Green Vehicles, Greener Buildings

As I have come across, some of the practical grren consepts in building can be

1.Use of solar water heater for hot water needs.

2.Spread of day light even to interiors by reflecting slabs and interior roof paints

3.Use of reflecting out door walls and roof to reduce building to heat up ( warm Climates)

4. Solar energy to Elect is still costlier. Wind depends on the wind availabilty.

5 Energy efficient fittings /equipments and auto switch off facilities

6.Use of Rain water for storage and use or percolation.

7 Insulation to walls by using hollo bricks.

Will members list some more ?

Some building materials can be made greener. We have made water repellents from petroleum-based paraffin wax, because it was cheap and that's the way we always did it. Recently, we have developed water repellents from plant waxes that actually work better! Some house wrap and roofing underlayment is made from polyester (PET).That's a good place for plastic bottles to end up.

Can PET handle the temps encountered on the roof on a hot day?

The upper limit for PET seems to be only about 80C. In the dry tropics a roof can exceed that.

Green energy in the form of electricity generated in a green manner ,is going to be the ultimate saviour for the mounting environmental issues. Whereas high capacity buildings exploit space and save abuse of land, the critical use of energy choice can set right green energy utilized buildings.Water utilities, cooking, rooms climate control, lifts operation, hot water preparation all to be met by green and low cost electricity. If low cost green electricity is achieved all major energy and pollution based issues will be silenced. Fossil fuels may be reserved for exclusive and remote area uses.The existing coal reserves can be exploited for liquefied coal so as to extract its worth organic raw materials and fuel conversions. All developments depend on low cost green electricity obtainment and augmentabilty.

I live in the Mid Atlantic region of the US and home builders still use 2X4 for exterior walls and still put in the cheapest doors & windows money can buy. Just using a 2x6's and a plastic wrap would make them 25% or more fuel efficient. but they don't even offer these options. How much added cost could it be just for this items vs the saving for the home owner.

Honestly do builders even care ?

Jim C

Another practical green concept in building is geothermal heating and cooling. Here is a great example of how geothermal works. http://geothermalservice.net/residential_systems.html

As an engineer and/ or contractor, have you made up your mind to trade in the gas guzzler for an electrical automobile or at least, a hybrid?

Where are the hybrid or electric trucks, pickups etc which engineers and especially contractors typically need?

Is there satisfactory hybrid or electric heavy construction equipment? I don't know of any except some for specialized use in mining or warehousing, and even there LPG is frequently better.

The problem in both areas is getting sufficient sustainable power and a usable working time before recharge, especially for construction equipment.

The use of solar and wind power is good but is perhaps illustrated by the press release which trumpeted that "Liddell power station is now solar assisted".

It transpired that all the hype was about the addition of 2MW of solar power to the station. While quite a sizable solar installation, this is small compared to the stations output of 2000MW.

There is, of course, the possibility that future coal fired power stations can have their exhaust gases scrubbed and the enriched water used to grow algae. These can then be processed for stock food, human food supplements or fuel (even liquid fuel). But that is still in the research stage.

Would this make coal firing green? Or perhaps some shade a little off that?

It is good to have as much power as possible generated locally by sustainable means (why not treat the sewage to produce methane, and perhaps turn it into methanol?), but there are limitations on how much of our grid can be sustainable before it becomes unstable.

For the foreseeable future, we are still going to need the base load power generators. We are also going to need liquid fuels for heavy work, unless there is some major breakthrough in energy storage technology (that doesn't use toxic materials like bromine, or environmentally demanding materials like mercury or Lithium).

I would emphasize that, where possible we should supplement this with renewable energy, but if it is subsidized, that should be for a limited time only so this equipment can build up sufficient production to lower the unit cost to become competitive with traditional methods.

There is much more that can be said on the subject, but perhaps another time.