Perhaps the present power hysteria will deliver the required kick in the sweets to get local architects, designers and developers to update their ideas on sustainable energy design.
The Solar Ark [pictured above] was built for Sanyo, and is an impressive 630 kW solar-collecting building that boasts over 5,000
solar panels and kicks off over 500,000 kWh of energy per year and is built using mainly reject solar cells which were destined for the rubbish dump. [more]
Ann Arbor is a small city in Michigan state in the US. Last year, Ann Arbor joined forces with LED manufacturer Cree, Inc, on an ever-expanding citywide LED initiative to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
With a recent retrofit contract signed with Lumecon, Ann Arbor is on its way to being the first U.S. city to light up its downtown with 100% LED technology! [more]
Perhaps something for Helen Zille to consider for all of those city lights that burn throughout the night.
This [pic above] is billed as the world's greenest building and is scheduled to be built soon in Paris.
The Energy Plus office building,
to be located outside of Paris, is designed to consume no electricity
other than that which it creates itself. This zero-energy building,
according to the designers, will be the greenest office building ever
created.
How does this building achieve its goal? For starters, the building
will be heavily insulated - enough to reduce its energy use to about 16
kilowatts per square meter, which is considerably lower than that of a
standard building. Cold water from the Seine river will be pumped
throughout the offices eliminating the need for a standard air
conditioner unit. And to actively contribute to the highest standard of
energy efficiency, designers have engineered the building to have the
largest solar array in the world installed in the roof. It is this
solar array which will provide all the energy needs of the building, as
well as providing additional energy to be fed back into the grid. [more]
These are just three first-world examples of how design can help with the growing world-wide problem of diminishing resources and environmental damage. Like a heroin addicting kicking the habit, we need to wean ourselves off outdated forms of energy production and evolve.
[all examples via Inhabitat]
