Pathways towards an Energetic Refurbishment Replication Strategy for Eastern European Countries - Findings from the EU project BEEM-UP

The goal of significantly increasing the energetic performance of multifamily buildings through effective retrofit measures has been proven to be feasible in three pilot sites in the Netherlands, Sweden and France in the BEEM-UP project. Further development of the project would naturally be to seek ways towards implementation of the gained experience on an even bigger scale, namely Eastern European countries with a large energetic refurbishment potential. However, the European Union comprises of countries of various stages of economic development, social-cultural values and environmental framework conditions so that the strategies discovered need to be translated to the specific national context. The goal of this paper is to evaluate seven countries from Eastern Europe by collecting and condensing information to great levels of abstraction, divided into seven major categories. The paper concludes on the major barriers towards energy efficiency and proposed a concrete strategy on how to overcome them

Linguee and the new ways of translation

Las nuevas formas de traducir (Cronin 2010) y las nuevas formas de documentarse (Corpas 2004) en el paradigma tecnológico se ven reflejadas en las herramientas y recursos que los traductores utilizan (Lagoudaki 2006 y Désilets et al 2009). Linguee es un repositorio de traducciones realizadas por humanos, alineadas con su texto de origen, que se recopila a partir del contenido de sitios web multilingües, mediante un procedimiento altamente automatizado. Linguee utiliza además su corpus alineado para extraer terminología y elaborar diccionarios. A pesar del recelo que puede suscitar el uso de textos paralelos a la hora de sustentar la toma de decisiones en el proceso traductor, aportamos argumentos que podrían justificar su uso. Demostraremos que Linguee cumple los criterios de calidad propuestos por Pinto (2004-2011), al menos en su nivel macroestructural. Por otro lado, identificaremos determinados mecanismos que pueden contribuir a la calidad de Linguee, como la revisión por pares, la revisión humana y el historial de ediciones de las entradas del diccionario, la trazabilidad de los contenidos, así como la edición colaborativa para matizar los resultados de los textos alineados.The new ways in which translations are carried out (Cronin 2010), and the new documentation procedures (Corpas 2004) in the technological paradigm are reflected in the tools and resources translators use (Lagoudaki 2006 and Désilets et al 2009). Linguee is a repository of translations made by humans that are aligned together with their source text; it collects content from multilingual web sites, through a highly automated procedure; finally, it uses aligned corpus in order to extract terminology and compile dictionaries. Though the use of parallel texts in translation, as a decision-making procedure, might give rise to suspicion, we contribute with arguments that could justify their use. We will prove that Linguee, at least at a macrostructural level, complies with the quality criteria proposed by Pinto (2004-2011). Also, we will identify some mechanisms that can contribute to quality in Linguee, such as peer-review, human review and history of editions in dictionary entries, traceability of content, as well as collaborative edition that can refine the aligned texts obtained from searches

Material efficiency strategies to reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with buildings, vehicles, and electronics - A review

As one quarter of global energy use serves the production of materials, the more efficient use of these materials presents a significant opportunity for the mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. With the renewed interest of policy makers in the circular economy, material efficiency (ME) strategies such as light-weighting and downsizing of and lifetime extension for products, reuse and recycling of materials, and appropriate material choice are being promoted. Yet, the emissions savings from ME remain poorly understood, owing in part to the multitude of material uses and diversity of circumstances and in part to a lack of analytical effort. We have reviewed emissions reductions from ME strategies applied to buildings, cars, and electronics. We find that there can be a systematic trade-off between material use in the production of buildings, vehicles, and appliances and energy use in their operation, requiring a careful life cycle assessment of ME strategies. We find that the largest potential emission reductions quantified in the literature result from more intensive use of and lifetime extension for buildings and the light-weighting and reduced size of vehicles. Replacing metals and concrete with timber in construction can result in significant GHG benefits, but trade-offs and limitations to the potential supply of timber need to be recognized. Repair and remanufacturing of products can also result in emission reductions, which have been quantified only on a case-by-case basis and are difficult to generalize. The recovery of steel, aluminum, and copper from building demolition waste and the end-of-life vehicles and appliances already results in the recycling of base metals, which achieves significant emission reductions. Higher collection rates, sorting efficiencies, and the alloy-specific sorting of metals to preserve the function of alloying elements while avoiding the contamination of base metals are important steps to further reduce emissions

The sustainable materials roadmap

Over the past 150 years, our ability to produce and transform engineered materials has been responsible for our current high standards of living, especially in developed economies. However, we must carefully think of the effects our addiction to creating and using materials at this fast rate will have on the future generations. The way we currently make and use materials detrimentally affects the planet Earth, creating many severe environmental problems. It affects the next generations by putting in danger the future of the economy, energy, and climate. We are at the point where something must drastically change, and it must change now. We must create more sustainable materials alternatives using natural raw materials and inspiration from nature while making sure not to deplete important resources, i.e. in competition with the food chain supply. We must use less materials, eliminate the use of toxic materials and create a circular materials economy where reuse and recycle are priorities. We must develop sustainable methods for materials recycling and encourage design for disassembly. We must look across the whole materials life cycle from raw resources till end of life and apply thorough life cycle assessments (LCAs) based on reliable and relevant data to quantify sustainability. We need to seriously start thinking of where our future materials will come from and how could we track them, given that we are confronted with resource scarcity and geographical constrains. This is particularly important for the development of new and sustainable energy technologies, key to our transition to net zero. Currently 'critical materials' are central components of sustainable energy systems because they are the best performing. A few examples include the permanent magnets based on rare earth metals (Dy, Nd, Pr) used in wind turbines, Li and Co in Li-ion batteries, Pt and Ir in fuel cells and electrolysers, Si in solar cells just to mention a few. These materials are classified as 'critical' by the European Union and Department of Energy. Except in sustainable energy, materials are also key components in packaging, construction, and textile industry along with many other industrial sectors. This roadmap authored by prominent researchers working across disciplines in the very important field of sustainable materials is intended to highlight the outstanding issues that must be addressed and provide an insight into the pathways towards solving them adopted by the sustainable materials community. In compiling this roadmap, we hope to aid the development of the wider sustainable materials research community, providing a guide for academia, industry, government, and funding agencies in this critically important and rapidly developing research space which is key to future sustainability.journal articl

nheeren/material_intensity_db: Database v1.2

<p>Major new release:</p> <ul> <li>Now over 900 datapoints</li> <li>Cleaned and corrected existing datapoints</li> <li>New attributes of standardized classifications o SSP regions, functional use types, structural construction types, etc.</li> </ul&gt

Towards a 2000 Watt society assessing building-specific saving potentials of the Swiss residential building stock

Switzerland declared the notion of the 2000 Watt society as their leitmotif towards a sustainable development in terms of energy. This implies that worldwide, no more than 17520 kWh of total primary energy and 1 ton CO2-eq. are to be consumed per capita and year for all services. Thus, in order to meet the targets of the 2000-Watt society, it is necessary to reduce primary energy demand by 44% and greenhouse gas emissions by 77%. The building stock model, described in this paper, assisted the government of Zurich to identify the necessary steps in order to achieve the goals with regard to the city‟s residential, school, and office buildings. The objective of this paper is to investigate the role of energy demand reduction in residential buildings on the way towards the goals of a 2000-Watt society.In order to illustrate the mechanisms within the building stock and to identify the effects of construction activity, the model works with different scenarios. Specific measures were isolated and analysed individually. All three measures act directly on the building stock; each have comparable reduction potential in terms of primary energy demand (ca. 15%) and greenhouse gas emissions (ca. 40%). In order to further cut back greenhouse gas emissions, measures to reduce carbon intensity of fuels and electricity need to be considered

Towards a 2000 Watt society – assessing building-specific saving potentials of the Swiss residential building stock

Switzerland declared the notion of the 2000 Watt society as their leitmotif towards a sustainable development in terms of energy and greenhouse gas emissions. This implies that worldwide, no more than 17,520 kWh of total primary energy and 1 ton CO2-equivalent are to be consumed per capita and year for all services. Thus, in order to meet the targets of the 2000 Watt society, it is necessary to reduce primary energy demand by 44% and greenhouse gas emissions by 77%. The building stock model, described in this paper, assisted the government of Zurich to identify the necessary steps in order to achieve the goals with regard to the city's residential, school, and office buildings. The objective of this paper is to investigate the role of energy demand reduction in residential buildings on the way towards the goals of a 2000 Watt society. In order to illustrate the mechanisms within the building stock and to identify the effects of construction activity, the model works with different scenarios. Specific measures were isolated and analysed individually. All three measures act directly on the building stock; each have comparable reduction potential in terms of primary energy demand (ca. 15%) and greenhouse gas emissions (ca. 40%). In order to further cut back greenhouse gas emissions, measures to reduce the carbon intensity of fuels and electricity need to be considered