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As the United Kingdom continues to make progress in its efforts to decarbonize its buildings, the country’s liberal party has unveiled a trail-blazing “Warm Homes for All” plan that could bring roof insulation, double-glazed windows, renewable technologies, heat pumps, solar thermal systems... View full entry
Scotland will soon be meeting the equivalent of 100% of its electricity needs from clean energy sources.
That’s the prediction made in a new report published by member organisation Scottish Renewables, which suggests renewable energy is providing signficant benefits to almost every aspect of the nation’s economy and is supporting major growth in terms of innovation, jobs, communities, climate progress and the rural economy.
— Energy Live News
The United Kingdom's green energy revolution is continuing apace following record-setting sustainable energy generation initiatives that have nearly eliminated the use of coal-fired energy in the country. According to the Scottish government, Scotland's recent move to double-down... View full entry
Around 0.9 billion hectares (2.2 billion acres) of land worldwide would be suitable for reforestation, which could ultimately capture two thirds of human-made carbon emissions. — Good News Network
Professor Thomas Crowther, co-author of the study and founder of the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich that conducted the research writes, “We all knew that restoring forests could play a part in tackling climate change, but we didn’t really know how big the impact would be. Our study shows clearly... View full entry
The University of Pennsylvania's newly-inaugurated Stuart Weitzman School of Design was officially renamed last week in honor or Penn graduate and global footwear designer Stuart Weitzman. The school, which houses undergraduate and graduate programs in architecture, landscape architecture... View full entry
The architecture profession tends to assume that there is always more to build. We need more infrastructure, more houses and more office space to accommodate economies and societies that are forever expanding. Greedy though it may be, this mindset is supported by the pervasive belief that a society’s success is best measured not in terms of humane measures such as the capacity for care and play but in economic terms such as market expansion. — Failed Architecture
Mark Minkjan of Failed Architecture interviews Phineas Harper and Maria Smith, two of the curators behind the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019. The triennale's theme, Enough: The Architecture of Degrowth is focused "proposing alternatives to the unsustainable and unfair paradigm of... View full entry
Plant Prefab, a building manufacturing backed by Amazon, has announced a plan to achieve "net carbon neutral" operations by the year 2028. According to a Medium post announcing the move, since 2006, the company has steadily worked to increase its "comprehensive and continuous effort to... View full entry
The Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF), a coalition made up of over 30 building industry leaders that includes the American Institute of Architects, Perkins and Will architects, Autodesk, the American Institute of Steel Construction, and the American Concrete Institute Foundation, among others, has... View full entry
The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s (RAIC) Committee on Regenerative Environments is calling on the country's architects to join architects from around the world in formally committing "urgent and sustained" climate action. The call makes Canadian architects the latest group to take up... View full entry
[San Jose] became biggest city in the US to adopt all-electrification requirements on new residential buildings and gas bans on commercial construction.
By early next year, developers may have to opt for electric appliances and other infrastructure in single-family homes, backyard cottages, low-rise buildings, apartments and condos. [...] the changes could cut greenhouse gas emissions in new buildings by up to 90 percent and save owners and tenants money on utility bills.
— San Jose Inside
San Jose, California's third largest city, is implementing its Paris Accords-aligned Climate Smart San Jose plan as part of a municipally driven decarbonization effort. The plan relies on a series of "reach codes" to go above and beyond existing sustainability requirements. View full entry
This Friday, the University of Pennsylvania will hold Designing a Green New Deal, a day-long symposium aimed at articulating a design perspective for "a still-abstract set of proposals for decarbonizing the economy, eliminating poverty, creating green, working-class jobs, and retrofitting... View full entry
The Seattle City Council will consider a ban on natural gas for newly constructed homes and buildings, favoring the use of electricity for heating and cooking.
Councilmember Mike O’Brien plans to introduce legislation this week that would prohibit natural-gas piping systems in new structures, starting next summer. The ban would take effect for permitting on July 1, 2020, according to a draft of the legislation.
— The Seattle Times
If successfully implemented, the ban would position Seattle alongside Berkeley, San Jose, San Francisco as American cities that have recently banned new natural gas infrastructure. A 2016 report estimates that roughly one-quarter of Seattle's total greenhouse gas emissions come from... View full entry
The government has decided to move towards achieving 100-percent electrification of railways, as part of efforts to curb carbon footprints, Union Minister Piyush Goyal said on Wednesday.
The railways minister also said he has a mission that in next 10 years, Indian Railways will be running on renewable energy.
— The Economic Times
Announcing the plan, India's Union Minister Piyush Goyal said, "We will be the world's first large railway...nearly [75,000 miles] of track, which will be 100-percent electrified. Imagine how much carbon we will reduce from the entire atmosphere." We are aiming to make Indian Railways world's... View full entry
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has unveiled a transformative Green New Deal climate action plan that aims to eliminate fossil fuel use in the United States entirely by 2050. Labeling the increasingly apparent effects of climate change “a national emergency,” Sanders seeks to... View full entry
San Jose, Santa Rosa and Petaluma are among the cities looking into phasing out natural gas in some new buildings as a means of meeting climate goals. Heating and appliances like dryers and ranges would have to run on electricity instead.
San Francisco is also set to consider legislation that would ban natural gas in new municipal buildings, of which there are few.
— The San Francisco Chronicle
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that several San Francisco Bay Area cities are looking to ban new natural gas installations in some types of upcoming construction projects. The move follows a recent city council ordinance in nearby Berkeley that calls for eliminating natural gas-powered... View full entry
There is enough room in the world’s existing parks, forests, and abandoned land to plant 1.2 trillion additional trees, which would have the CO2 storage capacity to cancel out a decade of carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new analysis by ecologist Thomas Crowther and colleagues at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university. — Yale Environment 360
Following new research, Thomas Crowther and colleagues at ETH Zurich estimate that there are 3 trillion trees on Earth, more than seven times the number previously estimated. Crowther argues that given this new knowledge, it is possible that new and existing forests could become more... View full entry