Archinect - News

AI has massive potential to aid decarbonization in the building sector, LBNL paper claims

2024-08-09T11:45:00-04:00

AI's capacity to initiate energy use reductions and decarbonization of the building sector was documented recently by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. A new study of medium-sized office buildings in the United States revealed the potential for an 8% emissions reduction by 2050. An up to 20% reduction of annual on-site energy costs can also be achieved through widespread augmentation combined with other emerging technologies such as robotics.

Utility Dive, which first reported on the paper's publication, summarized its findings further: "Adopting AI in [one] scenario can help reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions by roughly 19% in 2050, compared with the policy scenario without AI."

This comes on the heels of the General Service Administration's announcement of $9.6 million in new grant funding to test AI-augmented products and other emerging building technologies as part of its Green Proving Ground program.

California eases some drought restrictions but makes others permanent

2016-05-10T15:42:00-04:00

Gov. Jerry Brown [...] laid out a revised game plan for dealing with California’s persistent drought, making some conservation rules permanent while also moving to give communities more of a say in deciding how much water they must save. Brown issued an executive order enshrining a conservation ethic in state regulations — banning permanently some wasteful water practices and ordering regulators to develop new water-efficiency standards designed to drive down long-term urban use.

Previous Archinect stories covering the drought crisis in California and the Southwest U.S.:

New study suggests consumers, not producers, should bear responsibility for environmental impact

2016-02-29T19:14:00-05:00

We might think that most of the carbon emission come from the industrial sector and livestock, but a new study suggests that the real environmental problem is represented by the things we buy. [...] “We all like to put the blame on someone else, the government, or businesses ... But between 60–80 per cent of the impacts on the planet come from household consumption. If we change our consumption habits, this would have a drastic effect on our environmental footprint as well”.

You can read the full report, "Environmental Impact Assessment of Household Consumption", published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology by researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, here.

Related on Archinect:

A cardboard and carbon-emission economy: the long-term effects of our desire for instant gratification

2016-02-16T14:00:00-05:00

A handful of scientists and policy makers are...grappling with the long-term environmental effect of an economy that runs increasingly on gotta-have-it-now gratification [...] The environmental cost can include the additional cardboard — 35.4 million tons of containerboard were produced in 2014 in the United States, with e-commerce companies among the fastest-growing users — and the emissions from increasingly personalized freight services.

As internet retailers compete to provide as-close-to-instant services to satiate our increasing desire for rapid gratification, our collective ecological footprint grows. The problem isn't just the cardboard boxes piling up on your doorstep, but also the carbon emissions required to get that Postmates or Amazon Prime delivery into your hands.

And according to experts (or at least those profiled by the Times), the responsibility lies equally with consumers as it does with the companies providing the services. In short, we need to "slow down consumption," states Robert Reed, spokesman for Recology, the main recycling processor in San Francisco.

For more on the ecological impact of our consumptive patterns, take a look at these links:

"We have probably hit peak stuff," says Ikea boss

2016-01-19T19:24:00-05:00

The appetite of western consumers for home furnishings has reached its peak – according to Ikea, the world’s largest furniture retailer. The Swedish company’s head of sustainability told a Guardian conference that consumption of many familiar goods was at its limit. “If we look on a global basis, in the west we have probably hit peak stuff. We talk about peak oil. I’d say we’ve hit peak red meat, peak sugar, peak stuff … peak home furnishings,” Steve Howard said [...]

Related:

Who Shapes Cities and for Whom?

2014-03-03T12:41:00-05:00

The commercialisation of the urban landscape has resulted in the privatisation of public space. As city centres have become tributes to consumption, private interests have permeated these spaces. They have become awash with pseudo-public consumer spaces which belong to corporations rather than the citizenry. Although these places hold the semblance of being “public”, they are owned by corporate interests and are therefore under private control and not accountable to the public.

From The New Left Project's series on The Contemporary City.