Healthy social housing has to provide winter warmth, summer safety and clean indoor air, while retrofit sequencing determines how quickly residents receive those benefits.
“Fabric first” starts from a sensible building-efficiency idea. Improve insulation, stop unnecessary draughts, fix ventilation and reduce heat demand before replacing a gas or oil boiler with a heat pump. Some homes plainly need that work, and cheap measures such as loft insulation, draught repair and basic remediation can be … [continued]
States are recognizing the potential for tangible emissions reductions with broad co-benefits when it comes to embodied carbon. The built environment hides more climate-warming pollution than you think, and reducing it is the next frontier of climate action. While policymakers have focused for decades on operational emissions—from heating, cooling, and … [continued]
Ireland’s National Heat Study distinguished useful fabric improvements from extensive renovation and found that deep retrofit should not automatically delay replacement of fossil heating.
For several years I have been arguing that “fabric first” becomes a trap when a sensible building-efficiency principle is turned into a universal sequencing rule. Insulation, draught-proofing, ventilation and building repair can all be valuable, sometimes very valuable, but that does not establish that every household should complete extensive renovation … [continued]
Look around your home this evening. The days are getting shorter, and our craving for light means that we are substituting artificial illumination for sunlight. It also may mean that we are unknowingly causing injury to the hundreds of species of birds that are now migrating to their southern homes. … [continued]
Jackery recently showed off the EnergyGuard Max whole home energy storagesystem at their booth at IFA Berlin. The system pairs the Energycore 100kWh battery module with the PowerVault 50 inverter in weather-resistant enclosures. Also at their booth, I had the opportunity to talk with their CEO and founder, Jack Sun. … [continued]
Denver’s Energy Code aims to cut pollution, energy bills for households & businesses A Colorado District Court Judge has dismissed a corporate-backed lawsuit against Denver ordinances aimed at reducing air pollution from buildings and reducing energy bills for owners and tenants. The court agreed with arguments made by the City of Denver and Sierra … [continued]
Second Circuit rejects industry challenges to building electrification requirements. Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of New York City and New York State laws that prohibit fossil fuel-burning appliances in new buildings, affirming the judgments of two lower courts. Those laws are part of … [continued]
Cement decarbonization is a layered pathway: less Portland, lower clinker, better design, substitutes, recycling and selective CCS.
Cement decarbonization attracts miracle stories. One company has a new binder. Another has a carbon-negative aggregate. Someone else has an electrochemical process, a hydrogen kiln, a low-carbon limestone route, a supplementary cementitious material, a recycled cement process or a carbon-capture retrofit. Some of these ideas are useful. Some will become … [continued]
The transition does not preserve the fossil fuel pool and relabel it. Direct electrification removes most heat, motion, and storage work first, leaving molecules for narrower real jobs.
A lot of energy-transition arguments begin with today’s fossil fuel demand. Coal, oil, and gas still dominate global primary energy, so it is tempting to draw a straight line from the current fuel system to a future molecule system. Replace natural gas with hydrogen. Replace bunker fuel with ammonia or … [continued]
China’s infrastructure and property buildout was the materials event of the modern economy, and its decline changes the denominator for steel, cement, coal, freight, and fuels.
One of the easiest ways to get long-range energy and materials demand wrong is to treat first-build infrastructure demand as a permanent condition. Countries build their first stock of housing, highways, ports, rail, power systems, water systems, industrial parks, and concrete-and-steel cities once. After that, the demand structure changes. The … [continued]
