Progress Report on Chinese Eco-Village

The BBC has an interesting progress report on the Huangbaiyu eco-village project in rural China. Huangbaiyu gained some press partly due to the involvement of some big environmental names. The chair of the project is William McDonough, an architect probably best known for putting the largest green roof in the world on top of a Ford factory.

The financer of the project claimed that he had to make some minor adjustments for financial reasons. This would explain the lack of both solar panels and the special insulation coating specified in the original plans. More curious though is that he found money to add garages to each house (not in the plans) and decided not to face the houses south (bad passive-solar feng shui). In addition to this, some of the locals think that they are very ugly and have concerns about how the lack of a garden could leave them without a reliable income. The situation is summed up by this quote in the article:

"What the small Huangbaiyu experiment shows is the danger of trying to impose a new way of life on people without fully understanding their needs and the realities of their lives."

...but back to McDonough for a second... He's on the editorial board of the Jounal of IE. His writings are very creative and his work with architecture/city planning and product/process design seeks to bridge the gap between IE dreams and reality. Another of his Chinese projects is shown below. With China's rapidly urbanizing population and large amount of land unsuited for agriculture, he proposes holistic designs incorporating ideas such as moving farms onto urban rooftops.

Guantang Chuangye Sustainable Development Demonstration Project

Project links:
China-US Center for Sustainable Development - overview of Huangbaiyu Village
Slideshow of Construction
Project Description from McDonough + Partners

Ecopolis

The latest issue of New Scientist devotes several pages this month to the environmental transformation of mega-cities. With the UN predicting that by 2007 more people will live in cities than the countryside, creating sustainable cities is more important than ever.

The articles dive into many IE concepts and details some interesting progress that has been made around the world, with one article devoted to developments on eco-cities in China. One of the articles can be found here.

[via Archinect]

Thinking outside of the Barrel

It appears that Google hosts seminars called Google TechTalks about a wide range of topics. A recent one is about biofuels in the US. They shoot videos on the talks and post them on Google Video.

Check it out

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Coming soon is a new movie documenting the history of the EV1 electric vehicle in California. Starting in the mid 1990's, GM leased over 800 of these vehicles to consumers. The car was received enthusiastically, but eventually the program was suddenly cancelled in 2003.


GM claimed that they couldn't sell enough cars to be profitable, despite long lists of people who wanted to lease them. Amid public protests, the cars were crushed, which only served to fuel speculation that GM intended for the program to fail despite public support. The article in Wikipedia goes into more detail about allegations related to the project cancellation.

[via Clean Break]

Update: A 20 minute interview with the film director is available here as a video or mp3

Greenspan warns of energy crisis

Alan Greenspan, a leading US economist best known for his power to scare stock markets with his carefully-worded subtle phrases, recently gave a 3 hour testimony before a US Senate committee recommending a much quicker development of alternative energy sources.

His main concern was that energy prices would push up inflation and threaten the economy. In addition, a terrorist attack on a Middle Eastern oil refinery could raise prices even more.

He further noted that much of the world's oil reserves are owned by governments not exactly friendly with the US. The recent high energy prices have created a "very serious issue" where these governments are receiving tremendous amounts of cash.

He also debunked corn-based ethanol, but spoke highly of the possibilities of cellulosic ethanol. Liquified natural gas was also mentioned as another replacement for petroleum.

Full Article
[via Renewable Energy Access]

Green Steel

CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, is working on a way to help industries produce cleaner steel. Their idea is to have steel mills use charcoal produced from trees planted to combat salinity.

The charcoal is much cleaner and burns faster than the coke currently used. Further studies have shown that this process can use 65% less CO2/tonne of iron even when including energy for growing, processing, and transport. A more in-depth exploration of the idea can be found in CSIRO Solve Magazine.