Intensive research is underway for an effective vaccine for the COVID-19 virus. Once it’s discovered, the next challenge will be manufacturing and distributing it across the world. The ecological footprint left by global immunization campaigns and the refrigeration and transport they involve is often overlooked. Researcher Maria Croyle and her team have come up with a needle-free, shelf-stable delivery solution inspired from- candies!
EU not on track to meet its energy efficiency targets for 2020
While EU is on track to meet its 2020 greenhouse emission and renewable energy targets, energy efficiency will be a big miss. The targets that were set in 2012 failed to accurately predict the rise in energy consumption. In 2018, energy consumption of the whole EU was 5% above their 2020 target.
Tech innovations that may help reduce carbon impact
With the growing awareness about the need for reducing carbon emissions and embodied carbon in construction, there has been an influx of investment on creating software and tools that help achieving that. Whether it is understanding the materials used in the production of materials, or measuring carbon emissions of the production process or the carbon emission post construction, there’s a tool that can be used to calculate all of them. This in turn helps in targeting the ever so important goal of net zero carbon
Resilient plans may not be resilient enough to global crisis
The whole world is preparing for the challenge of climate change and the major urban cities have created resilience plans for the same. While these plans include energy efficiency and clean energy, there are only a few cities that have extensive initiatives in place. ACEEE conducted a global survey looking at some of the plans and shared its findings and recommendations.
India should focus on becoming more energy efficient
Energy efficiency is the most cost-effective climate mitigation option. The primary energy intensity improvement in India slowed down for a third consecutive year. While there have been steps taken in 2019 that bode well for the future, there needs to be more initiatives from the government and the people to make strides in making India more energy efficient.
2020 Greenbuild Leadership Award winners in India
In recognition of their work in advancing the development of sustainable and resilient buildings, cities and communities, architect & engineer Padma Shri Ar C N Raghavendran along with 5 organizations – Citi, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Ltd., GMR Group, Infosys Limited and Tata Realty & Infrastructure were awarded the 2020 Greenbuild Leadership Awards at this year’s Greenbuild India conference by The U.S. Green Building Council.
WorldGBC sets goals to tackle embodied carbon levels
With the growing awareness about carbon emission sources, the attention is now increasing towards lowering the embodied carbon which amounts to 11% of the annual global emissions. As operational emissions have decreased with increased renewables and energy efficiency measures, embodied carbon, which until now has remained hidden further down the supply chain, has become the biggest climate problem from buildings. WorldGBC has issued a bold new vision of
- By 2030, reducing embodied carbon in new constructions by 40%
- By 2050, achieving net zero embodied carbon in new constructions
Key target areas to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions by 2020
While achieving net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050 is realistic, it needs concentrated effort. Three key areas which will be crucial in achieving this are: scaling up technologies that help us reduce carbon emissions (from renewable energy generation to carbon capture and storage), policy changes incentivizing said technologies and generating demand for them.
Denmark investing in Hydrogen energy
The Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities is set to invest DKK 128 million in the construction of two large-scale electrolysis plants, in hopes that the country’s surplus of green energy can be used to facilitate hydrogen production. It expects to do away with fossil fuel by 2050 and rely on renewable energy completely.
Ireland to focus on a near zero energy future for housing
The Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Damien English, T.D., has called on the construction industry to be prepared for the revised building regulations that apply to all new dwellings commencing construction from 1st November 2019 subject to transitional arrangements. The new regulations aim to make all new residential dwellings 70% more energy efficient and emit 70% less carbon dioxide than the performance requirements in 2005.
NZEB goals assisting the rise of Building-Integrated Photovoltaics
While building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) has been commercially available for use since the 1990s, we are finally seeing them playing a larger role in the construction business. Evolving regulations in leading jurisdictions like California and Germany are driving the BIPV. Incorporating solar generation in commercial building materials may finally become a mainstream practice, with both solar windows and solar panels used to create net-zero buildings.
Carbon capture and storage to be key in achieving net-zero carbon goals
Almost all our remaining carbon budget as defined by the Paris Agreement will be depleted by emissions from current, under construction and operational infrastructure. It doesn’t take into account – new industrial & power infrastructure and growing urbanization and population. Hence, while continuing to build out clean and renewable sources of energy at even greater speed, the commercialization of clean energy technologies, particularly carbon capture and storage (CCS), will be key to significantly and quickly reduce emissions from hard-to-abate industrial sectors and power plants.
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