Critical Assessment Holistic Sustainability at Building Scale in China through Case Studies of Sustainable Tall Buildings

2013 ◽  
Vol 361-363 ◽  
pp. 75-80
Author(s):  
Yu Chuan Liu ◽  
Jie Wan ◽  
Zhen Hua Wang

In 1987, the Brundtland report defined sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The 30 percentage of the whole world greenhouse gas per year come from buildings. In many situation when architects design tall buildings, they often take into more consideration operational efficiency instead of some influence of environment. The consumption of energy ascend dramatically in developing counties, which leads to air pollutions and increase of greenhouse gas in these countries. In China, the number of tall buildings are increasing and these tall buildings take large proportion of energy consumption. The number of tall buildings was 400 until 2000 and the energy consumption of huge tall buildings is 6 to 8 times more than common buildings. Therefore, how to reduce energy consumption in tall buildings plays a vital role in sustainable development. The holistic sustainability includes three aspects which are economy, society and ecology. The purpose of this essay is critically assessing sustainable tall buildings in China and UK. Then limitation of holistic sustainability of building scale in China would be analyzed and how to enhance it.

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Nidhi Tiwari

Ever since the focus on cultural diversity and identities acquired prominence globally, there has been a shift in limiting sustainability only to environmental, economic and social dimensions. Culture is more than just the manifestation of culture, for example, ‘the arts’ and should be viewed instead as the ‘whole social order’ (Williams 1983). This naturally leads to an interrogation of the construct of sustainable development. The definition which emerged in the Brundtland Report (WCED 1987) is the widely accepted one and it states, “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 261 ◽  
pp. 03039
Author(s):  
Jiawen Zhang

In recent years, the construction industry has developed rapidly, and there are more and more urban construction projects. The corresponding design requirements for HVAC systems are also getting higher and higher. HVAC has been widely used in all kinds of buildings. While providing convenience for people, environmental pollution has gradually become a topic of concern for people. Therefore, when designing the HVAC system, HVAC not only meets the needs of customers, but also uses green energy saving technology to reduce energy consumption as far as possible. Reduce environmental pollution, so that the HVAC ventilation system of tall buildings can be in a stable and efficient operation state. Improve the operation effect of air conditioning, while reducing energy consumption.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 3289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasylieva ◽  
Lyulyov ◽  
Bilan ◽  
Streimikiene

The paper investigates the relationships between economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. GDP growth represents the main economic dimension, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and renewable energy consumption the environmental dimension, and corruption the social dimension of sustainable development. The investigation of these relationships is based on the concept of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis about the non-linear relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution. The authors used the panel data of EU countries and Ukraine for 2000–2016 years from the Eurostat database. The obtained results confirmed the Environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for the EU and Ukraine. All the indicators were statistically significant at 1% and 5% levels. The findings proved that increasing renewable energy (RE) by 1% led to a decline of GHG in the interval (0.166103, 0.220551), and аn increase of the Control of Corruption Index by 1% provoked a decline of GHG by 0.88%. The conducted study enabled the authors to conclude that Ukraine needs to increase the GDP level per capita given the economy diversification and via the introduction of more effective and “clean” production technologies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (18) ◽  
pp. 10230
Author(s):  
Irene M. Zarco-Soto ◽  
Fco. Javier Zarco-Soto ◽  
Pedro J. Zarco-Periñán

More than half of the world’s population lives in cities. A large part of the emissions and energy consumption corresponds to buildings, both in the residential sector and in the service sector. This means that a large part of the measures taken by governments to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are focused on this sector. With this background, this paper studies energy consumption in city buildings and the CO2 emissions they produce. It only makes use of publicly available data. The analysis is made from the point of view of income per inhabitant, and the results are obtained per inhabitant and household. To facilitate the analysis of the results, an index has been defined. The main contributions of this work are to analyze energy consumption and emissions due to buildings, study them from the point of view of the income of their inhabitants, and consider cities individually. The proposed methodology has been applied to the case of Spain. A total of 145 Spanish cities that have more than 50,000 inhabitants have been studied. The results show that the higher the income, the higher the consumption and emissions. Electricity consumptions are almost inelastic, while those of thermal origin are greatly influenced by the level of income. Regarding CO2 emissions, the percentage of emissions of electrical origin with respect to total emissions is higher than that of thermal origin. In addition, the lower the income, the higher the percentage of emissions of electrical origin.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yael Teff-Seker ◽  
Michelle Eva Portman ◽  
Keren Kaplan-Mintz

Urban planning can serve a vital role in meeting the goals of education for sustainable development (ESD); it could potentially provide future planners with the environmental considerations necessary to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This article presents findings from a quantitative study of planning students’ experiences with Project- and Problem-Based Learning (PPBL). Graduate planning students in an environmental planning class were divided into two groups according to their course assignment, PPBL or non-PPBL, and given pre- and post-questionnaires, with questions to grade statements on environmental attitudes and behaviors. PPBL students reported a statistically significant change in environmental behavior involving others, while neither behavior nor attitudes changed significantly for students in the control group. Then, semi-open interviews were conducted with 11 of the students 3 years later. The interviews indicate that PPBL students remembered more content related to their assignments and felt they received more types of planning experiences and tools than those in the control group.


Author(s):  
Robin Attfield

Sustainable development was defined in the 1987 Brundtland Report as development that ‘meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. It envisaged social, ecological, and economic needs, favouring not just leaving future generations with options for satisfying their needs, but also introducing policies that would make the meeting of those needs more feasible. ‘Sustainability and preservation’ discusses the Millennium Development Goals set in 2000 and the Sustainable Development Goals set in 2015. It explains why biodiversity loss is a major global problem, and why its preservation warrants inclusion in these goals. The forms and limits of preservation are also considered.


2021 ◽  
Vol 308 ◽  
pp. 01001
Author(s):  
Yuxuan Hu ◽  
Jue Wang ◽  
Xueru Wang

Green building materials are a new category. Compared with the past building materials, ideal building materials have a series of characteristics such as reducing energy consumption, reducing emissions, saving resources, and being recyclable, which makes them become an important reference for sustainable development. This article focuses on foam glass, green walls, and ecological cement. During the research process, it was found that foam glass has better characteristics than ordinary glass, and less waste is generated during the production process, which reduces pollution; The green wall can not only reduce energy consumption, but also absorb harmful substances, and the plant exterior wall can also make people comfortable; Ecological cement can be made from waste materials, which greatly saves resources and realizes recycling. In short, green building materials are an important method to achieve sustainable development and will certainly play an important role in the future construction field.


Author(s):  
Tejvir Singh ◽  
Muataz Ali Atieh ◽  
Tareq Al-Ansari ◽  
Abdul Wahab Mohammad ◽  
Gordon McKay

Desalination accounts for 1% of the total global water consumption and is an energy-intensive process, with the majority of operational expenses attributed to energy consumption. Moreover, at present, a significant portion of the power comes from traditional fossil fuel-fired power plants and the greenhouse gas emissions associated with power production along with concentrated brine discharge from the process, pose a severe threat to the environment. Due to the dramatic impact of climate change, there is a major opportunity to develop sustainable desalination processes to combat the issues of brine discharge, greenhouse gas emissions along with a reduction in energy consumption per unit of freshwater produced. Nanotechnology can play a vital role to achieve specific energy consumption reduction as nanofluids application increases the overall heat transfer coefficient enabling the production of more water for the same size desalination plant. Furthermore, concentrated brine discharge harms the marine ecosystems, and hence, this problem must also be solved to support the objective of sustainable desalination. Several studies have been carried out in the past several years in the field of nanotechnology applications for desalination, brine treatment and the role of renewable energy in desalination. This paper aims to review the major advances in this field of nanotechnology for desalination. Furthermore, a hypothesis for developing an integrated solar thermal and nanofluid sustainable desalination system, based on the cyclic economy model is proposed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph DesJardins

ABSTRACT:Almost thirty years after its initial use in the Brundtland Report, the concept of “sustainability” has become ubiquitous within business, with virtually every company division across a broad range of industries developing “sustainable” models and practices. While the original Brundtland idea of sustainable development has the potential to do much good in guiding business practice, this potential is being undermined by the systematic misuse, misunderstanding, and flawed application of the concept in many business settings. Under the guise of sustainability, business is being asked to do both less than and more than what should be required by a commitment to sustainable development. As a result, serious ethical and practical questions go unanswered, questions that must be addressed before sustainability can become a meaningful business strategy. This address situates sustainable business within its original context of sustainable development and argues against attempts to convert sustainability either into a narrow concept of risk management or into a broad concept of social responsibility. It then lays out a sustainability research agenda that helps us understand how to create businesses that can meet present and future needs without jeopardizing future generations via the destruction of the biosphere.


2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-122
Author(s):  
J. T. Kiss ◽  
I. Kocsis

Abstract Energy efficiency measures and the enhancement of investments in renewable energy play important role in sustainable development and lead to advancement of competitiveness of national economies. The increase of renewable energy consumption and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions are significant stages of the process to achieve the main purposes of sustainable development at global and national levels. In this paper the change in the share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption and in the greenhouse gas emissions intensity in Hungary between 2004 and 2011 is investigated. It is demonstrated that the share of the renewable energy in gross inland energy consumption increased during the examined period. The measure and the tendency of the change in Hungary show similarity to the EU 27 average. The greenhouse gas emissions intensity of energy consumption decreased in Hungary between 2004 and 2011. According to the data, the decrease is the second largest among the European Member States.


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