‘The Building Centre’ becomes latest high-profile venue to host SUE exhibition

The ‘Eco Zone Gallery’ at The Building Centre has become the latest high profile venue to host the Sustainable Urban Environment digital poster exhibition.

The Building Centre,  established in 1931, is an independent forum dedicated to providing information and inspiration to all sectors of the built environment. The venue regularly hosts workshops, events and training days and boasts a footfall of around 2000 visitors per week.

The SUE exhibition is located in the EcoZone Gallery, an area dedicated to sustainability and created in response to the growing awareness and concern of the effects that the choice of materials have on the built and natural environment.

Gallery manager John Bonning said:

‘ We have seen an increasing numbers of visitors interested in sustainability and coming to the Eco Zone to see the latest technologies and products in this field. The SUE exhibition is a great addition to the display and means our visitors can find out about the latest research too.’

Visit The Building Centre: Located in central London, just off Tottenham Court Road, The Building Centre is easily accessible by all forms of public transport.

View the exhibition online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8lsiBCL91M

The SUE exhibition is also currently on display at CABE headquarters in central London (www.cabe.org.uk) and is due to move to BRE Innovation Park (www.bre.co.uk) later this summer.

Benn: Engineers need to remedy changing climate

Making Britiain resilient to a changing climate will depend on the engineering sector’s response according to environment secretary Hilary Benn.

Speaking at the joint Defra and Engineering the Future Conference, Mr Benn called on the sector to lead the way in building Britain’s future infrastructure – from transport networks to nuclear power stations to withstand the changes to our climate.

Environment Minister Hilary Benn

“The floods of last month, and the collapse of bridges, show us how much a resilient infrastructure matters. Protecting ourselves against negative impacts, and also taking advantage of the benefits of a changing climate, is all part ofbuilding Britain’s future.

“The UK’s engineering sector is vital to tackling this challenge and is well-placed lead in designing and engineering climate resilient and low carbon infrastructure for global markets, as well as the UK.”

Defra predicts warmer and wetter winters, hotter and drier summers, increased risk of coastal erosion and more severe weather events such as flooding and heat waves.

ICE President and ISSUES principal investigator Paul Jowitt, said: “In the past week we have seen the destruction that infrastructure failure can cause and how dependent we are on the whole infrastructure network. It is crucial that we adapt and develop this network to withstand the inevitable future threats facing it.

“Climate change is not only about reducing emissions – it is one of the biggest threats facing the UK’s infrastructure and will present some major challenges. These challenges will require innovative solutions from the engineering community and joined up thinking with Government. We are confident that by acting now and working together, we can adapt our infrastructure to improve its resilience and reduce our vulnerability to crisis,” he said.

Read full article here

UK flooding: taste of things to come?

The UK was hit by some of the worst flooding ever recorded in Cumbria and Wales last week, devastating homes and claiming lives.

As concern grows for flood-hit communities in Cumbria and an urgent inspection of the county’s bridges gets underway as more rain is forecast, environment secretary Hilary Benn gave an emergency statement to the Commons. The government has already pledged a £1m fund to local authorities in flood hit areas.

Benn began his statement by paying tribute to PC Barker. He also announced the death of another man – Michael Streeter a contractor for the Environment Agency who died while repairing flood defences in West Sussex.

But the environment minster chose to end his statement with a warning about global warming:

“Although we cannot attribute this particular event to climate change, we can expect to see more extreme weather in the years ahead. This is a future we must prepare for,” he said.

For up to the minute flooding news visit the Guardian’s live blog.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne voted Greenest UK city

Newcastle has transformed itself into the greenest city in Britain, according to the country’s most comprehensive sustainability audit.

The Forum for the Future study’s annual rankings show the Geordies leap-frogging more “apparently green” cities such as Bristol, who topped the chart last year.

Millions of pounds and a communal push for cleaner, brighter surroundings including improvements in air quality, and biodiversity in public parks and open spaces,  have all contributed to Tyneside’s triumph.

The audit shows the city performing well on waste collection, extending green space, life expectancy and the local strategy for tackling climate change.

Read more about Newcastle’s regeneration

Read about SUE’s own sustainable urban regeneration projects here

Link directly to the relevant research by consortia:  SURegen, ReVISIONS, VivaCity, SuScit, InSITU, ESR

Or visit the consortia website links in the sidebar

Obama and Hu aim to agree greenhouse gas targets

Statement by leaders of world’s two biggest polluters could breathe new life into Copenhagen climate change talks, the Guardian has reported today.

The US and China, the world’s two biggest polluters, today said they aimed to set targets for easing greenhouse gas emissions next month, potentially breathing new life into the flagging Copenhagen climate negotiations.

Days after the US president, Barack Obama, said time to secure a legally binding agreement had run out, he and the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, agreed at a summit that they would continue to press for a comprehensive deal at Copenhagen that would “rally the world”.

Read full article

Read SUE research findings that challenge UK climate targets

Copenhagen climate talks hopes fade as Obama backs postponement

Barack Obama acknowledged today that time has run out to secure a binding climate deal at Copenhagen and began moving towards a two-stage process that would delay a legal pact until next year at the earliest, the Guardian has reported today.

During a hastily convened breakfast meeting in Singapore, the US president supported a Danish plan to salvage something from the moribund negotiations by aiming for a broad political agreement and postponing contentious decisions on emissions targets, financing and technology transfer.

read full article

UK Climate Targets ‘unachievable’

UK government plans to make carbon emission cuts of 80% by 2050 are physically impossible to achieve, according to a new analysis by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the BBC reported today.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers says there is not enough time or capacity to build the wind turbines and extra nuclear power stations required and that under current plans, the targets will not be met until 2100.

The UK’s Climate Change Act passed into law in 2008, putting a legal imperative on the government to cut emissions by 80% of their 1990 levels by 2050, with a mid-term target of 34% cuts by 2020.

But the report investigates how practical these targets are to reach and concludes that they cannot be met with the current approaches to cutting carbon.

IMeche called for a major investment in geo-engineering and what it is calling a “war” on climate change with a beefed up government department in charge.

Read full article here

Read SUE research findings that challenge UK climate targets

Hard-hitting ad campaigns in the wake of Climate Change Act:

Professor Paul Jowitt becomes ICE President

ISSUES Principal Investigator Professor Paul Jowitt celebrated ‘the proudest moment’ of his career yesterday, becoming the 145th President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

President Jowitt was joined by 500 friends, colleagues, ICE members and former presidents at the ICE building in Westminster to mark the beginning of his 12 months in office with the traditional presidential address.

In a rousing speech President Jowitt called for an ‘engineering renaissance’ and insisted that ‘now is the time’ for civil engineers to lead the world through the challenges of climate change, natural and man-made disasters, and economic crisis.

Referring directly to SUE research, President Jowitt said that devising the right implementation strategies for sustainable urban environments was the key challenge for engineers to overcome in the next 20 years.

President Jowitt joins the ranks of Robert Stephenson, Joseph Bazalgette and William Halcrow in taking up the prestigious post and succeeds President Jean Venebles, the first woman to head the ICE.

The new president has already put his new vision for change into practice by broadening the President’s Apprentice initiative to reflect an international approach. This year´s scheme focuses on providing the young engineers´ invaluable experience in the role civil engineers play in international development and unlike other years, when most apprentices have been UK-based, four of the apprentices live in ICE international regions and eight of them are not UK nationals.

To find out more about the new President’s plan of action, read President Jowitt’s interview in New Civil Engineer magazine.

URSULA’s new face

Starting this week research group URSULA, part of the second tier of the EPSRC’s SUE programme,  has just got bigger.

A new researcher, Laurence Pattacini, has joined Task 4 – ‘Urban Forms Design’, bringing her expertise in landscape planning to the project. As part of her work, Laurence will be working with other members of Task 4 to draw up new, distinctive and high quality designs for urban river corridors that maximise economic, social and environmental benefits. These designs will be visionary, drawing on the innovative river corridor interventions being studied by the URSULA team at the forefront of the latest cross-disciplinary research.

Of course to get a feeling for the practicalities of these designs they need to be grounded in the real world. And what better place then Sheffield, one of the UK’s largest cities, which has large areas of urban river corridor awaiting redevelopment.  One such site chosen by URSULA to create designs for is Wicker Riverside in central Sheffield, a rundown and underused area of the city adjacent to the River Don. Ample brownfield land and derelict buildings means there is plenty of scope at the site to apply radical urban design, though within the realistic constraints of an urban setting.

For more information click on the link to URSULA’s homepage in the Blogroll

Find out more about SUE

Civil engineers call for greater speed in UK carbon capture drive

The government must move faster in implementing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology if the UK is to meet ambitious targets to cut its carbon emissions, according to civil engineers,  THE GUARDIAN has reported today.

In a report published today by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), experts argue that the government must issue a national policy statement for the technology, in the same way that proposals for large-scale future energy projects in nuclear, coal and wind power are planned. This would reduce uncertainty among companies and investors while speeding up the implementation of the technology.

read full article

read SUE research findings related to UK Government carbon reduction plan