Week 7

Activity 7.3 - Building design near you

A building or part of an urban landscape that indicates a design that is adapted to a changing climate.

A well-known building that has been adapted to a changing climate is the former Ovaltine Egg Farm in Kings Langley, Herts, WD4 8LR. In 2002 the farm buildings were converted into headquarters offices for Renewable Energy Systems Ltd. (RES)



The building is now known as Beaufort Court, and as you would expect, the conversion incorporates a number of features which adapt it for climate change.

A comprehensive description of the building can be found online, but the main features are:

Energy generation

225 kW wind turbine (visible from M25 motorway)
54 sq m of hybrid photo-voltaic / thermal (PVT) panels
116 sq m of solar thermal panels.
5 hectares of 'Elephant Grass' to fuel biomass boiler in winter
75m deep borehole for cooling in summer

Energy storage

A large underground seasonal heat store allows heat generated from the PVT and solar thermal panels in the summer to be used later during cold weather.

"Greening"

The inner office areas are covered by a grass roof
Boxed Hornbeam trees in front of windows provide shade in summer, and allow light into office during winter.

Activity 7.8 - Reflection

Week 7 covered three main themes:

1. The huge variety of factors that must be considered when designing new buildings to survive through expected climate changes, and even more when looking at making existing buildings more resilient
    
2. Advantages of bottom-up approaches for gaining acceptance of renewable energy systems which change the appearance of familiar landscapes and buildings, compared with top-down approaches which generate resistance to change
    
3. An example of "carbon budget" approach, whereby everyone in a locality can see how their own actions contribute to reducing carbon emissions.  I think this approach can be usefully applied where I live.

Clearly, mastering all the aspects of building for climate change is obviously a lifetime career!

I hadn't realised the extent of UK government efforts which stem from the Climate Change Act of 2008, such as individual Departmental Climate Change Adaptation Plans, Energy Roadmap to 2020, Technology Strategy, Building Regulations & materials, Planning guidance, and so-on. I wonder how well these plans have survived under the government's austerity programme.

As someone who suffers more than many from cold, it hadn't occurred to me that keeping cool in summer is likely to be more important than keeping warm in winter.

I was puzzled why there seem to be relatively few campaigns against wind turbines in our local area. On a recent flight over Portugal we could see large numbers of turbines on every hill, and I was told that 70% of that country's energy demand is no met from renewable sources.

However, our area is relatively flat and average wind speeds are below 7m/sec, which seems to be a critical factor, so there aren't many locations where turbines are financially viable around here. The turbine at Beaufort Court shown above may have been approved because it is near the motorway, rather than "beautiful unspoilt countryside".

Particularly useful documents this week are the Design for future climate and Beating the Heat, and the Guardian article by Rebecca Willis on developing the Lake District's carbon budget.

Week 6

Although I know London tends to be warmer when I visit the city, I did not know about Urban Heat Islands, or why measures to counteract them can be so effective, such as trees and green spaces, or painting roofs and other surfaces white. Surely, solar panels also reflect infra-red rays back into space?

Today in UK we're already seeing the impact of climate change on food production, with large areas of prime agricultural land submerged below the water in the Somerset Levels, Thames Valley & Kent. Some estimates say it will take well over a year for the land to dry out and become productive again.

It started me thinking that perhaps food security is an even more urgent issue that climate change. The farmers who have been forced to leave the Levels appear mostly to produce dairy and beef products, which humans can live without, at least for much of the time.


I had a small difficulty in the quiz: Prof Gurr's transcript says that pathogens are moving towards higher latitudes at 7km per year, rather than 3km per year in the quiz. Which figure is correct?

I spent some time revisiting books I read in the 1980's about food supplies, such as Buckminster Fuller's "Ho-Ping Food for Everyone", and more recent writings on Permaculture from the Transition movement.

Once again, Wikipedia has a good body of articles on Agriculture, incliuding on Permaculture, Polyculture, Aquaponics. The UK government initiated a project to reduce food waste, which has excellent suggestions for reducing waste - see WRAP Waste & Resources Action Programme - http://www.wrap.org.uk

Week 5

At my second attempt I got through the course (15/15 again) and here are my reflections:

1. Themes:

a) Besides reducing the amount of sunlight reflected back into space, loss of ice cover on land at the N & S Poles will cause large sea level rise, much greater than loss of ice cover on mountains

b) It is difficult to predict future loss of polar ice caps with accuracy, for example, Arctic sea ice has retreated more rapidly than expected. Hence it is essential to monitor developments closely and improve understanding of ice loss mechanisms at the poles.

c) Ocean acidification (OA) occurs because CO2 is being absorbed in sea water at faster rates than the production of carbonate ions through weathering of rocks and dissolving shells of dead organisms. The resulting chemical interactions leave higher concentrations of acidic hydrogen ions, reducing the pH value of seawater.

d) Invertebrate organisms will be slow to adapt to harmful effects of OA. They are at the bottom of aquatic food chains, so loss of these organisms will lead to loss of larger aquatic species.

2. Difficult:

New terminology & processes: positive/negative mass balance, basal lubrication, phytoplancton, chemistry of OA.

3. Interesting:

OA is a completely new area to me.

4. Research:

Proportion of world's population living in coastal areas likely to be affected by sea level rise:

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-change/impacts/sea_level_rise/

5. Useful sites:

 

Wikipedia has many pages on climate change and related issues, e.g.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_the_Arctic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

Week 4

Reflections on Week 4

This week's sessions were about better understanding the physics and mathematical elements of climate models, and gaining an appreciation of  several geoengineering schemes for Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) as well as assessing the value of these schemes.

I successfully download the BOINC climate modelling client to my Linux laptop, but encountered difficulties connecting it to www.climateprediction.net via Gridrepublic. The client seemed to report there was no data to process on the tasks I selected.

Downloading the ZEMB spreadsheet was more successful, I completed 60% of the exercises before running out of time. However I did enough to understand the tipping points which might have caused the ancient climate to shift between "snowball earth" and ice-free conditions.

I find working with simulation models and spreadsheets extremely helpful to understand how models work and the role of different variables.

Wikipedia helped me find the number of "boxes" in HADCM3, and what is meant by "Ocean sulfur cycle enhancement". Pleased again to achieve 15/15.

The website at earthobservatory.nasa.gov has a fantastic collection of images, and useful articles on many aspects of climate change which we have already covered.

John Englart's Climate Citizen blog has an alarming article (http://goo.gl/zCTpkh) about very recent decisions by the Australian Government to develop coal mining at the Galilee basin in Central Queensland, coupled with destruction of part of the Great Barrier Reef to enable coal shipments. I am shocked that so few organisations are having such a huge impact, and would like to know about any campaigns to stop them.