I'm blogging about my on-going journey to establish my web presence at my other blog. The 2 posts that pertain, in particular are:
I've become conflicted about maintaining my blog here at Vox.
No offence to the Vox staff; this is certainly one of the best blogging services I'm aware of. But there's something about blogger that appeals to me.
I'm test driving it, at http://filsalustri.blogspot.com. I like the greater flexibility to change the look & feel of the blog (I think look & feel is really, really important), and I like the way they handle the use of widgets.
On the other hand, I really like the Vox editor, and the fine-grained control you can exert over who sees your blog. I also like the notion of Vox groups and neighbourhoods.
Of course, the real solution to my dilemma is to design a solution. I don't mean creating my own blogging software (although I'm working on that too); I mean making an informed choice by considering why I feel so conflicted.
And if I had the time to sit down and run the process - something that I know how to do very well - I'm sure I'd resolve my conflict. But real life gets in the way, and I just don't have the time to do it.
So I will keep the matter in my hind-brain (actually, in my white matter), on a low simmer, and wait for inspiration to strike.
Georgia Tech has a cool idea: they want to capture carbon emissions in a car, and recycle it into new fuel not based on petroleum. Existent sequestration techniques don't address physically small sources of carbon emissions - but these sources apparently account for two-thirds of global carbon emissions.
In the first stage of the project, carbon will be captured on-board from conventional fuels. When you refuel, you drop off the accumulated carbon gunge. That is then shipped to a processing station to be turned into a new fuel. Eventually, when the system ramps up, there'll be enough synthetic fuel that fossil fuels won't be needed.
What I like about this is the systems view. It's also interesting that they put the sequestration machinery at the source - the car. I also like their two-stage approach, which will help adoption. I think one of the publications pertaining to this is here. The original article I read is here.
There's a book soon to be published by David J.C. MacKay, a Cambridge University professor, called Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air. There's a draft available for free at http://withouthotair.com/. The site has a number of other interesting documents, including a 4-page summary of the book, and a fascinating experiment with mobile phone chargers. There's even a link to a list of all the URLs in his book - very convenient and thoughtful.
I had the pleasure of meeting Prof. MacKay whilst on sabbatical in summer 2007. What struck me most about him (besides the wry British wit which, I'm told, is due to something in the water) was how level-headed he was. This, I think, comes through in his book.
The Chicago Tribune (2 Jan 2008) reported that the Dutch engineering firm Ooms Avenhorn Holding BV
is working on a way to extract heat from street asphalt via pipes
embedded in the road. Heat is gathered in water passed under the
asphalt and stored in natural aquifers, from which it is pumped when
needed for keeping the roads ice-free. The system can also be used to
pump cool water from underground to keep buildings cool in the summer. And it could cut back on the need for salting and sanding of roads.
The company found that their pilot project was also generating excess energy, so they started routing the heated water into buildings to augment other sources of heat in cold weather. While the installation currently costs about twice as much as conventional gas heating systems, it results in lower operating costs and up to 50% savings in carbon emissions.
Believe it or not, Ecotec is apparently going to run a truck that runs on processed chocolate through parts of Africa. Three tons of wasted chocolate were used to make 396 gallons of biofuel. Apparently, burning that biofuel does less damage than landfilling the chocolate, which would then generate methane. Which makes the undertaking appear carbon-negative (so they say). I'd like to see the math on that. Apparently, a single British chocolate company generates 5,000 tons of waste chocolate a year. That's enough to make 660,000 gallons of biofuel per year - from just one company's waste.
What do designers need to design sustainable products?
There are many analytic tools out there. SDTC's STAR process and Okala are just two. It's been made evident to me that engineers take to these tools easily enough. I would wager that generic designers could do the same - assuming they can use excel and look numbers up in a table.
The problem with analytic tools is that they're after the (design) fact - you use them to figure out what you did wrong. Our goal ought to be to figure out how to do it right the first time. In a perfect world, Okala wouldn't be needed cuz you'd know it was as good as it was going to get.
While I think Okala is especially interesting and worth 'pushing' in some way, the main question is: how does one define 'design activities' such that there's some guarantee of sustainability from the outset.
I also think that it's not that big a problem methodologically, but it is a big problem politically & psychologically. Designing is a kind of problem solving where you balance a bunch of different factors that conflict (e.g. cost v quality). None of the design methods that I'm aware of make specific commitments to a defined set of factors. This means that all we have to do is add 'sustainability' as a factor. In the case of some methods, it's literally that simple.
Assume we could do that, and have a design process that embeds sustainability. The real problem is convincing people that its a good/valid process. Using it would be a 'risk.' To knock that down, we actually have to apply the process to the design of things and then analyzing the designs (with Okala or other things) to demonstrate it.
If we can demonstrate that the process works, then people will be more likely to accept it.
So I see the following research program:
- Establish a design process with sustainability built in.
- Publish it broadly.
- Find industries willing to let a 'third party' (e.g. a school like Ryerson, or a consortium of schools) help them design things using the process as pilot projects. Also run workshops and courses where the process is applied to real problems.
There is one problem in developing the process: decision making on matters of sustainability is context-dependent, and the context-sensitive information needed for such decisions isn't quite there yet. For instance, decisions about how to treat rainwater will depend whether you're in Arizona or Athabasca...or anywhere else for that matter.
Ideally what we'd want in this case is a method that evaluates a design with respect to a certain context. From a computer-y or mathematical point of view, the method would be like a procedure that takes the design as an argument, along with other key parameters that describe the context, and produce an evaluative result - like an impact factor. You could use the same method to then describe the same design used in different settings.
If this is a worthwhile goal, the question is: How do we understand what goes into that procedure? I think the answer will come little by little, and by doing examples: perform manually an analysis of the same design in two different settings/contexts. Look for similarities and differences. Come up with a heuristic that applies. Now do it again, for another product or design. Look for more heuristics. As you collect more heuristics, you can start to study the heuristics themselves, and find (hopefully) universal principles. This will allow the overall algorithm to start to get integrated.
...just some late night thoughts.
On the weird side of things: There's an electric eel in Japan that is powering the lights on a Christmas Tree.
Say it with me: D'oh!
I ain't kidding. See this treehugger article and the youtube video.
Does anyone know of eels feel pain when they discharge? I seem to remember something like that, but I couldn't find anything on Google.
The real question is: is this an energy solution? What if there were a farm of these eels - thousands of 'em - would the electricity be enough to do anything useful, given the expense of keeping the eels alive?
Let's just hope Detroit doesn't figure out how to run a car on eel-power....
This is my first post, so be gentle.
On 26 Nov 2007, I attended part of the Sustainable Building meeting held at York University and run by the Canadian Standards Association. Here's a few notes and ideas from that session.
Note: Any problems in these notes are errors on my part and do not reflect errors of the presenters or organizers or the meeting.
Interesting links:
- ISO 21930: sustainability in building construction - environmental declaration of building products
- peakoil.ie: association for the study of peak oil & gas, Ireland
- SBTool 07: a downloadable tool designed to assess the environmental and sustainability performance of buildings
- MSGB v2.0: Minnesota Sustainable Building Guidelines (downloadable) - based on requirements & recommendations, not on a certification/rating system.
- Green Building Initiative: "a not for profit organization whose mission is to accelerate the adoption of building practises that result in energy-efficient, healthier and environmentally sustainable buildings by promoting credible and practical green building approaches for residential and commercial construction." This American initiative is entirely web-based, and some regionalization is possible.
- Athena Institute: has downloadable spreadsheet tools for lifecycle assessment. (Canada)
- EcoAction: site connecting business with environmentalism, sustainability, etc. (Canada)
- Regionalization was noted as a pressing, but entirely unresolved issue.
- Design for disassembly of buildings is generally seen as a radical idea, even though its quite commonplace in many kinds of engineering. Perhaps "they" should be talking to "us" engineers about that more?
- Material selection is largely a matter of "trade-offs" between different characteristics. However, the standard behaviour these days seems still based on treating a single characteristic as the only one that matters. Again, this kind of trade-off analysis is something very well understood in other areas of engineering.
- A significant question at the government level seems to be whether to adopt a rating system or a standards approach. I wonder why not a standard based on a rating system and get the best of both worlds?
- There was also some discussion about how standards can/should be adapted. Obviously some adaptation can be necessary. I think the solution is the need for frameworks or even meta-standards to guide the adaptation process.
- A lifecycle inventory database is an (usually) online system that provides the "raw" data needed to perform lifecycle analyses. The US and Switzerland have them; there may be one in Japan too. Canada does not have one. Here's something an SDI could work on? Try this google search to find out more about these things.
