21 February 2019. the municipality of Lamspringe in Lower Saxony is the 100th drawing municipality.
For one in three Germans, the car is still a status symbol. But due to running costs and the scarcity of parking spaces, more and more city dwellers are giving up their own car. Is it worth relying completely on car sharing?
Source: WISO tip: Car sharing - ZDFmediathek
Keywords:
Construction and operating costs, CarSharing, DE-News, Mobility
10/2013: Europe's largest wooden house with straw insulation in Verden
The largest straw-insulated and directly plastered wooden house in Europe is being built in Verden from the oldest building materials known to man. The twenty-metre high natural building contains 38 tonnes of straw, 100 tonnes of clay and 200 tonnes of softwood.
www.weser-kurier.de/...artikel...
10/2013: Films "City of the Future" and "How does the city get fed?"
The following two recommendable films can be seen in the Arte Mediathek until 15.10.2013: "City of the Future" (45 min; first broadcast: 10/2013):
www.arte.tv/guide/de/047869-000/stadt-der-zukunft-zukunft-der-stadt
"How does the city get fed?" (53 min.; first broadcast: 10/2013):
www.arte.tv/guide/de/047870-000/wie-wird-die-stadt-satt
The films are also available from FechnerMedia:
DVD "City of the Future - Future of the City
http://shop.fechnermedia.com/katalog/filme/stadt-der-zukunft-zukunft-der-stadt
DVD "How to feed the city - The struggle for the food markets of the future".
http://shop.fechnermedia.com/katalog/filme/wie-wird-die-stadt-satt
9/2013: IBA Berlin 2020 Preliminary Studies
the downloads of the IBA Berlin 2020 preliminary studies are available here:
www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/.../iba/de/studien.shtml
8/2013: DIN standards on earthen building come into force
Since August 2013, binding standards for earthen construction have come into force in Germany for the first time since 1971. They apply to clay blocks, clay masonry and clay plaster mortars. This means that earth as a building material has finally arrived in contemporary construction. For non-standardised and on-site produced earthen building materials, the earthen building rules first published in 1998 continue to apply. With the current revision of the interior plaster application standard DIN 18550-2, the course has been set towards Europe-wide recognition of the material.
www.claytec.de/...din-normen-lehm-2013.html
6/2013: New timber construction magazine
"We want to show you wood" says the editorial team of lignardo, the first German architecture magazine dedicated exclusively to wood as a building material. lignardo is in intensive exchange with renowned architects and industry experts: Prof. Herrmann Kaufmann, Prof. Ludger Dederich, Prof. Uwe Germerott, architect Frank Lattke and architect Florian Lichtblau support an experienced editorial team that has been active in the timber construction industry for many years. This is how the print premiere "Award-winning timber buildings" came into being at the beginning of June. With six printed issues per year, lignardo will in future concentrate monothematically on one building task each, because timber construction will play a very special role in this century.
www.lignardo.de
5/2013: Polystyrene thermal insulation - The madness continues: The consequences of insulating with polystyrene can be devastating: for the living climate and also in case of fire. Who benefits from the constantly tightened energy-saving regulations?
Styrofoam as a façade insulation material is often the material of choice when houses are to be thermally insulated. But this can have devastating consequences: for the indoor climate and also in case of fire. Already at the end of 2011, NDR dealt with the topic of thermal insulation and pointed out risks and problems. Above all, the fire test with the insulating material polystyrene caused a sensation throughout Germany. In the second part, in which further in-depth research was carried out, the question still arises: Who really benefits from constantly tightened energy-saving regulations and the boom in thermal insulation composite systems fuelled by them: the residents, the environment or the lobby?
Here is the film from the end of 2012: www.ndr.de/...minuten667
and supplementary NDR information: www.ndr.de/...waermedaemmung
4/2013: No health risks from electrosmog from photovoltaic systems:
www.wilabonn.de/...elektromagnetische-strahlung-durch-pv
3/2013: Model buildings searched for on gutebaustoffe.de:
www.gutebaustoffe.de/modellbauwerke.html
Largest Sustainable Settlement in Europe there are with 2,900 flats on an area of 170 ha in Holland: Stad van de Zon (City of the Sun) Heerhugowaard
www.heerhugowaardstadvandezon.nl
First German PlusEnergy School near Augsburg
http://informationsdienst-holz.de/…plusenergy school
Largest plus-energy building with 78 rental flats of the municipal housing association ABG in Frankfurt
Photovoltaic systems are planned on the slightly sloping roof, on the windows and on the façade of the building. At the same time, heat is recovered from the waste water. All of this is enough to achieve a surplus of around ten percent after consumption in the entire house, says Junker. This surplus can be used for the electric car, for example. The ABG, which cooperates with the car-sharing provider Book 'n Drive, will provide five cars and an electricity charging station on the ground floor of the building, which does not have a basement. Unused electricity from the car can also be fed back into the storage system. It is "energy-autarkic", meaning it could completely disconnect from the general electricity grid.
www.fr-online.de/frankfurt/wohnungsbau-frankfurt-energie-im-ueberfluss,1472798,20352740.html
2/2013: Photovoltaics statistics updated: 32.4 GW connected to the grid in Germany
Whereas in 2000 there were just 400 megawatts of PV capacity installed in Germany, today there are 32,389 megawatts or around 32.4 gigawatts.
www.solarserver.de/...photovoltaik-statistik.html
Photovoltaics annual review 2012: Multi-layered markets in upheaval
As expected, 2012 was a difficult year for the global photovoltaic industry. Production capacities were consistently too high, and this caused price collapses along the value chain, negative margins and losses for photovoltaic manufacturers. Despite these difficulties, the global photovoltaic market grew by 10-17 % in 2012 to around 31-33 GW, even established markets like Germany continued to grow. The latest figures from the German Ministry of the Environment show that the photovoltaic market in Germany reached a volume of 7.6 GW by the end of the year, despite the cut in the solar power feed-in tariff. This is again a World record for annual installed PV capacity. The Chinese photovoltaic market probably doubled again in 2012. Final figures are not yet available, but if the estimate by IMS Research from last October is correct, China would be the second largest PV market in the world with 5 GW. The installed capacity includes not only the plants that have been approved for feed-in tariffs, but also those from the "Golden Sun" programme with a total of 1.7 GW.
www.solarserver.de/...photovoltaik-jahresrueckblick-2012
Terra Preta - The new grassroots revolution
Save the climate and defeat world hunger with kitchen waste, vegetable charcoal and earthworms? Science believes it has found the recipe: Terra Preta do Indio, the "black gold". Ute Scheub, Haiko Pieplow and Hans-Peter Schmidt have written in "Terra Preta. The Black Revolution from the Rainforest", Ute Scheub and Haiko Pieplow have compiled the knowledge about the most fertile soil in the world. "Black soil - produced by farmers and smallholders, hobby gardeners and slum dwellers - can trigger a literal grassroots revolution," says Scheub.
www.oekom.de/nc/buecher/buechersuche/buch/terra-preta-die-schwarze-revolution-aus-dem-regenwald.html
1/2013: New DBU brochure on resource-efficient building and living
www.dbu.de/...
Rolf Disch builds Plusenergiesiedlung in Grenzach near Basel with 74 flats
www.rolfdisch.de/...
Brave New World: Megacities in China
www.zeit.de/...density-2
Keywords:
DE-News
The Federal Cabinet today adopted the so-called Easter Package at the proposal of Vice Chancellor and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection Robert Habeck. This is the largest amendment to energy policy legislation in decades. The Easter Package comprehensively amends various energy laws in order to accelerate and consistently drive forward the expansion of renewable energies.
Robert Habeck on this: "The Easter package is the accelerator for the expansion of renewable energies. We will almost double the share of renewable energies in gross electricity consumption within less than a decade. We are tripling the speed of renewable expansion - on water, on land and on the roof. In the future, renewable energies will be in the public interest and serve public security. This is crucial to increase the pace. Overall, with the Easter Package we are creating the conditions for Germany's energy security and energy sovereignty. At the same time, it lays the foundations for Germany to become climate neutral."
Habeck further explained: "The Easter Package is part of our agenda and has been worked on under high pressure over the past months. It has now taken on a double urgency in view of Russia's war of aggression on Ukraine, which is contrary to international law. On the one hand, the climate crisis is coming to a head. On the other hand, Russia's invasion shows how important it is to get out of fossil fuels and to consistently push ahead with the expansion of renewables. We are doing this courageously and consistently.
The Easter package adopted today by the Federal Cabinet will now be forwarded to the German Bundestag and will enter the parliamentary legislative process in a next step. It is an article law, which comprises the following individual laws on more than 500 pages:
What concrete measures does the Easter package contain?
An overview paper on the Easter Package and the draft laws can be found at here.
Keywords:
DE-News, Renewable, Funding, Climate protection, Tenant electricity, PV, PlusEnergy house/settlement, Solar thermal, Environmental policy
(2017)
Over the last 30 years, numerous tools have been developed to assess the ecological or sustainable aspects of buildings. This book discusses the role these tools can play in the implementation of the UN's 'New Urban Agenda'.
The 67-page book provides an up-to-date overview of the world's most important building assessment tools. It is available as a free download:
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/93577/factsheet/es
Keywords:
New books and studies, News Blog Europe (without DE), Tools, Certification & Labels, Life cycle assessment
