WEEK 4 Pre-session

Review of Are we ready for zero carbon buildings?

This article demonstrates the definition of zero carbon buildings, which is also known as ‘carbon zero’, ‘carbon neutral’, ‘zero energy’ or ‘zero emission’, and some of the issues which should be considered. It refers to the building which use the renewable energy on the site resulting in an equal net amount of energy or the net energy that the building took.

In addition, the construction of zero carbon buildings contains various technologies. As the example illustrated in the article, the Josh’s House, it represents 10 star energy house with comparable cost. The main design principle includes the solar passive approach which maximizing the thermal comfort of the building without additional air-conditioning and heating facilities.

However, future of zero carbon need a strong support of government and industry as the new zero carbon buildings were fail due to the increase cost and regulation in UK in 2016.

Therefore, I believe that the passive solar design could be a basic design principle of housing design in terms of orientation and planning, to reduce the energy consumption and the cost of that amount of energy. However, the zero carbon design is not suitable for all projects, such as some of the high rise buildings. On the grounds that the the photovoltaic system is much harder to installed in the high rise buildings. And the energy consumption is quite large. Then, in some of the design, the materials could increase the embodied energy.

WEEK 3 Pre-session Reflections

Review of Are Cool Roofs Green? The Answer’s Not Black and White

This article is about the advantages and disadvantages of the cool roof. However, due to the different building type and detail construction, the roof are not as beneficial as it expected in terms of energy reductions. It illustrates that more heat can be brought into building by the cool roof which is white and high reflective surface whereas the black roof will reduce effect of heat conduct.

There are different attitudes on that. Some hold that the temperature would be remained or increased by touching the increasing temperature surface, nevertheless, this point of view will not affect too much due to the decreasing global temperature.

There are also different factors affect on he cool roof, including snow and glare. The snow can be seen as adding the ‘R-value’ to the roof, and the glare can reflect the radiation, then the among of radiation can be absorbed by the building.

In addition, the consideration of the effect of the natural environment, architects’ design and the relative occupants should be taken account. Also, as the article mentions that the temperature of surrounding neighborhood has been raised by the stainless steel panels facade in Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

In conclusion, I believe that using cool roof can effectively reduce energy consumption, but we should consider the way of achieving the requirement.

WEEK 2 Post-session Reflections

Review of Slash Australians’ power bills by beheading a duck at night

The article clearly demonstrates the number of energy budgets can be saved by reducing the electricity consumption. Then, the peak period of energy consumption of household is from 7pm. to 10pm as Simshauser (2012) shows. During the night period, it is suggestive that increasing the battery storage of the solar PV panels is a practical way to extending the using time.In addition, it also mention that finding a way to decrease the peak demand will effectively reduce all energy costs.

We should consider how to reduce the energy on warming up our homes, rather than cooling down. Trying to achieve that, we could add some appropriate shading elements on the sunning orientation. Also, we could install the insulation in-between the wall to keep the internal temperature. Additionally, the mix use of low energy appliances is an efficient approach to reduce the peak evening demand.

In conclusion, i believe that the solar PV panels is a practical and long-term sustainable method on reducing the energy consumption.

 Alex

WEEK 2 Pre-session Reflections

A single tonne of CO2

The clear explanation of sustainability( in terms of social, environmental and economical) and CO2 are defined in this video. Unfortunately, since 1990, the global CO2 emission has risen 50%. I have summarized few key points from the video. Firstly, the Carbon footprints are divided into 6 key GHGs categories. Secondly, the video suggests three perspectives to reduce the emissions of CO2e, including transportation, food and materials). Specifically, different transportation can release different amount of CO2 by traveling different distance. Also, we should take account of the food production and materials consumption in the way of living. Lastly, the London Olympics was taken as an example to inspire developer to use the cable-net structure and low carbon concrete in the future development.

A 40-year plan for energy

The main energy consumption in USA contains the non-renewable sources, including coal and oil. But nowadays, more industries are trying to use renewable energy rather than non-renewable energy to obtain benefits and reduce costs in producing and developing. To use new type of energy can help to reduce the emissions of GHGs,also it minimizes costs. In terms of energy in supply and demand, we need to explore more types of energy or renewable resources to support our requirement with a lower cost.