Nuns will harvest rainwater, use ground source heating and plant a wildflower meadow – while Bradford’s Anglicans install the UK’s first cathedral-roof solar power
Liverpool’s long association with the Roman Catholic faith is taking another step forward with the building of Europe’s largest new Carmelite monastery in Allerton.
The £3 million project includes the planting of 1500 trees and aims to give 30 Carmelite nuns the peace and quiet they have lost in their present home in busy West Derby.
Parabel AG (Berlin, Germany) announced that it has begun work on the first of 11 rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) plants totaling 6 MW in Brandenburg and Saxony, Germany.
Parabel’s concept involves the refurbishment of asbestos-containing roofs belonging to former agricultural production cooperatives, including re-cladding with metal sheet roofing and the installation of PV plants.
In the harsh climate for public spending, it’s good to learn of two northern housing initiatives: 800 new ‘affordable’ homes are planned for the Leeds city region over the next four years; and up to 3000 council-owned houses in York stand to get free solar power.
Yorkshire Housing has secured funding from the Government’s affordable homes programme for the new-build which will be shared between the 11 councils which make up Leeds CR: Barnsley, Bradford, Calderdale, Craven, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds, North Yorkshire, Selby, Wakefield and York.
Although net-zero projects have been creating a lot of buzz lately in the field of green building, the Sonnenschiff solar city in Freiburg, Germany is very much net positive. The self-sustaining city accomplishes this feat through smart solar design and lots and lots of photovoltaic panels pointed in the right direction. It seems like a simple strategy — but designers often incorporate solar installations as an afterthought, or worse, as a label. Designed by Rolf Disch, the Sonnenschiff (Solar Ship) and Solarsiedlung (Solar Village) emphasize power production from the start by smartly incorporating a series of large rooftop solar arrays that double as sun shades. The buildings are also built to Passivhaus standards, which allows the project to produce four times the amount of energy it consumes!
The annual energy bill for a typical single family American home is $1,255, resulting in $144 billion spent per year for 115 million U.S. households.
After their tryst with blatantly ambitiously sustainable projects, such as the Masdar City and Al-Raha green city, Dubai officials are now looking forth to scale down their focus on more public-oriented services. The general maintenance department of Dubai has envisioned a conscientious plan of installing solar powered toilets all over the grand city. According to them, it will have a two pronged beneficial effect of firstly increasing environmental awareness and, secondly, save the tax payer’s money on utilities in the long run.
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