The world’s most sustainable football stadiums

The world’s most sustainable football stadiums

Football is packing stadiums to the brim each passing year, but with it comes an ugly environmental footprint. From generating millions of tonnes of solid wastes to fans consuming truckloads of sausages that inflate the game’s carbon footprint, how can the beautiful game live up to its environmental responsibility? American power tool company McCulloch rounded up 12 of the world’s most sustainable football stadiums, including one built entirely from wood, and another that is naturally cooled by water.

Eco Business

Long live sustainability as corporate strategy

Corporate social responsibility departments are dead — as are all the consultants, academics, conference organizations and lecturers who prey on them. We have just completed two decades of buzzwords, imitation tactics, greenwashing, PR, meaningless statistics, tomes of reports and the world is over it — they see right through all of it. Google the term “CSR” and you will see story after story stating the same thing: CSR is dead.

GreenBiz

Impact investing begins to hit home

There is a difference between the current interest in impact investing and the more established forms of responsible or sustainable investing. The latter is fundamentally about mitigating risk and protecting value, while the former has a conscious objective to render a positive effect on society. But impact investing is not all the same and can be differentiated by being ‘finance first’ and ‘impact first’.

IPE Real Estate

More buildings are going green. Literally.

Most people, when they think of “green” buildings, take that to mean structures built with energy conservation in mind. But, increasingly, buildings are becoming literally green, as cities and companies around the world embrace biophilic design—the concept of surrounding buildings with nature, even on their upper floors, and bringing the outdoors indoors by including natural elements in their interior design.

Wall St. Journal

Is this a data center that combats climate change?

A new prototype model for urban data centers, developed by MIRIS in cooperation with Snøhetta, Skanska, Asplan Viak, and Nokia, hopes to help solve the international climate challenge by allowing excess energy from data centers to power cities with up to 18,000 people.  Considering data centers account for 2% of the world’s total energy consumption, that wasted excess heat is a substantial amount.

BDC Network

New study looks at the design of the home in 2050

It seems that sometimes it goes too far, and in other ways doesn’t go far enough. A new study has been released by the NHBC foundation in the UK, Futurology: The new home in 2050 that has a lot of interesting ideas. Prepared by Studio Partington, a design practice in London, it “provides an interesting insight into some of the trends we are likely to see 30 years or more into the future.”

TreeHugger – NHBC Foundation

U.S. GBC announces latest LEED Homes Award Winners

The U.S. Green Building Council‘s LEED Homes Awards recognize residential projects and developers for their innovative green construction. Most recently, the USGBC distinguished a group of multi-family, single-family, and affordable housing projects and companies for the 2017 edition of the awards.

Archinect.com

	Cyclists, drivers navigate a Toronto intersection
	The driver of a silver four-door car merges late into the painted green lane on Richmond St., crossing a solid white line. Within seconds, the car is surrounded by cyclists: five on the passenger’s side, three on the driver’s. When the light turns green ……
	Toronto Star, June 20, 2018

 

Edmonton drafting new bike transportation blueprint

Edmonton is looking to rewrite its bicycle transportation plan. The city has issued a request for proposals to hire a consultant to develop a new bike transportation blueprint. Public consultation is expected to begin this summer, with a first draft of the plan expected within 18 months.

CBC

Boston enacts new climate resiliency rules for buildings

Boston has enacted new rules to help buildings withstand climate change. The Boston Planning & Development Agency approved the new rules recently with the aims of helping to minimize flooding, keep the lights on in more buildings during power outages, and make it easier to upgrade street lights and other public works. Developments of 1.5 million sf or larger will need to assess installing an on-site power plant, and would have to build one if it’s financially feasible.

BDC Network

How Paris is building the eco-community of the future

Every so often, an environmentally friendly building gives us a glimpse of the low-carbon future so many climate plans envision. With the development of Clichy-Batignolles, the city of Paris has created a groundbreaking eco-village filled with such buildings. Begun in 2002, the massive redevelopment project is about 30 percent complete and is slated to be finished in 2020.

GreenBiz

Green Ontario cancellation leaves homeowners, industry scrambling

Anxious homeowners were checking with their window installers after incoming premier Doug Ford announced he was canceling the Green Ontario Fund. Jimm Fox, marketing director for Nordik Windows and other brands sold in the Toronto and Ottawa areas, said installers such as his company had received phone calls from people checking to see if they still qualified for up to $5,000 under the now-canceled rebate program.

Toronto Star

	10 things to know about Bloom Energy’s IPO
	A little over eight years ago Silicon Valley energy startup Bloom Energy unveiled its “magic box” to the public for the first time at a star-studded press event and through an exuberant story on “60 Minutes. Bloom Energy investor John Doerr compared the unveiling of Bloom Energy’s technology to Google’s IPO.
	Green Biz, June 20, 2018

 

Billions in limbo as Doug Ford nixes cap and trade

The cancellation of Ontario’s cap-and-trade system will leave billions of dollars in carbon credits in limbo and consumers on the hook for pricey home upgrades that were expected to be part of a rebate program. Incoming premier Doug Ford has vowed to immediately dismantle cap and trade, but has offered few details on how the system will be wound down, and how or if participating companies will be reimbursed.

Globe and Mail

No plan to increase target for cutting emissions: McKenna

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna says Canada has no immediate plans to follow Europe’s lead and increase its target for cutting emissions. McKenna is in Belgium this week for the second ministerial meeting of Canada, European Union and China on their climate change alliance to keep driving progress on the Paris agreement.

Globe and Mail

UK environment policies in tatters, warn green groups

Environmental campaigners and clean air groups have warned that the government’s green credentials are in tatters after a flurry of “disastrous decisions” that they say will be condemned by future generations. The government’s plan to expand Heathrow won overwhelming backing in the Commons on Monday with more than 100 Labour MPs joining the majority of  Tory politicians to back the plan.

The Guardian – The Guardian – Heathrow Expansion

US judge throws out climate change lawsuits against big oil

A U.S. judge who held a hearing about climate change that received widespread attention ruled Monday that Congress and the president were best suited to address the contribution of fossil fuels to global warming, throwing out lawsuits that sought to hold big oil companies liable for the Earth’s changing environment.

Financial Post

Renewable Energy

I just switched to “green” gas from Bullfrog Power

We used to be able to justify burning a bit of fossil gas, but we cannot anymore. As noted in a recent post Reduce Demand. Clean up electricity. Electrify everything, I have a gas boiler keeping my radiators hot and a gas stove in my kitchen. I used to think this was the right thing to do and it certainly was when we burned coal to make electricity (which we don’t in Ontario, Canada anymore).

TreeHugger

Corporate Sustainability

How strategic public-private partnerships are shaping up in cities

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) fall into four key types: operating partnerships, advisory committees, project partnerships and strategic partnerships. Of these, the most potent and long-ranging partnerships are strategic. Though they may begin with a single project, they ultimately provide a platform capable of generating new projects with the potential to achieve far-reaching impacts over time.

GreenBiz

Water Management

Wastewater dumped into Lake Champlain caused breweries

The city of Burlington, Vermont, released 1.8 million gallons of partially treated wastewater into Lake Champlain earlier this month, forcing the closure of city beaches – and state officials said part of the problem was wastewater from breweries and food producers. The cumulative effect of these industries in the area is a challenge for Burlington.

Environmental Leader

Other

GM’s global design center turns waste into works of art

At General Motors, we see waste as simply a resource out of place, and we strive to keep materials in use for as long as possible. That’s true at our industry-leading 142 landfill-free sites around the world, and it is a driving force behind our goal to become a zero-waste manufacturer.

3BL Media