EarthNews
Sep 3rd, 2010
Posts Tagged ‘energy’
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Welcome to Part 10 of our ongoing Shanghai “Better City-Better Life” Expo tour! (Check out the whole Shanghai World Expo series, Parts 1-10!)
Broad Pavilion
The key highlights of the Broad Pavilion, as introduced in Shanghai Expo Part 4, was the interactive Energy Conservation Technology Hall.
BROAD Pavilion Carbon Footprint
The Broad Pavilion Carbon Footprint (as seen in the picture above) was divided into Construction, Trash and Operation. If green building techniques are used, you can save a significant amount of CO2, which translates into cost saving.
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Welcome to Part 9 of our ongoing Shanghai “Better City-Better Life” Expo tour! (Check out the whole Shanghai World Expo series, Parts 1-9+!)
Inside Urban Planet Pavilion
On the second day, I was the most surprised when I entered the Urban Planet Pavilion. We were strolling around the Theme Pavilion and since there was no line at this pavilion we decided to just walk inside of course not knowing what to expect. I immediately felt like I was on a new planet that showed us how much destruction we have caused on Planet Earth.
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EarthNews
Shanghai “Better City-Better Life” Expo Part 8 – Alsace Case Green Building Techniques
Aug 29th, 2010
Welcome to Part 8 of our ongoing Shanghai “Better City-Better Life” Expo tour! (Check out the whole Shanghai World Expo series, Parts 1-8+!)
Alsace Case Shanghai Expo
The Alsace Case has a wonderful green wall (made out of plants) and a window waterfall, as I like to call it. The Alsace Case pavilion recreated the solar wall prototype of the Bouxwiller High School. A great example of how to use solar energy to control interior temperature. (more…)
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EarthNews
Shanghai “Better City-Better Life” Expo Part 6 – Hamburg House, Another Passive House Example
Aug 26th, 2010
Welcome to Part 6 of our ongoing Shanghai “Better City-Better Life” Expo tour! (Check out the whole Shanghai World Expo series, Parts 1-6+!)
My favorite area was the Urban City Planning area where they showcased urban planning from various cities.
Hamburg House_Home of Hidden Energies
I was excited to enter the Hamburg House, the home of the hidden energies. It was another beautiful example of a passive house just like my recent article Japan’s First Certified Passive House. The Hamburg House uses about 10% energy compared to a typical building. The room temperature of this house can be kept at about 25 degrees celsius all year round without air conditioning and heating. The largest part of the heat requirement comes from the passive sources of heat such as the people inside the building, the appliances and sunlight. (more…)
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EarthNews
Aug 17th, 2010
Welcome to Part 5 of our ongoing Shanghai “Better City-Better Life” Expo tour! (Check out the whole Shanghai World Expo series, Parts 1-5+!)
HafenCity in Hamburg, is a very extensive development of a sustainable district near the Elbe River. However, HafenCity will not be completed for another 10 to 15 years. This new district will increase the size of Hamburg’s city center by 40%. Not only is money being spend on the buildings but there will be plenty of quality designed public spaces. (more…)
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Welcome to Part 4 of our ongoing Shanghai “Better City-Better Life” Expo tour! (Check out the whole Shanghai World Expo series, Parts 1-4+!)
On the third day at the Shanghai Expo, I was back on the Puxi side. I had hoped that the lines to the pavilions I wanted to see on the previous days would be shorter on a weekday.
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Ranging from financial incentives to sources of renewable energy, Yusuke Saito of Carbon Free Consulting, Aya Asakura of RH2 Renewable Hydrogen Network, and Thomas Giuffre of Hot Earth Enterprise, shared their organizations innovative ideas for reducing our reliance on fossil fuels with attendees at the July Green Leaders Forum. (more…)
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Welcome to Part 3 of our ongoing Shanghai “Better City-Better Life” Expo tour! (Check out the whole Shanghai World Expo series, Parts 1-3+!)
On the second day at the Shanghai Expo we started on the Pudong Side of the Huangpu River. We entered the Expo through the Expo Axis, the main entrance. I must say it was quite impressive. (more…)
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Welcome to Part 2 of our ongoing Shanghai “Better City-Better Life” Expo tour! (Check out the whole Shanghai World Expo series, Parts 1-2+!)
After arriving on the Pudong side with the Ferry, we mostly covered the European Pavilions for the rest of the day. The Pudong Side consists of Zone C, Zone B and Zone A. The European Pavilions are part of Zone C. (more…)
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I recently had the opportunity to attend the Shanghai World Expo 2010. In the history of the World Expos, the Shanghai Expo is the largest Expo covering 5.28 square kilometers as well as the most expensive one so far. In 2008 the Expo was in Zaragoza, Spain and the next one will be in Yeosu, Korea in 2012. (Check out the whole Shanghai World Expo series, Parts 1+!)
I started out on the Puxi Side of the Huangpu River. This side consists of the Urban Planning Best Practices area, Zone E and Zone D. As my interests lie in green buildings and sustainable urban planning I spend most of my time in the Urban Planning area. (more…)
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Maishima Incineration Plant, Osaka. Photo: Anna Galore Le blog
Is it a fun park? Is it an art-deco building? No, it’s an incineration plant!
Really? Yep, you can even take tours there. (See below for tour details.)
The topic of incineration in Japan, one of the world’s biggest incinerators of trash, is fairly divisive. While most westerners tend to be confused and shocked to hear that a modern industrial nation incinerates most of its trash (as we pointed out this week in Incineration in Japan: Paper, Food Scraps, Infectious Medical Wastes and even Plastics?), Japanese people take it for granted as part of daily life and after a while living in Japan you get used to the idea that huge volumes of garbage are burnt on a daily basis. However, this does not mean that incineration is as safe as “they” say. (more…)
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SustainableCommunity
Incineration in Japan: Paper, Food Scraps, Infectious Medical Wastes and even Plastics?
Jul 21st, 2010
Tokyo Train Stations Trash-cans
The debate between the uses of incineration for waste management is controversial around the world.
From the first time I set foot in the train stations in Tokyo, garbage sorting stations were everywhere. The garbage sorting stations consist of four compartments. The green compartment for newspapers and magazines, the lime green one for PET bottles, the blue one for cans and the red one for other garbage. However, I was confused about why they mix paper and plastic in the red compartment as I had assumed they take the time to separate this compartment for recycling once it reached a garbage facility. I thought, why not have two more compartments, the fifth compartment for paper and the sixth compartment for plastic to bypass the need for separation once it reached a garbage facility.
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Machine Gun Etiquette. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved. Photo by Tate Modern.
All of us have been moved at some point in our lives, be it by a good book, a new encounter, or maybe an unexpected act of kindness. Whatever it is, this interaction or discovery of something we were searching for, whether consciously or not, leaves an impression on our hearts. There is, once in a while, a movie that can also offer us that same sensation. Here are five such movies dealing with war, human rights, the earth, water, and energy that will move you like no Hollywood blockbuster can. (more…)
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Photo: Stephen Poff. Creative Commons License.
The Japanese government recently kicked off subsidies for cars under its Eco Cars tax incentive — for which we recently remarked the Japanese government’s latest “eco car” is the not-so-humble Hummer — or the Eco-Points stimulus plan for electronic products. While these subsidies are considered by most to be an acceptable economic boost in times of financial hardship, globally, subsidies are a big issue.
In particular, there has long been a debate about the prices of energy and whether renewable energy is getting a fair deal in the market considering the long history of subsidies, in all of their forms, for “conventional” fossil-fuel and nuclear energy sources. Now, detailed information has emerged exposing just how extensive subsidies are for one of the least “green” energy sources: fossil fuel oil. (more…)
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XO laptop pedal power generator: Copyright (C) 2009 One Laptop Per Child News, All rights reserved.
The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, which was developed by the founder of the Institute of Technology’s Media lab, Nicholas Negroponte, is a program to donate low cost laptops to children in developing nations for education. As its name states, the vision of the project is to put a laptop in the hand of every child in the world, but there are many countries in the world with poor electric infrastructure and many are not environments where one could freely use a laptop. Presented with this kind of problem, a newly redesigned “self-sufficiency-style” laptop that children can use regardless of the state of infrastructure has appeared. (more…)
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Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved. Photo by woodleywonderworks
Last month on the greenz news roundup, we wrote that Fuji Electric and GE have signed a memorandum of understanding on a joint venture to design, manufacture and market electric meters, including smart meters, for use at Japan’s electric utilities and other companies. Smart meters enable an accurate visualization of energy usage, giving consumers and utilities information to help them better monitor, understand, manage and control energy usage. But there is another step that goes beyond smart meters. That next level is the Smart Grid. (more…)
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GreenBusiness
PV Expo 2010 Big On Industrial Tech, Light On Consumer Solar Applications
Mar 17th, 2010
Asia’s largest photovoltaic and solar cell exhibition, PV Expo 2010 once again drew huge crowds to Tokyo Big Sight (the same site where perhaps the world’s largest green exhibition, Eco-Products Japan, is held) last week, with roughly 570 companies and organizations participating in the photovoltaic industry event. (more…)
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The Green Energy Partnership, formed in 2008 to promote green energy, held a competition for posters and videos promoting green energy. The slogan: ‘Green Creative Contest – Let’s draw our future together!’
- This article has been translated by Ken from the original Japanese article by Takeshi Okahashi (November 18, 2009).
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Some rights reserved by Melissa Maples
With 2009 drawing to an end, greenz.jp would like to share eight great green party ideas. If you want to see how they work in practice, then come along to the Green Drinks Tokyo Xmas Special!
- This article was translated by Ken from the original Japanese post by YOSHI (Dec 14, 2009) (more…)
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Source: BBC News
The UK is about to send it’s first shipment of nuclear waste back to where it first came from – Japan. This is not the first batch to reach Japanese shores. Since 1995, 12 shipments of nuclear waste originating in Japan have already been returned from facilities in France. The UK shipment is due to arrive in Japan before the end of March, where there are already local storage facilities in place. The UK plant, Sellafield, is not only fulfilling contractual obligations from the 1970’s, but is returning the nuclear waste in accordance with international policy. (more…)
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