Thursday, 28 February 2008

ESD AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN AUSTRALIA (1) - INTRODUCTION (1 of 5)

ESD AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN AUSTRALIA

Well, firstly you may consider there are three levels of "energy rating" schemes.

1. Aspirational - Green Star (I am a GBCA Accredited Professional or more usually known as Green Star Professional)

2. Operational - ABGR (Australian Building Greenhouse Rating, in full) (I am also an "Accredited ABGR Assessor").

3. Mandatory - BCA (Building Code of Australia) Section J Energy Efficiency.

(1) & (2) are voluntary. (3) is mandatory which comes to force in May 2006 (for NSW including
Sydney, it was November 2006)

Although ABGR seems like voluntary, it is like semi-mandatory particularly for large developers. More details coming.

Wednesday, 20 February 2008

Wow, I got myself an Asus Eeepc!

I just got an Asus Eeepc today.

Haven't turn it on and run it yet.

So, looks like I will have more chance to horn up my Linux skills.

Btw, mine is a black one.

Wednesday, 13 February 2008

Unofficial ABGR Assessment

Today I've been to a business park to carry out the preliminary assessment on energy use of one of the buildings.

I've talk to the Operations Manager of the premises. It's somehow "interesting" to talk to people with "hands on" experience to the services, etc. in buildings.

I can see his enthusiasm to help me out to do the energy assessment, maybe a little too "hot headed".

But in doing ABGR, the actual assessment is not the most difficult part.

The most difficult part is to gather the information necessary to get a proper rating as required by the ABGR protocol.


And for this one, it would be to gather the energy bills from ALL tenants and their cooperation to provide their occupancy hours when 20% of people is there in the morning and when only 20% of people is remaining in the office.

I've been through this with another project. Amazingly, it took weeks or even months to gather the info. And by the time the last info comes in, the first info could have been expired.

We'll see how good or bad this building is later.

Tuesday, 5 February 2008

Helping out on computer

Last evening, I help a family to fix their computer.

They just got a new computer about a month ago.

They have M$ Windows Vista installed on that.

But that was "too" slow.

They asked some one to install XP over the Vista.

Then, I was asked if I can fix various issues with the computer. This included: "can't connect to internet"; "no sound"; "can't play mp3"; "can't open word file"; "cannot burn disks"; "screen too big"; .....

So the guy that installed XP didn't finish his job properly.

What was done was only installing XP.

Now, here's what I have done:
  • Install drivers (sound, display, network, etc.) There was some drama with the ethernet chip driver as the driver CD didn't have the driver (!!!!) I needed to use lateral thinking to get this done!
  • Install firewall, antispyware, anti-virus (all freeware)
  • Install disk burning software (Freeware again)
  • Install Firefox, PDFCreator, XPDF reader (Yes, freeware)
  • Install harddisk backup software (Free!)
  • Install windows optimiser (Free!)
  • Install OpenOffice (Free again!)
  • Prepare recover DVD; backup hardisk on DVD
  • Burn and show how an audio CD should be made from mp3 files to the tweenage (not a typo) girl in the family (She complain the CD she made couldn't play on her CD player.)
All these took me two visits, each around 3 hours.

Why am I writing this?

I wonder what a "usual" computer user is!

My first computer experience was in a classmate's home playing AP II (cloned Apple 2) back in high school days. We used normal cassette tape player to "load" program to the AP II. This was in the early '80s.

Then I had my first PC (8088) back in 1986. In those days I ran PCDOS/MSDOS of course. I vaguely remember I started with PCDOS 2.x then ended up running MSDOS 3.3. I still vaguely remember using dot commands in WordStar.

Then it was windows 3.1. WordPerfect 5.1 for windows was my favourite. Though that time, MS word was already there. (BTW, I had used the DOS version of MS Word)

A simple flowchart is:

DOS -> Windows 3.1 -> Windows 3.11 -> Windows 95 (4.0) -> Windows 98 -> Windows XP

Next is Linux, the Ubuntu favour, possibly with some dip on DSL (Damn Small Linux), Fedora or OpenSUSE! (I feel quite comfortable with command line interface.)

Now, for someone with their first computer experience from Windows 95, 98, etc., what do they think about Linux?

Now they left two (old) computers for me to rebuild them. Windows 95 and 98 will be out of the question. XP will be too hungry for the two computers to handle.

Here I go again! Need to learn how to install DSL on two OLD computers with floppy drive, malfunction CD drive and harddisk!

Wish me luck!

And for the helpful Linux users, enlighten me please on how to "resurrect" old computers!

I may comeback with more details on the computers' spec.

Thursday, 24 January 2008

The many dimensions of sustainable development

This is an article from the very informative sustainability magazine from CSIRO, Ecos.

It appears than the definition of "Sustainable Development" should be clarified.

There are many good points from the article, particularly, the causes and to a lesser extent the impacts of not "Going Green".

The article can be found at : http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=EC139p13.pdf



The many dimensions of sustainable development

Abstract: These days, everyone seems to be talking about sustainability. But are we all on the same wavelength when we use the term? Steve Hatfield Dodds – senior CSIRO researcher and President of the Australia New Zealand Society for Ecological Economics – begins a series examining the meaning behind this often-invoked word.

Sustainable development is one of the most important ideas, and goals, of our time. It is defined as ‘development which meets the needs and aspirations of the current generation without impairing the ability of future generations to meet theirs’.

It is not the goal that makes this idea important, however, but the recognition that current patterns of human activity are unsustainable, and that our economic, social and political institutions seem to be losing the race towards sustainability.

The term ‘development’ implies that things are getting better over time. What this means in practice, however, will always be contested – just as most people agree that ‘fairness’ or ‘freedom’ are good in principle, but have different views of what fairness or freedom mean in a specific situation.

At its most basic, achieving sustainable development involves, first, improving the living standards and quality of life of the current generation – especially those who are currently least well-off – and, second, ensuring that current development patterns do not risk undermining the wellbeing or options of future generations.

Achieving sustainable development will thus involve a vigorous and urgent debate about how and why – even whether – current development patterns might undermine future wellbeing. Different viewpoints on the causes of unsustainability include the following:

Loss of natural capital or other critical capital

Deforestation, pollution and inappropriate natural resource management are all contributing to a loss of ‘natural capital’, which risks undermining the health and productivity of important ecosystem processes.

These natural assets are essential to human wellbeing – underpinning agriculture and food production, for example, or providing adequate supplies of clean water. Policies and institutions that treat these assets as free or limitless risk running them down, rather than conserving or protecting them for future use.

Power imbalances in political decision-making

A lack of transparency and accountability in government and business decision-making allows natural resources, such as forests and fisheries, to be destroyed for short-term gains.

Similar processes may undermine other shared assets, such as a fair and accessible legal system. This impoverishes local people and may undermine social and natural capital that could be used to generate improved living standards.

Wrong world views or values

Some argue that Western thinking is too materialist or human-centred, and that this contributes to unsustainable practices because nature is understood to exist entirely for human use. Achieving sustainability will require new ways of thinking, such as accepting that human activities can affect global environmental processes – as illustrated by global warming. It will also require recognition of the impact of unregulated selfish behaviour, and the introduction of ‘carrots and sticks’ to manage this. But this does not imply that sustainability can only be achieved through widespread changes in underlying values or ethics.

As you can see, the idea of sustainable development covers a lot of territory, encompassing ideas of the good life, how humans behave, multiple types of interactions between society and nature, and what we can do about all of this.

We at Ecos have therefore decided to produce a series on key concepts for achieving sustainable development – beginning with this article.

Consistent with the scope of sustainable development outlined above, these concepts can be divided into three:

· wellbeing and development, including capital-based approaches to sustainable development and the happiness– income paradox;

· the dynamics of human and environmental systems, including economic growth and environmental pressure and resilience thinking; and

· specific tools for promoting sustainable development, such as payments for ecosystem services, triple bottom line reporting and corporate social responsibility, and adaptive governance.

We hope that explaining these concepts will help Ecos readers to identify opportunities where they can make a difference in practicing and promoting sustainable development.

More information:

International Institute for Sustainable Development, www.iisd.org/sd/

International Society for Ecological Economics’ online encyclopaedia, www.ecoeco.org/education_encyclopedia.php

Friday, 18 January 2008

The definition of green

The following is from a blog here: http://weblog.infoworld.com/sustainableit/archives/2008/01/green_products.html?source=rss

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One of my blog readers, the author of the "Green" Supply Chain Analyst Weblog, posed an interesting question in one of my previous posts. Essentially he asked, What defines a green product or service?

Not only is it an interesting question, it's an important one. Vendors and their marketing departments are, of course, keenly aware that organizations have green in their sights and are thus cranking out products and unveiling services touted as being eco-friendly. But how do you know whether an offering is a victim of a vendor's green-washing scheme or if it really is "green"? And that goes back the original question: What defines a green product or service?

Well, I find it difficult to devise a simple and succinct definition on which everyone can agree. On the most extreme end of the spectrum, one might argue that any product or service you can buy off the shelf, via the Internet, or over the phone isn't technically green. The process of transforming a natural resource into something else requires the use of additional materials and energy and, even in a minute way, detracts from the environment. In that realm of thought, a soybean growing in the wild would be green whereas tofu wouldn't.

Now, if businesses were to exercise that level of discrimination in their ambition to invest only in green products, they wouldn't accomplish much. Hence, that definition is pretty useless in the context of commerce or generally going about one's day-to-day life, unless one happens to live in the forest naked, scrounging bark and berries fallen off of trees and bushes.

But here's what I consider a more practical definition that companies might employ to gauge a product or service's "greenness": A green product or service is one that delivers comparable or superior performance, utility, or other benefits to an alternative one while utilizing fewer resources, containing fewer toxic materials, and/or boasting a longer lifecycle.

So, for example: Suppose the fictitious company SustainoTech (not a registered trademark as far as I can tell, so snag it quick) were to roll out a blade server that used 25 percent less energy and produced 30 percent less heat than the average comparable blade server on the market. Moreover, it would be ROHS-compliant and designed such that individual components could easily be swapped in and out -- plus, the system as a whole could be efficiently dismantled for refurbishing or recycling. That, in my book, would be a mighty green server. (I expect to see at least one major vendor roll out a server that meet most of those criteria -- if not all -- within the next year, a prediction you may add to my list.)

No, SustainoTech's server wouldn't be made of a renewable resource such as bamboo. Yes, it would still use electricity and create heat. It would still require the usage and alteration of natural as well as hazardous resources. It would contribute to your company's carbon footprint. But it would deliver comparable performance to the competition with a lower drain on the environment. Hence, it's green. Or at least greener. The bar will inevitably rise as companies come up with new technologies.

There are other examples of products out there that I'd readily categorize as being green, such as telepresence. I haven't drilled down into the relative energy requirements of the various telepresence solutions on the market today, but I'd file the category under "G" for "green." My reasoning is, employing telepresence as an alternative to using planes, trains, and automobiles means less fuel consumption. Further, telepresence, unlike videoconferencing, delivers a meeting experience that is comparable to an in-person meeting. (Admittedly, that's based on plenty of secondhand accounts; I've not yet experienced telepresence.)

What about systems management software that lets admins ensure that a server is using just as much electricity as it needs to in order to run effectively? So long as it performs as well as other management software, yeah, that's green. Virtualization, which lets you wring the same amount of work out of fewer machines? Again, green. Electronic document management outgreens paper-based systems. Solar power beats coal power. And the list goes on.

A couple of final thoughts on this subject: First, if a vendor comes to your door hawking what it deems a green product, be sure to ask just what makes it so green.

Second, bear in mind that a product deemed green today will be considered wasteful and eco-unfriendly tomorrow. Technological advancement coupled with relativity is funny that way.

Finally -- and this is a point I'll keep making until my fingers ooze (the blogging equivalent to the expression "talking until I'm blue in the face"): Green products alone simply can't make your company green. A blueprint for long-term sustainability is a must, and the products you employ are but a piece of the puzzle. Deploying virtualization in your datacenter may very well help you make better use of your resources in the short- or midterm. It may also reduce your company's carbon footprint. But you most certainly need to plan beyond that for the sake of your organization's future prosperity -- as well as for the sake of the environment, if that is, indeed, a concern for your company.

How would you define a green product or service?

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It's good to see people reflect about what is "Green" technology.

And particualrly, we should be aware of what is "Greenwashing".

Everyone wants to be seen "Green".

And I believe there is no true "Green" product or building as yet.

So "Green" auditing should be put into place.

This is particularly important in the post "Kyoyo Protocol" era. Every country is working to a number. You can't stop someone cheating on numbers.

We need a clear guideline and procedure.

But back to the "Greeness" of a product or a building, we may use a comparative method.

Like that the ABGR and Green Star use stars to represent relative Greenness of buildings.

I believe the next logical move is to rate vehicles and, as the blog says, electronic products.

Now, tell me what on earth is carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative at this point of time?

Thursday, 10 January 2008

A FireStallion Update

Well, it's been a long time since I last wrote my blog.

December was crazy before the rush for holiday.

That "Greenwash" project had a little drama when it was about time to apply for DA (Development Application).

Kept me busy for a while (including some overtime).

Then I didn't have any idea to write in the blog during the Christmas break.

Now, after MS Gundam 00 episode 13 "Return of the Saint", I had some idea to write about.


And I actually put it on the discuss.com.hk forum. These include:
On 19 Jan 2008, I'll lead my fellowship group. Now I need to organise my ideas in ESD & GW and link to stewardship and using our gifts to a group of Christians.

Well, I need some divine intervention to help me get through this!

And let me say hi to mandy214tik & Smokes and a belated birthday to Square.

Also, congratulations and bon voyage to The.Darwinian and welcome to Australia.