GreenClips.170 06.20.01 OFFICIALS IN CHICAGO AND NY STATE PUSH RENEWABLE ENERGY Chicago officials say that within five years at least 20 percent of the city's electricity for everything from public buildings to elevated trains will come from renewable sources. It's part of an ambitious plan to become the nation's manufacturing and development center for green technology, city environment Commissioner Bill Abolt says. To begin meeting its 20 percent goal, Chicago has teamed up with the state and Commonwealth Edison to build a solar power generating station next year in Lake Calumet, south of Chicago, at the site of an old landfill. The landfill will be tapped for its methane gas and will be the site of a wind power experiment. Also, a solar panel factory will open this summer on a formerly polluted industrial site on the city's West Side, and the city plans to find a company to make energy-efficient windows for the city's bungalow and Victorian-style houses. And earlier this month in New York State, Gov. George Pataki ordered state agencies to get 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010. Pataki also directed agencies to follow "green building" standards for all new state construction or major renovation projects and to purchase the most energy efficient equipment and products. Chicago article: Washington Post, 20 Jun 01, by Tammy Webber (Associated Press). New York article: Times Union (Albany, NY), 11 Jun 01, by Joel Stashenko (Associated Press). LONDON DEVELOPMENT EXCEEDS SOME GREEN TARGETS, MISSES OTHERS The Greenwich Millennium Village, a master-planned housing development on London's Greenwich Peninsula, is falling slightly short of its much trumpeted environmental targets on primary energy use and water consumption but is exceeding its targets on embodied energy and construction waste. The L286 million [$405 million USD] housing project, designed by Ralph Erskine, will have nearly 1,400 new homes on 32.3 acres located southeast of the Millennium Dome. The government hopes the project will set a trend for more environmentally responsible commercial construction techniques. The developers set themselves the target of constructing homes during the project's first two years -- up to December 2001 -- with 20 percent less construction waste than current standards, and 20 percent less carbon dioxide emissions during construction. They beat these targets. But figures from the initial construction phase show the project is falling 5 percent short of its 70 percent target reduction in cutting primary energy consumption, and 3 percent short of its 15 percent water consumption goal. Building Design, 15 Jun 01, p 1. [More: http://www.greenwich-village.co.uk] TOOLS FOR EVALUATING BUILDING ENERGY PERFORMANCE Design and simulation tools can help architects make better-informed decisions about the energy performance of their designs. A number of third parties provide interactive front-end tools that work with DOE-2. For example, VisualDOE, from energy consultants Eley Associates in San Francisco, offers a graphical interface that eases the laborious chore of entering data about a building. VisualDOE version 3.0 is now part of a larger suite of Green Design Tools from Eley Associates, which includes an energy cost calculator and modules for lighting, home energy use and other applications. The Building Technologies Department of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) offers the Building Design Advisor (BDA), which incorporates three functions: the Building Browser for point-and-click selection of building parameters, the Schematic Graphics Editor for input of simplified building models, and the Decision Desktop for comparison of alternative energy performance scenarios. Geopraxis, based in Petaluma, California, has created several DOE-2 add-on programs, some of which are available for free. One such program is EDR-Charrette, available at http://www.EnergyDesignResources.com, for analyses of retail, commercial and educational facilities. Another of Geopraxis' free utilities, Quickee 1.0, simplifies and manages user input to analyses done in DOE-2. Architectural Record, Jun 01, p 195, by Jerry Laiserin. [Full text of article: http://www.archrecord.com/DIGITAL/OPENING.ASP. More about the simulation tools: http://www.greendesigntools.com; http://gaia.lbl.gov/bda/index.html; http://www.geopraxis.com.] HIGH VOLUME FLYASH IMPROVES DURABILITY OF CONCRETE Every year, the United States produces about 60 million tons of flyash, a byproduct of coal-burning power plants. About 70 percent of the flyash is landfilled, but instead it could be used to produce a stronger, more durable and more environmentally friendly concrete. The key to successfully using flyash in concrete is the mix design -- how the flyash is combined and proportioned with the other ingredients. While most concrete incorporates up to 15 percent flyash, high percentages (50 percent or more) must be used to obtain maximum benefits, such as reduced permeability and increased durability. In the past, builders were reluctant to use "high volume flyash" (HVFA) concrete because it reacts more slowly than Portland cement. But the mix can be designed to compensate for the different reaction speed by keeping the total amount of water very low. Canada's CANMET has pioneered a 60 percent flyash mix that uses superplasticizers to get the necessary workability in the concrete while keeping the water content very low. Another method, pioneered by Dr. P.K. Mehta of San Francisco, uses a slightly higher water-cement ratio, 50 percent flyash and a common water-reducing admixture. When obtaining HVFA concrete, it helps to use an experienced supplier, since the mix designs have to be adjusted for each plant and tests of the mix will be required. More: http://www.edcmag.com/archives/05-01-2.htm. Environmental Design & Construction, May-June 01, by Scott Shell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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