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Do we need new housing to cope with the changing climate?
The wholesale replacement of a nation's housing stock - both public and private - may not be on the priority list of any government today. But a report by Oxford University's Environmental Change Unit suggests such strategies will be unavoidable if the world is to stem the ravages of global warming.
Using Britain as its example, the unit has calculated that over the next 45 years the country's annual rate of housing demolitions will need to increase fourfold. At the same time it will be necessary to construct a whole new generation of homes that are so energy-efficient - and self-sufficient - that it will not even be necessary to connect them to the national electricity grid.
Tens of thousands of today's homes will also have to be refurbished to make them equally self-sufficient - and any house built before 1919 will almost certainly have to be knocked down because it will be just too expensive to bring up to the new standards. The implications for energy utilities, let alone any other sector, are profound and echo the warning just issued by major institutional investors that future government interventions to combat climate change will be of such magnitude that some companies - including energy utilities - will be undermined.
The strategy of the Environmental Change Unit is outlined in the unit's new research report, "The 40% House Project". The report's title refers to the strategic aim of creating a housing stock that is responsible for producing no more than 40% of the carbon dioxide emissions that are produced (directly and indirectly) by houses today.
Today Britain's residential sector accounts for 30% of the country's energy demand - and that level of consumption is growing fast.
But the Environmental Change Unit believes that even with today's technology it would be possible to not only stem that growth but to reverse it and build homes that are non-polluting and energy self-sufficient.
The scan also showed:
Remodelling sea change
Australia's "sea change" towns - including WA's Bunbury and Busselton - often have populations that struggle with low incomes and socio-economic disadvantage, according to Dr Nicole Gurran of Sydney University's Planning Research Centre. She says retirees are no longer the major drivers of coastal population growth and instead it is young people in search of cheaper housing. "Housing affordability is the main factor affecting the decisions of low income earners and income support recipients to move to non-metropolitan areas," Dr Gurran said. But she does not believe such population mixtures will translate into communities with thriving economies. Dr Gurran, who has recently co-authored a report, "Meeting the Sea Change Challenge", says similar problems can be found from Cairns to Grant in South Australia. She says other countries have tackled similar problems and believes their solutions should be reviewed with the aim of developing a best-practice model for Australia.
Fire watch
An international research program has been launched to perfect new hi-tech sensors that will provide fire emergency crews with detailed information of what is happening to the interiors of major buildings in the case of fire. The idea is to perfect a new sensor system that will provide instant updates on the spread of fire or toxic smoke and provide data on how the building's structure is behaving under the strain. The project, which has come in the aftermath of the 9/11 World Trade Centre disaster, is being led by a research team at Edinburgh University. According to one of the researchers, Dr Asif Usmani, it is envisaged that the so-called "FireGrid" system will be used initially in high-profile buildings such as airports, main railway stations, nuclear power plants and particularly high buildings. But although sensor technology is relatively advanced, considerable development is necessary to enable the sensors to operate in high temperatures. Dr Usmani said it might be a decade before the system is in full use.
Ecological footprints
Any public event produces a large "ecological footprint" but now in Wales, researchers at Cardiff University have calculated just how big it can be. According to a report in New Scientist, an ecological footprint for an event like Britain's FA Cup can create a footprint thousands of times the size of the pitch the game is played on. In fact University researcher, Andrea Collins has calculated that when the Cup was played at Cardiff's Millenium Stadium it produced an "ecological footprint" of 3051 hectares. She came to the conclusion by converting the energy and resources used on the day of the match into the hypothetical area of land needed to support the use of those resources. Energy consumed was converted into the area of forest needed to soak up the carbon dioxide generated in its production, while food consumption was represented as the amount of farmland needed to make it. More than half the footprint came from transport. The 73,000 supporters collectively travelled nearly 42 million kilometres to reach the match. Fewer than half travelled by car, but car use generated 68 per cent of the transport footprint. If those fans had travelled by bus instead the footprint would have been 399hectares smaller, she said. Had the organisers substituted beef steaks with chicken another 428 hectares would have been trimmed from the footprint. Ms Collins argues that such footprint measurements are useful management tools to assess the effect of activities. "We'd like to see organisations and policy makers look at the results and hopefully instigate measures to reduce the impact," she says.
(Editor's Note: Two years ago Canadian researchers found a link between road crashes and the outcomes of Super Bowl games - specifically in the towns supporting the losing side. See: TransScan May 2003 page 9)
