wrong room!

We last had class on Monday. After sitting in room 213 for 15 minutes wondering where our teacher was, about half our class realized that we were in the wrong room! Sheepishly, we went across to the correct room and took in our lecture.

The lecture discussed sustainable building methods as well as adaptive reuse. We found out that 75% of Earth's energy is produced from fossil fuels, while the remaining 25% is created from solar, biomass, wind, nuclear, geothermal, and tidal energy. You may thinking, 75% is from fossil fuels!?! That's a lot of pollution! Well, you're right, but I was actually surprised that as much as 25% of energy was produced from other means. At least it's a step in the right direction.

Anyway, the burning of all this fossil fuel releases greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. These gases exist naturally, and insulate the Earth so that we can live in moderate temperatures rather than in ice. However, too many gases (made by us humans) cause the world to warm up too much, which is why you hear about the polar ice caps melting and all that good stuff. Some people (like my dad) think global warming is just a trend. I disagree (for the sake of keeping this blog relatively short and readable, I will stop that discussion there).

We then discussed the different alternative energy sources and other green building practices. To give you a quick rundown, here' some things you can do/ use to make your building more green:

1) Utilize geothermal energy.
2) Set up a solar voltaic collection system.
3) Integrate a passive heating/ cooling system.
4) Create a green roof.
5) Introduce a rain-water collection system.
6) Upgrade existing HVAC systems
7) Upgrade existing windows, doors, lights etc.
8) If you are tearing down an old building to construct a new one, RECYCLE MATERIALS!! Many materials can be recycled, and are perfectly good to be reused. The MEC building in downtown Winnipeg provides an excellent example of the potential for reuse, being constructed of almost 80% recycled material.

Not only do these systems benefit the environment, but many of these systems will actually save the client money (either short or long term). Okay, so if there are so many ways to build green, how come there isn't more people doing it? I honestly believe that at this point the problem is education. My generation (gen-x) is now being taught different sustainable solutions, but the current consumers (mostly from the baby boomer generation) are not knowledgeable of the alternatives. It is great that the government is now beginning to offer rebates for sustainable uprgrades, but people first need to know WHAT they can upgrade.
Education is the key. Sustainability will only increase importance as major corporations squander the Earth's resources, so we may as well start now.

Check these guys out, they're called Terreform 1. They offer various solutions to multiple ecological issues surrounding urban habitation and vehicular transport. They call themselves an "Ecological Design Group for Urban Infrastructure, Building, Planning, and Art", and are based out of New York. Oh yeah, they're also the COOLEST firm ever (at least I think so). I found them in an awesome magazine I just bought called Evolo, which I also highly recommend.


Cool eh?