New York Awards $3m to Nextgen Clean Energy Leaders

24.10.2018

The projects are expected to reduce emissions by more than 2,000 metric tons over the next five years.

The Step Towards the Energy Efficiency: The First Typology of Schools in Serbia

23.10.2018

kindergarten-2204239_960_720 — Photo-illustration: Pixabay

The “National School Typology” study has recently been presented on the most suitable approaches to the renovation of school buildings and the improvement of energy efficiency, which will be the basis for making further strategic decisions regarding the restoration of school buildings.

The study was carried out as part of the German-Serbian Development Cooperation project, which was im-plemented by the German Organization for International Cooperation GIZ, with a participation of a team of experts from the Faculty of Architecture, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at the University of Belgrade, supported by the line ministries of the Government of Serbia. Based on this typology, now every school can recognise its facility from the models defined in the study and choose the most appropriate type of restoration.

Professors Branislav Zivkovic from the Faculty of Mchanical Engineering and Dusan Ignjatovic from the Faculty of Architecture participated in the preparation of this study, which included the database of 1,857 school buildings, out of 3,890 schools in Serbia, which was more than sufficient amount of sample for statistical analysis. This base has suffered a certain “cleansing”, and the sample for analysis has been reduced to 1,268 buildings. The buildings themselves are from different periods, most of them built between 1946 and 1970. “Considering that the greatest number of school buildings dated from the period when energy consumption was not taken into account, and when the building’s envelope was not thermally isolated, it can be concluded that schools are relatively big consumers of energy per unit area,” Professor Zivkovic says. The buildings themselves are mostly commission buildings, structures planned throughout the territory of the Republic of Serbia, regardless of their geographical disposition, size, and age. According to their structure, they correspond to the specific requirements of the educational process that has changed significantly during history. The beginnings are mainly related to the development of the educational process itself while fulfilling the minimum requirements, whereas at the end of the 20th century we can see complex structures with very diverse contents. Diversity is mostly related to the arrangement of the buildings or whether they are planned for rural or urban areas or the sheer size of the school building itself. Smaller buildings are simple structures, composed of several units with almost no additional rooms, while large buildings are very complex. Thus, “in the field“ we can encounter objects that, besides classrooms, barely possess elementary hygienic facilities, but also those that have many different halls or swimming pools in their facilities.

The energy efficiency measures should
be applied to a fully functional facility
to reduce the energy consumption

Dusan Ignjatovic, the professor at the Faculty of Architecture, says that from the historical point of view, important symbolic functions have been linked to the massive buildings so that they are often seen as very representative structures and, in a way, a “decoration” of the cities in which they were built. As of lately, they are in fact almost considered as theoretical models of the development of the educational process. “Given this diversity, it is clear that it is a question of the quality improvement, especially regarding the energy efficiency, and a very diverse one indeed. It ranges from simple material and technical improvements to the building envelope and installed systems to the structural changes to raise the general level of the educational process with the addition of new functional units. The variety of forms of presentation is one of the most significant challenges for the process of reconstruction and improvement,” Professor Ignjatovic says.

By the analysis and statistical processing of 1,268 schools, which formed the sample for the study, ten types and three subtypes of schools were selected in 10 basic categories. The buildings were classified according to the construction period, the gross area of the building, the characteristics of the thermal coating (façade, wall and roof materials, the existence of thermal insulation, the size, and the type of windows), number of floors and compactness of the building.

You can read the whole article in the eleventh issue of the Energy Portal Magazine SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE, in July 2018.

Prepared by: Tamara Zjacic

Climate Change Is Exacerbating World Conflicts, Says Red Cross President

23.10.2018

red-cross-19494_960_720 — Photo-illustration: Pixabay

Climate change is already exacerbating domestic and international conflicts, and governments must take steps to ensure it does not get worse, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross has said.

Peter Maurer told Guardian Australia it was already making an impact and humanitarian organisations were having to factor it into their work far earlier than they were expecting.

“In many parts of the world where we work it’s not a distant engagement,” he said.

“When I think about our engagement in sub-Saharan Africa, in Somalia, in other places of the world, I see that climate change has already had a massive impact on population movement, on fertility of land. It’s moving the border between pastoralist and agriculturalist.”

Maurer, who was in Australia to speak about the changing nature of modern conflict, said concern about the impact of climate change in the Pacific was “enormous”.

He said changing rainfall patterns change the fertility of land and push populations, who may have settled and subsisted in one area for centuries, to migrate.

“It’s very obvious that some of the violence that we are observing … is directly linked to the impact of climate change and changing rainfall patterns.”

Earlier this month the United Nation’s climate panel, the IPCC, gave the world just 12 years to make the drastic but necessary changes. Its report said emissions had to be cut by 45% before 2030 if warming was to be restricted to 1.5C.

At 1.5C, 10 million fewer people would be affected by rising sea levels, and the proportion of the world’s population exposed to water stress could be 50% lower.

A 2016 study, which examined three decades of data, determined that a 1C rise in temperatures in a country reliant on agriculture correlated with a 5% increase in migration to other countries.

“When [populations] start to migrate in big numbers it leads to tensions between the migrating communities and the local communities. This is very visible in contexts like the Central African Republic, like Mali and other places,” said Maurer.

He said it was up to governments, not humanitarians, to develop the policies needed to deal with the “root causes” of climate change.

“As a humanitarian I am used to political decisions … never [being] as fast as we hope for them, or as generous or as big, but it’s encouraging an increasing number are recognising the importance of the issue and are taking steps to reduce the impact of climate change on our habitat – the Paris Agreement is an important step forward,” he said.

“For us we hope the international community will soon enough take necessary steps, so at the end of the day they won’t have to pay by increasing humanitarian impacts which, again, we already see in other conflicts.”

Donald Trump said little about the IPCC report, having already pledged to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement.

This made things difficult for everyone else, Ola Elvestuen, Norway’s environment minister, said last month, but still called for countries to transition away from fossil fuels, embrace electric cars and halt deforestation.

The Australian government largely dismissed the IPCC report and its recommendations – which included the rapid phase out of coal – as well as the pleas of Pacific Island nations.

Australia has no formal energy or climate change policy, and the Coalition government at one point flagged pulling out of the Paris Agreement.

MPs and ministers maintain that Australia is on track to meet emissions reductions targets, despite official government figures on emissions suggesting Australia will not, according to current projections.

On Sunday Australia’s treasurer and former energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, rejected the suggestion it should get his government rethink its policies. He said the government did not intend to “reduce emissions at the expense of people’s power bills”.

Anote Tong, the former president of Kiribati, was in Australia this week advocating for action.

“It’s not about the marginal rise in price or reduction in price of energy, it’s about lives, it’s about the future,” he told Guardian Australia.

Maurer said there were now more people displaced than ever before, approaching 70m across the globe. Two thirds are displaced internally, and most of those who fled would go to a neighbouring country.

“At the end of the day there is no single policy that allows in any satisfactory way a response to these issues, but there are multiple things which can be done,” he said.

Source: The Guardian

Cherry Blossoms Are Blooming Across Japan: It’s October

22.10.2018

japan-2755079_960_720 — Photo-illustration: Pixabay

Each year, Japan’s iconic cherry blossoms herald the arrival of spring. But after a bout of extreme weather, blooms are being reported several months early.

The Japanese weather site Weathernews said it had received more than 350 reports of blossoms throughout the country. The flowers usually appear in March or April.

It’s not unusual for sakura to arrive ahead of schedule, however experts said it’s rare for the flowering to be so widespread.

“We get reports every year of cherry blossom blooming early, but those are confined to specific areas,” Toru Koyama, a senior official with the Flower Association of Japan, told Reuters. “This time we are hearing about it from all over the country.”

Koyama explained that the leaves of cherry blossom trees contain a chemical that suppresses the pink and white flowers from blooming. But two powerful typhoons this September—including devastating Typhoon Jebi—stripped the trees of their leaves or exposed them to salt water. Without the presence of the growth-inhibitors, the trees flowered early.

What’s more, temperature swings brought by the storms may have tricked the bulbs into thinking it was spring.

The early blooms should not spoil the 2019 hanami, or the traditional flower-viewing season. The number of flowers blooming early is still small, so viewers are unlikely to notice much difference, Koyama added.

Regardless of this year’s major storms, cherry blossoms in Japan are emerging increasingly early, and scientists say that climate change is likely the culprit.

Source: Eco Watch

These Iconic Mediterranean Landmarks are Currently at Risk from Sea Level Rise

21.10.2018

santorini-akrotiri-lighthouse-1938723_960_720 — Photo-illustration: Pixabay

Climate change is clearly a threat to both our present and our future, but did you know that it was also a threat to our shared past?

A study published Tuesday in Nature Communications looked at 49 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites in the coastal Mediterranean and found that 37 are already at risk from a 100-year flooding event and 42 are at risk from coastal erosion.

Some of the most at-risk sites include Venice in Italy and Tyre in Lebanon.

“Heritage sites face many challenges to adapt to the effects of sea level rise, as it changes the value and ‘spirit of place’ for each site,” study co-author and University of Southampton senior researcher Sally Brown told AFP.

The researchers looked at the sites’ risk level from flood and erosion through 2100 following four different emissions scenarios, from limiting warming to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to a business-as-usual scenario with warming of three to four degrees Celsius by 2100. Under the worst-case scenario, the number of sites at risk for flood increased to 40 of 49, and the number at risk for erosion increased to 46. Overall, they found that flood risk across the region could increase by 50 percent by 2100 and erosion risk by 13 percent.

Researchers hoped their results would help policy makers craft adaptations to protect these iconic sites.

The energy efficiency measures should be applied to a fully functional facility to reduce the energy consumption

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