Bere Admin June 14th, 2010
At the same time as driving for energy efficiency, the UK must de-carbonise the electricity supply without creating toxic nuclear waste hazards for the planet and for future generations. Wind energy offers the solution for the UK:
The Offshore Valuation is the first full economic valuation of Britain’s offshore renewable resource.
The report finds that using just one third of the UK’s wind, wave and tidal resource could:
- unlock the electricity equivalent of 1 billion barrels of oil a year (matching North Sea oil and gas production).
- give CO2 reductions of 1.1 billion tonnes by 2050
- create 145,000 new UK jobs
The Offshore Valuation Group is an informal collaboration of government and industry organisations who have come together to address the question: what is the value of the UK’s offshore renewable energy resource?
offshore_valuation_full.pdf
www.offshorevaluation.org
Bere Admin February 10th, 2010
The Camden passivhaus home is about knowledge transfer from Austria and Germany and the Welsh Passivhaus project is about trying to apply this knowledge to social housing prototypes. We are also working on a terraced Welsh Passivhaus home to save more money and energy than detached houses.
Where there is political will, such as in Wales, we believe it is possible to achieve 90% energy savings in houses now. This is in spite of the Welsh heads of valley location having Winter conditions as unfavourable as an Austrian mountainside. This is because, whilst the winter outdoor temperatures in Wales are warmer than Austria, there is a lot less winter sun on a Welsh hill than on an Austrian mountain.
We are trying to show that the UK can and should be making massive savings on all new buildings NOW. The less-developed world is understandably becoming very frustrated with the lack of action from the developed world. Two days ago, the chief negotiator for India at the Copenhagen and Mexico climate change conferences described the overall achievements so far of the UK, America and Australia as “pathetic” and he is absolutely right about this.
Bere Admin November 6th, 2009
Read the original post here
Justin Bere, 6th Nov 2009
Amanda, if you are searching the internet for scientific facts, may I suggest that you dip into Cambridge Professor David JC MacKay’s extremely scientific and highly respected book at www.withouthotair.com. There you will see graphs showing the big rise in atmospheric CO2 levels that occurred between about 1800 and 2000. Scientific fact.
To those who remain sceptical about the cause of this, MacKay asks “does sceptic mean someone who has not even glanced at the data? Don’t you think, just possibly, something may have happened between 1800AD and 2000AD? Something that was not part of the natural processes present in the preceding thousand years? Continue Reading »
Bere Admin November 6th, 2009
Amanda Baillieu shocks Building Design readers with her claim that the science of global warming is just ‘hot air’ (the text of this article was toned down Monday 9th November, 9pm)
November 6th 2009, Amanda Baillieu today wrote a shocking article in Building Design. In her title piece, she refers to “the increasing evidence against man-made climate change” however she does not explain what she means by this and appears to have no real interest or grasp of the issues. When challenged to substantiate her claim, she did no more than refer to “the dizzying range of ideas that are being debated” – without giving details of a single one of them.
Her ‘twitter’ site gives some indication of what is behind this. Items 2, 4, 13, 17, 18 below are written by Ms Baillieu. Ref to no.18 at 10.03am on Nov 4th indicates that it seems to have started by an article she read in the Guardian about a judge finding that someone was discriminated against for his environmental principles. At 10.07am she exclaimed to the world “Basically believing in man made climate change is a bit like hoping that fairies live at the bottom of the garden.”
This is followed by some mind-numbingly vacant utterances from another journalist and a designer. (who’s home page curiously says “We are the leading UK consultancy working across public health, sustainability and planning.”)
Continue Reading »
Bere Admin June 17th, 2009
In an ideal world the police would be impartial upholders of all fair and just laws; of course with the proviso that the legal system, based on logic and reason, can challenge unjust or outdated laws.
However many people who have experienced a burglary, a theft, injury by dangerous driving or been a victim of countless other crimes will have concluded that the police were too busy or disinterested or even incapable of helping. The usual reason given is that the police were too busy to cope. That is effectively an admission that cases are prioritised according to an agenda. But who lays down that agenda? Is it senior police officers or is it left to the conscience of the individual police officer? If anyone who knows would tell me, I would be interested to hear from you. Continue Reading »
Bere Admin May 17th, 2009
How Justin Bere’s rooftop native wildflower meadow provides important support for the local house sparrow population as well as evidence of the role of native planting in the support of a healthy ecosystem.
May 16th 2009: The local house sparrows have suddenly found my rooftop wildflower meadow very interesting. After the adults have fed themselves on sunflower seeds that they collect from nearby bird feeders, they have taken to flying over to the native wild flower meadow roof where they collect beak-fulls of insects and fly off, presumably carrying them to their fledgling chicks. I have noticed that the sparrows are most interested in the Common Vetch native wild flower which is abundant on the roof thanks to ecologist and green roof expert, Dusty Gedge’s planting advice. Close inspection shows that the Common Vetch is host to an abundant supply of huge juicy aphids; one of the favourite foods for baby sparrows, and essential for the survival of the first of the season’s brood of chicks. Further research (below) indicates that Common Vetch is known to be unusually attractive for aphids and that by supporting healthy aphid populations, the Common Vetch in turn supports the declining house sparrow population. I believe that this may indicate a strong link between native Common Vetch and a healthy sparrow population. It also suggests more broadly that green roofs planted with native wildflowers may provide a particularly high level of support for native ecosystems that may not be immediately obvious to many green roof specifiers. Continue Reading »
Bere Admin April 18th, 2009
Since taking up cycling for all trips, sometimes in combination with the train, the car has been sitting in a friend’s garage without even seeing it for 6 years and then for 2 years since I had it back, I used it just a couple of times. Also my motorcycle has just been sitting in the garage unused apart from taking it for an annual MOT. Although I knew I didn’t need either vehicle, it’s been very, very hard to let them go for sentimental reasons.
To many of us, motor vehicles seem more and more vulgar with every year that goes by. This particularly applies to those grossly oversized vehicles that people convince themselves they ‘need’. What would their great-grandparents have thought if they could see the excesses and waste of their descendants in the early 21st century? It becomes more and more obvious that the environmental, health and social problems caused by motor transport make our unthinking reliance on these crazy metal boxes just plain daft and unacceptable. Furthermore for people to see beauty in the shape of these ugly and dangerous metal carts becomes increasingly passé and quite sad. I believe that our grandchildren will look back and ask us why we were so stupid.
So car and motorcycle are up for sale, hopefully stopping someone buying a new one.
Bere Admin April 11th, 2009
I am attending the excellent annual beekeeping course at Roots and Shoots, following in my father’s footsteps as a beekeeper. However unlike most of my fellow students, I’m NOT becoming a beekeeper because of an interest in maximizing a supply of honey for family and friends. My father and other beekeeping relatives made me aware years ago of the difficulties caused by the spread of the Varroa which has wiped out 30% - 50% of UK honey bees since 1992. What I have discovered through careful questioning of the more scientific lecturers is that it is beekeepers who are responsible for the spread of the Varroa mite. This little mite lived in a reasonably symbiotic relationship with Asian bees. These tropical bees have a much easier life than European bees because there is much more nectar available for them. The Asian bee therefore doesn’t need to work so hard as a European bee and is genetically more docile and less energetic. The Varroa mite was therefore less of a problem to the Asian bee. Continue Reading »
Bere Admin May 18th, 2008
Stuart Caunt started an awareness campaign in the bere:architects office to stop us chucking our batteries into the bin and ultimately into landfill. After 6 months of putting our batteries into the jar on Stuart’s desk, we gathered quite a sizeable collection. The sight of this growing collection is a continual reminder to think about ways of avoiding using batteries. The next task will be to see how easy it is to get the batteries disposed of in an environmentally satisfactory way. Continue Reading »
Bere Admin May 18th, 2008
The picture shows the incoming air filter in the heat recovery ventilation unit in my London house after 6 months. Considering the quiet residential location of the house, I think most Londoners would be shocked to see that there is this amount of pollution in the air that we breath. I suspect that the cause is diesel fumes from lorries, vans, buses and taxis. Continue Reading »
Bere Admin March 13th, 2008
Justin Bere presented a philosophical lecture to the Geffrye Museum members’ 2008 annual general meeting. The talk explained the link between architecture and land resource management, particularly farming and food and energy production. Justin referred to Professor Tim Lang’s recent lecture at City University and lamented the lack of government planning that is clearly necessary in order to address the increasing and conflicting demands on land for housing, energy and food production. Continue Reading »
Bere Admin April 5th, 2007
Published by Ecotech
Commentary by Justin Bere
5 April 2007
Each spring Germany’s Passivhaus Institute holds its annual conference within a European city. The conference probably represents the largest gathering of low energy construction research academics and professionals in the world and without a doubt it presents the most experienced, the most scientific and the most professional low energy and ecological papers presented to construction professionals at any single international conference. Continue Reading »
