SUSTAINABILITY

A green building is an environmentally sustainable building, designed, constructed and operated to minimise the total environmental impacts. Well designed green buildings will save money, increase comfort and create healthier environments for people to live and work, using improved indoor air quality, natural daylight, and thermal comfort.
 

The UK Government White Paper issued in 2004 proposes energy consumption be measured in CO2/m2 pa. The advantage of including CO2 is that it includes the energy source. This is relevant when renewable energy sources are used. Renewable Energy provides clean energy with zero CO2 emissions. Sources are including:

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• Wind
• Solar
• Biomass
• Geothermal

We specialise in the design, construction and performance of environmentally sustainable buildings. Our customers are property developers, architects, consultants, town and city councils.

The world has long been making attempts to eliminate the need for fossil fuels and recently, more and more officials and non-governmental organizations call for the closing of nuclear power stations, as well.

Because of the continuous price increase of the fossil fuels, renewable energy is a real alternative. The production price of the latter is decreasing due to the new generation of technologies. One of the elements that mankind has an unlimited access to is the wind.

Photovoltaic systems use cells to convert solar radiation into electricity. The cell consists of one or two layers of a semi-conducting material. When light shines on the cell it creates an electric field across the layers, causing electricity to flow.
The greater the intensity of the light, the greater the flow of electricity is.

Biomass is the third most important renewable energy source in the European energy mix, after hydro and wind. It is also, alongside wind power, the fastest growing form of renewable energy.

Unlike fossil fuels, combustion of biomass does not contribute to the greenhouse effect in the long run. When biomass fuels are burned, the quantity of carbon dioxide released is the same as the amount the plants consumed during their lifetime. One exception is peat, which when burned, is regarded as a net contributor to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

Nanotechnology (sometimes shortened to "nanotech") is the manipulation of matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology works with materials, devices, and other structures with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres, where nanometer is one billionth of a meter. A sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick.