60% of that could have been eaten.
At the same time the UK’s largest retailer, Tesco, recently agreed to reduce its multi-buy items and other promotions after revealing that 35% of its bagged salad was being thrown out. It also found that 40% of apples were wasted, and just under half of bakery items.<
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See on Scoop.it – Green Building Operations – Systems & Controls, Maintenance & Commissioning
Infographic – Energy efficiency. A solution.
Industry has been reported to consume between 40 and 60% (UN Report) of the world’s electrical supply. Motors are the largest consumer of the industrial electrical supply and the greatest opportunity for industry wide savings.
Many motors are over-sized and run inefficiently. Variable speed drives can significantly reduce industrial operating costs, with attractive payback period and reductions in energy consumption by up to 50% or more.
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Access to energy in the U.S. — and the effects of generating it — are a national concern.
>The Forgotten ‘Fifth Fuel’
Access to energy in the U.S. — and the effects of generating it — are a national concern. Debates persist over the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly mix of nuclear energy, coal, gas and liquid hydrocarbons and renewable sources.
Too often left out of these discussions is the so-called fifth fuel: energy efficiency. States have driven benefits for consumers and the environment with policies that both reduce energy use and encourage economic growth.
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) yesterday issued its annual scorecard for each state based on multiple factors, including reductions in greenhouse gas, energy codes for buildings and switching to cleaner fuels.<
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See on Scoop.it – Green Building Operations – Systems & Controls, Maintenance & Commissioning
Big Data remains a fairly nebulous concept for many real estate professionals, including those who stand to gain tremendously from it right now: real estate energy managers.
>To effectively time energy retrofit measures, energy managers can first develop those measures. New energy analytical tools such as FirstFuel identify and develop measures, and even estimate a range for capital cost. It does this analysis remotely over the course of a day just by analyzing hourly electricity data (which is sometimes also stored by the utility); no time-intensive on-site energy audit is required. Another new tool is Retroficiency, which provides a high-level look at energy performance improvement potential using the same interval data and, with minimal additional data from the IWMS, can further develop retrofit measures to investment-grade level.
After identifying energy-retrofit measures for the portfolio using remote energy analysis tools or more standard on-site energy analysis, energy managers can create a new retrofit measures database in the IWMS. Having this new database on hand enables managers to integrate energy retrofit opportunities with space management, maintenance and capital upgrade needs, and potentially other real estate issues. Such integration drives down the incremental cost of an energy retrofit, which is the gross cost minus the avoided cost of otherwise required capital or space upgrades.<
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The Kyocera Corporation just opened a 70 megawatt solar power plants off the southern coast of Japan.
>Kyocera partnered with six other companies to develop the solar plant, which is located in the Kagoshima Prefecture. The company hopes that this latest offshore venture will set a precedent for a cleaner Japan, especially in light of the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The solar plant is designed to inspire and encourage Japan to make the switch to more renewable energy sources.
The Kagoshima Nanatsujima Solar Power Plant was made possible in part because of Japan’s revised feed-in-tariff (FIT) program, which was restructured in July, 2012 to better accommodate solar energy. The adjusted FIT plan requires local utilities to purchase 100 percent of the power generated by solar plants that produce more than 10 kW.<
Read more: Kyocera Opens Japan’s Largest Offshore Solar Power Plant | Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building
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FEMP trains Federal agency managers about the latest energy requirements, best practices, and technologies through eTraining Courses, First Thursday Seminars, and webinars.
See on apps1.eere.energy.gov
>The energy saving measures are being retrofitted during a wider refurbishment project. They range from secondary glazing, draught-proofing and new energy efficient boilers to roof insulation, LED lighting and the installation of wood burning stoves. There are also low volume baths, dual flush cisterns and heat recovery systems in the bathrooms. Full details of the Buscot and Coleshill refurbishments and a short video can be found at the SuperHomes website.<
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Through immediate publication of press releases, we keep the business, financial and public press informed on all important Siemens topics.
>The plant will be built in western Poland in the city of Gorzów Wielkopolski. Within the scope of turnkey construction, Siemens will deliver two SGT-800 gas turbines, one SST-400 steam turbine, three 11 kilovolt (kV) generators and two heat recovery steam generators. In addition, Siemens was awarded a long-term 12 years maintenance agreement for the gas turbines. The Gorzów plant will be fired with nitrogen-rich natural gas from gas reserves located in western Poland. This type of gas has a lower calorific value than conventional natural gas. […]
The Gorzów power plant will replace a currently used coal-fired block at the same location. The combined cycle power plant with district heat extraction will be able to generate electricity in a much more efficient and environmentally friendly manner. Compared to the old coal-fired power plant, the new plant will produce 95 percent less sulfur dioxide emissions, more than 30 percent less nitrogen dioxide emissions and more than 95 percent less particulate emissions.<
See on www.siemens.com
>However, as buildings get more and more efficient, elements such as building operation and occupant use make up a bigger slice of the building performance pie.
Even for buildings that commit to stringent building standards, there’s a large range of outcomes, Frankel says, as to how those buildings eventually perform based on factors that currently are almost entirely outside the purview of the building code.
For example, in a recently retrofitted office building engineered for high performance that Frankel profiled, plug loads made up nearly half of all the energy the building consumed. “That has nothing to do with code, and it doesn’t even have that much to do with operation,” Frankel said. “It has to do with the occupants.”
As a result, it’s these areas—operation and tenant behavior—that are going to see most of the action in code policy discussion in coming years, he says.
“We have to find a way to engage operators and occupants in this discussion,” he says, “or we are never getting to net zero.”<
In many discussions of building performance, it’s builders and architects that are forced to take all the heat for buildings’ carbon footprints. But that wasn’t true of a recent presentation given by Mark Frankel, technical director of the Vancouver, Wa.–based New Buildings Institute, titled “Codes Standards and Rating Systems,” delivered at the recent Vision 2020 Sustainability Summit in Washington, D.C. While Frankel noted that there’s certainly more that can be done in design and construction to improve how a building will perform, “there’s not as much room left in building design as we’ve already captured,” he said.
That’s not to say there’s not still a long way to go. In the United States, the building sector is still the highest contributor to greenhouse gasses. And many builders and architects have yet to fully embrace the high-performance building practices that Frankel emphasized are available. “We have the technology…
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