Sustainable Development Construction

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Background
Lecture 2

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• Sustainability
• Sustainable Development
• Substitutability
• Deep Ecology
• Factor 4 and Factor 10
• Carrying Capacity
• Ecological Footprint
• Ecological Rucksack
• Adaptive Management
• Ecological Economics
• Environmental Ethics
• Clean Production
• Industrial Ecology
• Eco-efficiency
• MIPS

Some New Vocabulary
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Main Points

• Our current resource consumption and destruction
  of natural systems is unsustainable.
• Humankind can live sustainably if and only if it
  controls its population, lives within natures
  resources, and extensively protects natural
  systems.
• Construction industry has disproportionate
  impacts on the environment and resources.
• There is no inherent conflict between protecting
  the environment and a strong human economy
  because the environment is the support system for
  all human activity. Anthony Cortese, Earth Day
  1995

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Critical Environmental Problems

• Loss of Biodiversity
• Polluted Air and Water
• Destruction of Productive Ecosystems
• Loss of Productive Soil
• Greenhouse Warming
• Ozone Depletion

Summary Loss of Critical Natural Capital
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Correlation CO2 and Temperature
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CO2 Concentration vs. Time
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Contributions to Global Warming
Gas Percent Contribution Carbon
Dioxide 50 Methane 19 CFCs 17 Tropos
pheric Ozone 8 Nitrous Oxide 4
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Services Provided by Natural Systems

• Food and water for wildlife
• Pest control
• Recreation and tourism
• Grazing for domesticated animals
• Noise barriers and separation
• Natural fires
• Carbon, energy, water storage
• Hazard reduction

• Air quality enhancement
• Soils for food, wood, paper production
• Ambient temperature enhancement
• Dampening flood peaks
• Filtering/recharging groundwater
• Erosion control
• Renewable energy
• Pollination
• Evaportranspiration

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Worth of Ecosystem

• Costanza et al 1997, The value of the worlds
  ecosytem goods and services, Nature,
  387253-260.
• Pollination, Raw Materials Production, Water
  Supply, Waste Recycling Pollution Control,
  Recreation Education, Climate and Atmosphere
  Regulation, Soil Formation and Erosion Control,
  Control of Pests Diseases
• Value of services US16 to US54 trillion
• World GNP US18 trillion
• Ecosystem-to-GNP ratio 1.8

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Exhaustion of Natural Resources

• Rainforest loss 1 acre per second
• Annual temperate forest loss 4 million hectares
  (Siberia), 1 million hectares (Canada)
• Forests 40 (1,000 years ago) 30 (1900) 20
  (today)
• Loss of 20 of all species by 2030
• Grain production 465 MT (1987) 229 MT (1996)
• Fisheries 22 MT (1950) 100 MT (1987) 90 MT
  (1995)
• Movement of more material than natural forces
• Loss of 24 billion tons of topsoil annually

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Oil Crisis 1974
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Hubberts Pimple - Oil Consumption
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Availability of Common Metals
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Carrying Capacity Ecological Footprint

• Carrying Capacity
• ...the maximum population that can be sustained
  in a habitat without the degradation of the
  life-support system.
• sustained, instantaneous, maximum, optimum,
  human, physical, hydrologic, global, biophysical,
  real, and natural carrying capacity, carrying
  capacity per resource, KL
• UN forecast of between 7.7 and 12 billion people
  in the year 2050. In 1995 the worlds population
  was 5.7 billion with an annual growth rate of
  1.6, creating a doubling time of 43 years. Wide
  variety of estimates as to how many people the
  world can support.

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Ecological Footprint

• Ecological Footprint (EF) is the quantity of land
  needed to support a person, population, activity,
  or and economy.
• Londons impacts on ecosystems when analysis
  indicates that its EF is 120 times its physical
  footprint
• The Dutch have an EF 15 times greater than their
  actual land area
• The available land per person to produce the
  required goods and services and assimilate their
  waste is about 1.5 hectares. Americans are using
  3x their Earth Share.

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Energy Requirements Virgin vs. Recycled
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But...

• Recycling is subject to physics and
  thermodynamics
• Each cycle produce less materials and often at
  lower quality
• Materials tend to disperse until concentration is
  at the background in nature
• Downcycling is more prevalent than recycling

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Materials Efficiency

• MIPS Materials Intensity per Service Unit (The
  Wuppertal Institute)
• Ecological Rucksack Micrograms v. Megatons
• 10 grams gold 350 tons of earth
• MIPS1350,000
• 1 CD 3,000 pages
• Data Transmission via fiberoptics

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Some Remedies

• Precycling Design for the Environment (DFE)
• For the built environment
• Design for deconstruction
• Design products for disassembly
• Use recyclable materials
• Shift the economics in favor of cyclic systems
• Increase costs of disposal
• Increase taxes for pollution
• Increase penalties for damage to natural systems
• A question of national will and policy

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Resource Consumption
1. Live better 2. Pollute and deplete less 3.
Make money 4. Harness markets enlist
business 5. Multiply the use of scarce capital 6.
Increase security 7. Be equitable have more
employment
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GM Ultralite Hypercar
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Ford Synergy 2010
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PV Roof
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Wind Energy
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Low Head Hydro
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Concluding Thoughts

• Sustainability is difficult to achieve but
  ultimately a necessity.
• Present trends make sustainability an
  impossibility.
• Huge increases in resource efficiency are
  required.
• Construction industry must participate for
  sustainability to succeed.
• Green, high performance buildings are
  construction industrys response to the problems
  of environmental degradation and resource
  consumption.