GreenClips.83 11.05.97 SOLAR HEATS UP BOTH SIDES OF ATLANTIC Just as President Clinton's Million Solar Roofs initiative gains momentum in the United States, the United Kingdom will fit 100 schools with photovoltaic cells. Its Department of Trade & Industry will spend 1 million pounds on the Scolar project, the UK's first state-sponsored application of solar energy. Ove Arup & Partners have designed a steel-frame entrance canopy with photovoltaic cells for the first 15 schools. Ove Arup associate Ray Noble expects a policy change on photovoltaics from the new UK government soon, and Arup is studying photovoltaic cell applications for a number of banks, supermarkets, and insurance companies suddenly interested in them. Arup is also helping Reading University to fit the first colored photovoltaic cells on a mansard roof, car-maker Ford to install 26 rooflights on its factory-of-the-future in Bridgend, Wales, and BP in Berlin to launch the first gas station in the world clad with photovoltaic cells. Across the Atlantic, the US government recently telecast a video conference on its Million Solar Roofs project to 200 sites around the nation. President Clinton announced his plan to install solar systems on one million American rooftops by 2010 at a United Nations climate change conference in June. As part of the initiative, the Department of Energy also wants at least 20,000 solar systems operating on federal buildings. — Building Design, October 3, 1997, p. 2, by James Fisher, and Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, October 30, 1997, by Pete Herrera/AP. ASHRAE'S NEW IAQ STANDARD STALLS After receiving 8,000 public comments, ASHRAE says that its proposed revision of indoor air quality Standard 62 Ventilation for Acceptable Air Quality is too unwieldy and will instead consider periodic alterations to the current standard. Skirting the usual public comment process, opponents of the revision this summer convinced the Board of Directors of the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-conditioning Engineers to jettison six years of committee work on updating the standard. Practicing design engineers widely see the proposed revision as a big improvement to the current standard. But they make up only about 20 percent of the society's membership, explains research architect and IAQ consultant Hal Levin. Many other members represent particular industries. "Economic interests (not limited to, but including, tobacco) and ignorance (especially by many ventilation system engineers) and the vast web of special interests affected by and affecting indoor air quality are at the heart of the recent action by the ASHRAE Board of Directors," Levin reports. "Most of the revised content will find its way into the new standard under continuous maintenance, but it will come in pieces, not all at once," Levin says. "This will allow issues to be discussed separately and deliberately, and will help focus the dialogue on specific points of contention." — Building Design & Construction, October 1997, p. 9, and Environmental Building News, October 1997, p. 3. SMARTWOOD GOES PUBLIC IN MINNESOTA A public timberland in Minnesota has earned the Rainforest Alliance's SmartWood seal of approval. Joining the dozen or so privately owned SmartWood stands in the United States, the 550,000-acre timberland in Aitkin County is only the second public forest to win certification. The Aitkin County Land Department and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources now manage the once heavily cut timberland not just for profit, but to sustain the forest and preserve its ecosystem. And the Rainforest Alliance, an independent judge of forestry management techniques, found that the county and state meet its SmartWood program's strict requirements for long-term forest management. "One of the major industry challenges has been whether there is actually a market for this stuff," says Eric Bloomquist, head of Colonial Craft, a St. Paul-based manufacturer of moldings, trim, and picture frames that uses certified wood for many of its products. But "the current need is clearly in supply, and that's nationwide," he says. "There's just not enough certified wood." — St. Paul Pioneer Press, October 31, 1997, by Dennis Lien. US BETS INNOVATION AND FREE MARKET WILL FIX GLOBAL WARMING President Clinton has outlined a moderate program to fight global warming that relies on tax credits and research subsidies to encourage energy conservation. But many other nations now negotiating a new climate treaty quickly denounced the plan. The 1992 Rio de Janeiro treaty on climate change called on industrial nations to cut their emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. But most, including the United States, are falling short of that target, and Clinton's plan defers it until some time between 2008 and 2012. Japan, Europe, and many developing countries want the industrial nations to agree to deeper and earlier cuts in a new treaty set for a December completion in Kyoto. Negotiating this binding treaty in Bonn, they said that as the largest single emitter of heat-trapping, or greenhouse, gases, the US should be doing more and doing it sooner. But optimistic about energy-saving technologies, the Administration is betting heavily that innovation and the free market, driven by a few billion dollars of tax incentives and subsidies, will drive down fuel use in the next few years without causing any serious economic disruption. Yet its package of incentives is relatively modest. The $5 billion in tax cuts and research subsidies over five years would amount to a bit more than a penny per hundred dollars of economic activity — $1 billion annually in a $7 trillion economy. And the US proposes to wait until 2008 before fully establishing fixed caps on industrial sources of greenhouse gases, mainly the carbon dioxide that comes from burning fossil fuels. Only then, reflecting the costs of mandatory emission reductions, would energy prices have to increase. — The New York Times, October 23, 1997, p. 1, by John H. Cushman, Jr. ROYAL MAIL DELIVERS GREEN GUIDE The property arm of the UK Post Office has come up with The Green Guide to Specification, an easy-to-use, 64-page handbook on the environmental effects of over 50 commonly used building materials and components. The guide's environmental profiling system assesses the materials in seven categories — primary energy used to extract, produce, and transport the material; its drain on resources; reduction of natural reserves; toxic pollutants from manufacturing; emissions; waste; and recyclability. Not to worry. The guide boils all this down to simple ABC categories. Category A materials are the better environmental choices; those rated C, not so good. The guide also gives relative costs, maintenance requirements, and replacement intervals of the materials. Property Holdings general manager Mike Sinclair, the driving force behind the guide, wanted a quick, single point of reference to help Royal Mail meet its commitment to measure and reduce its environmental footprint. Managing one of the largest property portfolios in the UK, the Post Office wants to reduce what it calls Real Unit Environmental Costs by five percent every three years. David Shiers of Oxford Brookes University developed the guide's simple but meaningful profiling system and consultants Davis Langdon and Everest analyzed the materials. For more information, contact RM Consulting, Environment Team, Room 306, Royal London House, 22 Finsbury Square, London, EC2A INL. The Green Guide to Specification is available from GTI Specialist Publishers, telephone 01491.826262. — Green Futures, October-November 1997, p. 28. CAMBRIDGE COHOUSING In most ways, a new housing project nearing completion in Cambridge, Massachusetts will be like any other cohousing development. Residents will share extensive common-house facilities including a large kitchen, dining room, exercise room, library, children's room, two guest rooms, mail room, and offices. But Cambridge Cohousing will likely be among the most ecologically sound of these communities. Consisting of 41 housing units, a common house, and underground parking on 1.5 acres, the development reclaims an old industrial site next to a commuter rail line. Its exterior walls are 2 x 6 construction with R-19 fiberglass batt insulation. Cellulose insulation fills roofs and band joist areas. Steel studs partition the full basements and hold insulation at their exterior walls. Windows are aluminum-clad with low-e glass. A central plant with eight 10-ton ground-source heat pumps served by coolant loops in three 1,500-foot-deep wells heats and cools the entire project. At about $100/SF, the project's construction cost is below the average in Cambridge. For more information, email Stella Tarnay at the GreenVillage Company, starnay@world.std.com. — Environmental Building News, October 1997, p. 6.