IES Blog

After weeks of anticipation and around 250 entries, we are happy to announce the winner of our Global VE-Gaia contest. The envelope please…

(Drum roll followed by dramatic pause)

And the winner is…Brian J Wolfe of HKS!

With the quality of entries extremely high, Brian managed to impress us with his answer detailing how he felt “VE-Gaia = Sustainable Projects.”  Brian went on to explain the early sustainable analysis role VE-Gaia could play at HKS within its DesignGreen team, which he is part of.  His detailed and lengthy answer showed he really understood how VE-Gaia could make a difference in his day-to-day work, and that he was ready to get going using its features on real-life projects as soon as he could.  I’ve included some extracts from his entry below…

“IES’s program VE-Gaia seems to meet the wish of seamless workflow by providing many features. One of the most beneficial features is the Energy/Carbon Simulation. In the discussions of what is important to reducing Green House Gas (GHG), some groups say that project teams should focus on reducing the energy demand. Others say it’s more important to focus on reducing the carbon footprint. The fact of the matter is that this is similar to, “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” 

“I believe that the IES feature Energy/Carbon Simulation would be of great benefit to design teams. By allowing teams to see how their design decisions can reduce the project’s carbon footprint, teams can better understand the project’s impact when compared to reduction of vehicle use, trees cut, etc. The reduction of the carbon footprint in turn translates to a more energy efficient building, hence energy efficiency.”

“By being able to determine the affects of the design decisions, teams will be able to proceed with confidence that the project is a quality project. For society to continue to enjoy the valuable resources nature offers and NOT compromise its future, project teams must develop sustainable projects. With so many different factors that contribute to providing a project that is sustainable, teams need assistance. Any program that allows the team to work seamlessly through design and sustainable analysis will not only provide that team a distinct advantage, but the team will have the satisfaction of knowing that it has done its part in seeing that the next generation’s future is not compromised.”

Brian has won a one-year stand-alone license for VE-Gaia, the company’s revolutionary architectural green building analysis tool.  He will also receive a three-part training course for two people, with a certified IES consultant. The total grand prize is valued at $1,840 / £1,200.

Brian was officially announced the winner at our booth at Greenbuild in Chicago yesterday.

Many thanks to all who participated in our contest.  The feedback you provided us is priceless.  As always, we remain committed to improving our products every day to better serve you, and we also hope that you will continue to help us help you make our world greener, one project at a time.

Once again, thanks to all the contest participants and congratulations Brian!

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Tags:competition, Greenbuild, software, Twitter, VE-Gaia, winner

Are your kids going to a brand new LEED certified school? Probably not, but the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) recently announced a new program, the Center for Green Schools. This new initiative is encouraging both the construction of new schools to be LEED certified as well as existing schools to make repairs with sustainability as a main component. As this program looks to green our schools, it realizes it won’t be an overnight process so before making large scale changes it is offering some easier options for older schools, like using green cleaning products or changing air filters.

“The education sector is doing more in the way of green building than any other sector, more than health care, more than commercial, more than religious institutions. But we still have a really long way to go,” said Rachel Gutter, director of the USGBC’s new initiative.

Along with helping schools build a greener facility, the Center for Green Schools is also looking to educate teachers so they are able to implement sustainability lessons into their classes. The thought behind this is if students learn sustainability at a younger age, just as they do with languages, they will be able to retain the information more easily.

The USGBC is looking for all of our children to attend greener schools by the end of this generation. Do you think this is possible?

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Tags:Building, education, LEED, students, Sustainability, USGBC

Earlier this year, I attended & was proud to present at The 10th REHVA World Congress – Clima 2010 in Antalya, Turkey. There were over 1,000 attendees from 56 countries at the HVAC congress. Attendees included two former ASHRAE presidents, one former CIBSE president - OBE, the current IBPSA president and the chairman of CIBSE Guide- A Steering Committee. There were 460 papers presented orally & 180 posters took place. Needless to say it was a huge success.

If you are unaware, REHVA is the Federation of European HVAC Associations and represents over 100,000 engineers from 28 European countries.

A feature of the biannual REHVA World Congress is the International student competition. Having graduated with my MSc. from Brunel University in 2009, I was asked to enter the competition. The European association I was representing was CIBSE, which I know is not specific to any one European country, but a collective nomination from the UK & Ireland nevertheless.

Apart from commending the success of the event, I wanted to blog about a fascinating project of the student competition, by Geert Filippini of Royal Haskoning in The Netherlands. Geert went on to win the competition, and deservedly so. Geert’s research work on a low energy micro-climate was very impressive. I’ve attached an image below of his built prototype which was tested in a climate chamber in the Eindhoven University of Technology.

The fresh air is being supplied directly into the microclimate of the occupant so the he/she is given a psychological feeling of being in control of his/her own environment. The radiant panel is a low energy feature (14% less energy), again because the local heating & cooling is taking place in the occupant’s working environment. A very clever idea!

I’ve analysed the concept using <VE> – MicroFlo for a typical day and the CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) analyses does also seem to certainly prove the concept.�
Please see the latest edition of the REHVA Journal & I hope to see you at the next annual conference In Tallinn in May 2011.

Liam

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Tags:ASHRAE, CIBSE, climate, Engineers, Environment, REHVA World Congress

According to Wikipedia, “Sustainable Building Consulting is a practice or service where an intermediary party or company is utilized as a way to forecast levels of sustainability during conceptual architectural stages.” In other words, consultants are a great way to maximize the sustainable potential of your project while ensuring your company is LEED compliant throughout the entire design process.

With mandates coming from states, cities and the federal government, companies are realizing that green building is no longer a fad, but a way of life. In the recent article, “How to use insurance to handle the risks of building to LEED standards”, Philip Glick stated, “Construction of environmentally friendly and sustainable buildings will represent a significant new market for the construction industry. However, it’s also likely that new risks are being created that can have an impact on the building owners, developers, contractors and design professionals involved in these projects.”

To combat these risks, a company preparing to move or even remodel their current space should utilize a consultant (always make sure this service is offered before signing on the dotted line) - ensuring they are following the most up-to-date standards throughout the entire design process.

An additional benefit of using a consultant is that they can explore the feasibility of potential sustainability strategies at a more in-depth level. Drawing on previous experience and knowledge in the field, sustainable design and LEED to help inform a building’s design, consultants can ensure the design process is successful and cost-effective.

At IES, we have a dedicated group of consultants who are available to instruct building managers and architects using IES’ software from the earliest stage of the design process. Without help, companies are often left to trust their vendors, which might cause issues when trying to obtain LEED or even government green building certifications.

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Tags:Architects, Building, IES, LEED, Sustainability

Having recently become a father of a baby girl, I have now started living a life as a father. No doubt it is a tough job and it sure is challenging, but on the other hand it is joyful. You might think why am I writing about fatherhood in this blog? Because how you raise or take care of a baby is closely related to our environment.

I read an article last month about being a “green family”. The couple are raising their kid in a diaper free environment. Just a bit of fact, on average a baby will go through about 6,000 disposable diapers by the time he/she turns two years old, that means millions of diapers end up in the landfills every day, taking about 200-500 years to decompose. At first I thought this sounds a bit exaggerated, but now I do believe 6,000 diapers in two years maybe achievable.

So one solution for this is of course change to cloth nappy, and at best nappy-free. This sounds easy, but it does require quite a bit of effort. I do admire the couple’s effort getting their baby to use the cloth nappy all the while and turn nappy free after six months. We have tried using just the cloth when our baby was about 1 -2 months, but soon realised it is too much trouble and have then switched to disposable. After reading this, I think I should try using the cloth nappy again since she is now older and the frequency for toileting should not be as high as before. I was always hoping to see something like bio-degradable diapers (since we can have bio-degradable plastic bags, why not for diapers) in the market, but so far no luck, I think this will be a good product for the market.

I may not be doing so well on the diapers side, but I do try to help the environment in other area, i.e. after bathing our baby, will keep the water for flushing the toilet. There are also a lot of things parents can do or be aware of, for example, not to buy too many baby clothes as you will soon realise they can’t fit in them after wearing a few months as they just grow too quickly. Don’t buy too many toys, as they probably prefer parents playing with them instead (at least that what I have noticed). 

Let’s not forget our children’s’ future environment while happily raising them.

To read the “Green Family” article, please click here.

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Tags:Environment, free, nappies

Apparently VE-Gaia was named after the Greek goddess of the earth rather than James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis but I am using this tenuous link to talk about him in an IES blog anyway.

Gaia was the name that William Golding, the author, suggested for Lovelock’s hypothesis that life on earth has a regulatory effect on the Earth’s environment that acts to sustain life. The Gaia hypothesis was readily accepted by the environmental community but was not so readily accepted by the scientific community, including Richard Dawkins.

To my shame I only really knew of Lovelock through his Gaia hypothesis, and the fact that he upset many of his environmentalist fans on his pro nuclear power stance, but I saw an interesting programme on BBC 4 about him this week. He has had an amazing career as an independent scientist with his lab being the converted barn at his home in Cornwall. The program highlighted his work at NASA where he proposed using the atmosphere on Mars to determine whether there was life on the planet. It turned out that Mars has a relatively inert atmosphere of mostly CO2 with very little oxygen, methane, or hydrogen - very different to that of the Earth where there is life.

Lovelock’s invention of the electron capture device allowed very small levels of chemicals to be detected in the atmosphere, including CFCs. He took a trip by ship down to the Antarctic to measure CFC’s across the earth and then wrote a paper in the journal Nature that showed that CFCs were not being broken down in the atmosphere. After hearing a lecture on the subject of Lovelock’s results, Frank Rowland and Mario Molina embarked on research that resulted in the first published paper that suggested a link between stratospheric CFCs and ozone depletion in 1974, and later shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work.

Lovelock also invented the Microwave oven and has been published in the journal Nature so many times it would make any academic green with envy.

You can still find the programme information, ‘Beautiful minds’, on the BBC Website, amd a video clip can be found here.

Like Lovelock, Thomas Midgley, Jr. was another very talented scientist that was celebrated for his discoveries and patents. His legacy is somewhat different to Lovelock’s though. Midgley was the scientist that developed the ‘lead’ additive in petrol. He was also on the team that developed the use of CFCs as a refrigerant. Perhaps luckily for him he died in 1944 before anybody discovered the effect his discoveries had on the atmosphere.

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Tags:Academic, Environment, Environmentalists, IES, Sustainability, VE-Gaia

The New CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme came into force on 1st April

The new Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme began in earnest on the 1st April! The scheme aims to achieve an annual energy reduction of 3.2m tonnes by 2020 and stimulate businesses to make their buildings more energy efficient.  It affects around 20,000 organisations – is yours one of them?

Any organisation with a half hourly settled electricity meter needs to do something.  It was the requirement for qualifying organisations to start monitoring energy usage from all qualifying sources that started on 1st April 2010.  And whilst it may be straight forward to gather retrospective data from half hourly sources, this may not always be the case for class 5-8 meters, for example, which are also considered as core sources under the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme.

Those qualifying for the CRC will also need to register while those under the threshold still need to make an information disclosure.  Both actions must be done before 30 September 2010.  However, as the process could take up to 4 weeks to complete don’t leave it until the 29th September!

A raft of recent surveys indicates just how confused and unprepared organisations are for its implementation…

A survey by energy consultancy McKinnon and Clarke found that 54 per cent of participants were uncertain whether they come under the scheme, which encompasses all bodies and businesses with half-hourly meters (HHMs) that consumed more than 6,000 MWh of electricity during 2008.  Around 5,000 of the UK’s heaviest energy users will need to participate fully, while another 15,000 odd organisations that consumed less will need to make an information disclosure. 

In addition, the survey also found that three in five companies had not factored in the financial implications of having to participate fully in the scheme.  At the lowest qualifying level, a typical organisation will pay £45,000 a year to advance purchase allowances at a rate of £12 per tonne of carbon dioxide.  In addition, they will be placed in a league table, showing their carbon emissions relative to their peers.  Companies at the bottom of the table will be penalised, with the money recycled into rewards for the most energy-efficient.

In another survey by the power supplier Npower, nearly half of companies surveyed said official advice about the new legislation had been “inadequate”.  About 49 per cent said they did not understand how to buy the necessary carbon allowances and 44 per cent said they do not know how to forecast their carbon emissions.

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Tags:Building, carbon assessor, Environment, recycle, recycling, Renewables

There is a great diversity of climate zones across the planet. Each climate zone presents its own particular challenges for the architects and engineers of the design team. High humidity year round with a small diurnal range presents a challenge to human comfort in the humid equatorial climate zone. At the other extreme, sub zero temperatures in cold regions present an entirely different obstacle. Looking to the past, at the indigenous architecture in each region, we see a remarkable level of ingenuity in design. Before the luxuries of central heating and air conditioning, people used the very form of the building as their only means to control conditions inside the building. The traditional igloo allowed people to survive in an inhospitable climate which offered little in the way of building materials. Utilising the principal that hot air rises, the sleeping area was situated on a raised platform inside the igloo. The thick snow walls insulated the occupants from the sub zero temperatures outside and protected them from the biting wind.

No less ingenious is the traditional Malay house which has an entirely different set of challenges to overcome. Large levels of openable area help keep the house well ventilated, while the overhanging roof functions as a solar shade.

All across the world, the vernacular architecture shows a wonderful degree of congruence with the climate in which it is found. Contrast this with the modern urban skyline where generic high rise apartment and office blocks replace the highly specialised, climate specific designs of the past.

Building form is now more a result of function than climatic conditions. The inventions of central heating and air conditioning represent a great achievement in allowing us greater levels of indoor comfort and flexibility in design.

However, the energy used to condition our buildings represents a significant portion of global C02 emissions. Whilst technological advancements have delivered ever more efficient heating and cooling solutions, there perhaps remains scope for improvement in the external form of the buildings themselves. Lessons can be learned from the climate specific designs of our ancestors. With the benefit of tools and technology which did not exist for the indigenous builder, we can take inspiration from their designs to create buildings better suited to their environment. If we can control climate as much as possible utilising the form of the building alone we reduce the energy expended using mechanical methods, thus helping us towards the goal of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.

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Tags:Architects, Building, climate, Engineers, Environment, reduce