Min. 4:56; Video from 18.02.2020; Ed.: GBG Mannheim
Project Info: http://sdg21.eu/db/quartier-franklin-in-mannheim
21.01.2020 Everyone is talking about sustainability - including the construction industry. A prize that the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) and the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) have been organising since today provides the perfect talking point: With the new "Federal Environment and Building Prize", which will be awarded for the first time in 2020, the initiators want to recognise projects that are exemplary in terms of sustainability - not only in the classic areas of existing and new buildings, but also in five other categories. All players in the construction sector can apply. The closing date for entries is 15 April 2020 and the patron of the competition is the Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Svenja Schulze.
The desire of more and more building owners and planners to combine high utility value and architectural quality with Climate - and environmental protection has resulted in many exciting projects. They demonstrate by practical example that sustainable construction offers many advantages over the life cycle - also in terms of costs.
Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze: "This is precisely where the Federal Environment and Building Award comes in. On the one hand, the prize is intended to illustrate the spectrum of what is already structurally and technically possible today. On the other hand, it is intended to raise awareness of the outstanding examples through the award and thus invite imitation."
Professor Dirk Messner, President of the Federal Environment Agency: "It's about holistic solutions that incorporate the technology, the design of the building and its surroundings. Individual 'greenfield' projects are expressly not supported. In no other competition is the interplay between the environment and building assessed in such a way as in the Federal Environment & Building Award."
About the Federal AwardIn order to show the breadth of sustainable building, the Federal Award comprises the categories "Residential buildings", "Non-residential buildings", "Neighbourhoods" and "Sustainability and innovations". The first two categories focus in particular on the energy-efficient refurbishment of existing buildings, as this is where the greatest need for action exists from a climate protection perspective.
In addition to these competition categories, the BMU and UBA also award three special prizes for particularly innovative approaches. Under the headings "Resilience" and "Sufficiency", the focus is on adaptation to climate change and strategies for reducing the use of resources. Building projects that take particular account of aspects of biodiversity and thus make a substantial contribution to the protection and implementation of "urban nature" are also to be honoured. The third field "Building envelope & building product" is intended for novel solutions with innovative materials and building constructions.
Conditions of participationDue to the thematic breadth, all players in the construction sector are invited to apply: from clients and property developers to architecture, building services, urban and landscape planning offices, manufacturers and research institutions. The competition is aimed at buildings or neighbourhoods completed in Germany that are at an advanced stage of planning; multiple applications in different categories are possible.
What awaits the winnersThe award winners can look forward to public recognition on several levels. The award ceremony will take place on 29 September at a congress on sustainable building at the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in Berlin, where the award-winning projects will be presented to experts and the media. The award-winning projects and their plus points will also be presented on the websites of the UBA and the Federal Ministry for the Environment - including in the form of videos: This is because the UBA is having films made about the award-winning sustainability examples, which the winners can then use for their own public relations work. In addition, all award-winning projects will be documented in a book.
Interested parties can find more information on the conditions of participation in the Federal Environment & Building Award and the selection procedure on the UBA website:
www.umweltbundesamt.de/bundespreis-umwelt-bauen-start
The application deadline is 15 April 2020.
Keywords:
DE-News, Building, Climate protection, Mix of uses, Quarters, Resource efficiency, Settlements, Sufficiency, Transition Town, Contests & Prizes, Housing, Housing projects, Ecology
Production in the city is not a new phenomenon. Urban production - in its various forms and development paths - is one of the constitutive features of a city. The concept of the Productive City opens up the possibility of using a strategic approach to link the central aspects of the changing socio-economic basis of cities (development of new forms of production and work) with the goals of a compact and functionally mixed city.
In a research project of the iaw, the conceptual foundations of urban production and the productive city were prepared with a view to the situation in Bremen and analysed in their impact structure. The study makes proposals for describing and recording urban production that is compatible with the city and embedding it in an urban development policy model of a productive city. On the basis of seven reference cities (Vienna, Zurich, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main, Wuppertal, Bochum), corresponding activities were filtered out and their transferability to the city of Bremen was examined. In the city of Bremen, eight locations and neighbourhoods (including the Tabakquartier and Kellogg-Areal) were examined with regard to their potential for implementing a productive city.
Arbeitnehmerkammer Bremen (ed.), authors: Nischwitz, Guido; Chojnowski, Patrick; von Bestenbostel, Martin (2021): "Urbane Produktion für eine Produktive Stadt Bremen. An opportunity for more employment?" Series Work and Economy in Bremen 34/2021, Bremen. 202 pp.
Download link (pdf approx. 7 MB)
https://iaw.uni-bremen.de/f/71635f3091.pdf
Keywords:
DE-News, Research, Sustainable management, New books and studies, News Blog Bremen, Mix of uses, Quarters, City, Urban production
25.03.2019 - The German Trade Union Confederation is today launching a nationwide week of action on the subject of housing. Under the motto "Affordable is half the rent", more than 200 actions and events will take place throughout Germany. The action week is the nationwide public launch of the DGB dialogue on the future.
The DGB Chairman Reiner Hoffmann declares at the start of the action week:
"We want to talk to local people and find out from them: What problems do they face in finding housing, rents and service charges. An ever greater proportion of income is eaten up by rents and many people can no longer afford a flat near their place of work. Workers' interests do not end at the factory gate. Affordable housing is the new social issue of our time."
Stefan Körzell in an interview with tagesschau24:
DGB Executive Board Member Stefan Körzell said in Berlin on Monday:
"Rising rents are a problem for more and more workers. They are also the result of decades of failed housing policy. The market failure in the housing sector is obvious - now politics must intervene strongly and steadily. At least 400,000 new and affordable homes are needed each year, including 100,000 social housing units. The federal and state governments must jointly provide seven billion euros annually for this purpose. The money the federal government has so far earmarked for social housing construction is not even enough to maintain the existing stock. In addition, politicians should take more decisive action against land speculation, for example by obliging owners to build on their land within the framework of building law."
With the DGB Future Dialogue, the DGB and its member unions are launching a broad social dialogue. We are asking people, collecting their answers and using them to develop impulses for fairer policies in Germany. The action week from 25 to 29 March is the nationwide public launch of the DGB dialogue on the future. Hundreds of other events will follow throughout Germany in the coming years. The debate on the dialogue on the future is taking place online at www.redenwirueber.de - there you will also find all further information.
Keywords:
Stakeholders, Housing policy, eG, Economics
This week, the Federal Cabinet intends to approve the draft bill for the coal phase-out law. However, the timetable for the shutdown of coal-fired power plants to be voted on deviates in several places from the coal compromise reached last year. The Baden-Württemberg Solar Cluster has pointed this out and is calling for significant improvements. According to the draft law, carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced significantly less than agreed in the first ten years: By 2030, only five gigawatts of power are to be switched off instead of 20 gigawatts. In addition, the number of CO2 certificates will not be reduced to the same extent as coal-fired power generation. "This violates the spirit of the coal compromise and must be corrected," says Solar Cluster Managing Director Franz Pöter. The renewed blockade of renewable energies - despite announcements to the contrary - must also come to an end, says Pöter. The draft bill does not include the lifting of the 52 gigawatt cap, which prevents the expansion of photovoltaics. The 1,000 metre distance regulation is a similar obstacle to the expansion of wind power generation.
The draft from the Federal Ministry of Economics is intended to legally implement the coal compromise that was painstakingly reached with associations and industry. There is not only criticism of the content: "We had 22 hours to formulate a statement," criticises Pöter. "A discussion was probably not wanted." In the view of the industry association, the CO2 reduction in the first ten years, for example, is far too low: it falls well short of the agreement in the coal compromise. According to the compromise, ten million tonnes of CO2 are to be avoided each year. This corresponds to a reduction of around two gigawatts of coal-fired power plant capacity. However, the draft only contains 0.5 gigawatts per year, a quarter of what was originally agreed.
"It is unacceptable for politicians to draft a coal phase-out law that exceeds the financial framework of the coal compromise and yet only implements a small part of the agreed CO2 reduction," criticises Pöter. If the draft becomes law, Germany will emit around 40 million tonnes more CO2 by 2030 - a major burden for the climate target.
Surplus of CO2 certificates looms, electricity price does not fall, renewables are hindered
Not all CO2 allowances from the shutdown power plants are to be removed from the market either. The resulting surplus would depress the CO2 price in the emissions trading system in future. This would allow the remaining coal-fired power plants to operate profitably on the market more often and thus emit more greenhouse gas. Furthermore, electricity prices are not to fall after all. In any case, this is no longer mandatory in the draft. This also has a negative impact on the energy transition: The conversion of a coal-fired power plant operated by Uniper to a more climate-friendly gas-fired power plant has been rejected. The argument: 2,000 jobs would be affected.
The curbing of the coal phase-out is also associated with a blockade of renewable energies. They are actually supposed to replace the electricity generation from coal-fired units that is being phased out. "Despite promises to the contrary, the 52-gigawatt cap on photovoltaics has still not been abolished," criticises Franz Pöter. "Many photovoltaic projects have been cancelled or at best postponed in recent months due to the unclear legal situation." Wind energy is not faring any better: the 1,000 metre distance regulation between wind turbines and residential areas poses a further obstacle to the expansion of wind power generation. The target formulated by the German government of generating 65 per cent of electricity from renewable energies by 2030 cannot be achieved with these restrictions. What is needed is a doubling of installed capacity by 2030 - that would mean 100 gigawatts of wind energy and 100 gigawatts of photovoltaics.
False arguments Jobs and system security
The current framework conditions have consequences for the domestic wind industry in particular, which has already lost around 35,000 jobs since 2017 - that is far more than all current jobs in the lignite industry combined. Photovoltaics suffered a similar fate a few years earlier, with 75,000 jobs lost. However, the future potential for jobs in the photovoltaic and wind energy sectors remains high compared to the coal industry. "It is therefore disproportionate to block the restructuring of the energy supply with reference to jobs in the coal industry," continued Pöter. "A smart industrial and economic policy for the energies of the future is urgently needed."
The energy system security argument does not go far either: despite a green electricity share of almost 43 per cent on average in 2019 and a 65 per cent share over two weeks in March 2019, grid stability has continued to increase in recent years. This is demonstrated by the historically low number of grid outages in 2018, with the Federal Network Agency confirming that the energy transition has not yet had any impact on system stability. The electricity grids can also be kept stable with a higher proportion of renewable energy. "The claim that we have to deviate from the coal compromise in order to guarantee system security cannot be substantiated with facts," says Pöter. "But it is fuelling fear among the population and industry. These unfounded statements are irresponsible and economically damaging."
---------------- Info box ----------------
Six demands of the Solar Cluster Baden-Württemberg e.V.
The draft bill for the Coal Phase-out Act must contain the following points:
- The CO2 reduction path agreed in the coal compromise must be adhered to. The shutdown dates for coal-fired power plants must therefore not be delayed and the residual electricity volumes must not be increased.
- CO2 certificates to the extent of the shutdown power plants must be withdrawn from the market.
- The state must not prevent the market-driven conversion of coal-fired power plants to gas-fired power plants.
- It must be possible to reduce electricity prices by refinancing the EEG levy on a pro rata basis within the framework of the 40 billion euros.
- The 52 gigawatt cap for photovoltaics must be removed immediately, and the 1,000 metre distance regulation for wind must not be adopted.
- Jobs in the solar and wind sectors must not be jeopardised in favour of coal-fired power generation.
Source: Press release of the Solar Cluster Baden-Württemberg from 27 January 2020
Keywords:
DE-News, Renewable, Funding, Climate protection, News Blog Baden-Württemberg, PV, Environmental policy, Ecology
