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By 2030, around a quarter of UK buildings should be heated using them, according to the UK government's climate advisory body, rising to 52% by 2050. Electrifying heating will also be key to decarbonising buildings in the US, says Melissa Lott, director of research at the Centre on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. One study in San Francisco referred to heat pumps as the "single most impactful lever" to reducing emissions. — BBC
Communal heatmains can be used to overcome the challenges of digging expensive boreholes for heat pumps in private homes and urban apartment blocks where most of the UK’s population resides. The country’s push to heat half of its homes using heat pumps, which are evolving, puts it... View full entry
For much of its recent history in mitigating climate change, Denver has concentrated on buildings’ operational energy — the energy needed to run basics like heating, air conditioning, lighting and hot water. That will shift in May, when Denver’s newly adopted green code takes effect, said Christy Collins, green communities specialist with the local government. — Smart Cities Dive
Denver’s new green code will make it so a building’s embodied carbon is considered. It will provide minimum requirements for the siting, design, construction, and plans for the operation of projects. Commercial projects in Denver are now required by law to choose around 10% of the green code... View full entry
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has revealed an update to its Urban Sequoia project it says can be built right now, during a presentation that took place today at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. SOM Partner Chris Cooper was on hand to make the presentation of his firm’s... View full entry
Megadeveloper Lendlease is one of the entities behind a new study into the use of mushrooms as a means of decarbonizing construction waste through their application on discarded asphalt roofing shingles. The company teamed with Rubicon Technologies, Mycocycle, and Rockwood Sustainable Solutions to... View full entry
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has just announced the addition of six new strategic partners to the $50 million Empire Building Challenge in aims of enhancing the state’s stock of energy-efficient buildings. The newly-added partners will be tasked with developing "highly repeatable" solutions to... View full entry
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has announced an ambitious new city-wide plan that would eliminate the use of fossil fuels in new developments and major renovations in an effort to take "every possible step to climate action." If passed, the Home Rule Petition to the state’s new Bill H.5060 would make... View full entry
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded $39 million to 18 projects dedicated to developing technologies that can transform buildings into net carbon storage structures. The initiative titled the Harnessing Emissions into Structures Taking Inputs from the Atmosphere (HESTIA) program... View full entry
Cityzenith, a Chicago-based digital twin platform, announced last week that it is partnering with the Los Angeles branch of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Challenge to help construct a digital twin, or virtual replica, of a section of the city to help make its buildings more sustainable and reduce carbon emissions. — Construction Dive
The project will initially center on the downtown Los Angeles neighborhood of Bunker Hill. Cityzenith’s SmartWorld digital twin product will be implemented to enable building owners to simulate their financial paths to net-zero emissions. This is part of Cityzenith’s "Clean Cities &mdash... View full entry
Citing the climate crisis, the Los Angeles City Council voted Friday to ban most gas appliances in new construction, a policy that’s expected to result in new homes and businesses coming equipped with electric stoves, clothes dryers, water heaters and furnaces.
The nation’s second-largest city was late to the game, said Councilmember Nithya Raman, the policy’s lead author — but no longer.
— The Los Angeles Times
Raman’s motion echoes that of many other cities in the state as well as a recent proposal to phase out non-electric car sales by the year 2035. It also includes a provision that all newly-constructed buildings be emissions-free, a requirement it first adopted for all municipal properties in... View full entry
A new study from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has revealed important statistics that provide a clearer picture of the present state of tall mass timber construction across the globe. There are now a total of 66 completed mass timber projects worldwide totaling of... View full entry
Six months after the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, columnist Kunle Barker wrote in the UK Architects' Journal to take a stand against the industry’s oneiric focus on “lofty ideals of zero-carbon and on soundbites” and towards a more considered system of new project evaluation, advocating... View full entry
Arup has designed and engineered the Netherlands’ tallest timber-hybrid residential building. Completed this year, HAUT is part of the country’s commitment to becoming climate-neutral by 2050, in which the use of timber as a building material has been identified as one of the most... View full entry
A creative answer to one of the most pervasive issues in American public housing is being sought by one of the largest civic authorities in the country as the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) has issued a challenge to design an affordable new all-electric heat pump for the 21st century... View full entry
The Biden administration wants to shove more money into projects that are supposed to capture CO2 emissions from power plants and industrial facilities before they can escape and heat up the planet. But carbon capture technologies that the Department of Energy has already supported in the name of tackling climate change have mostly fallen flat, according to a recent report by the watchdog Government Accountability Office. — The Verge
According to the report, the Department of Energy (DOE) has invested about $1.1 billion in 11 carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration projects since 2009. Of those, only three were ever built, however, the sole participating coal plant shut down in 2020, leaving only two industrial projects... View full entry
President Biden on Wednesday set in motion a plan to make the federal government carbon neutral, ordering federal agencies to buy electric vehicles, to power facilities with wind, solar and nuclear energy, and to use sustainable building materials. — The New York Times
Biden called for the transformation of 300,000 government buildings, 600,000 cars and trucks, and the use of its annual $650 billion budget for goods and services to meet his goal for a carbon-neutral federal government by 2050. Detailed by The New York Times, his timetable for the... View full entry
