24
Sustainability and the built environment
Thus, London’s impact on the environment stretches beyond its immediate boundaries
and beyond the UK, effectively touching every part of the globe which supplies its
resources. The problems listed above exist as a direct consequence of Londoners’
consumption patterns. Multiply this by the thousands of other cities around the world
and the result is clear.
To illustrate this further, picture someone sitting in an office having a cup of coffee.
Even a simple action like this involves decisions which have an impact on the world
at large: the choice of coffee brand, milk, sugar; and the type of cup (plastic or china),
water and kettle used. But it doesn’t end there. That person is also creating impact
through his or her office furniture, fixtures and fittings, and the type of building in
which they work. Then there are the wider impacts of the company he or she works
for, the impacts created by that company’s suppliers, and the impacts stemming from
whatever use customers make of the company’s products.
It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss these issues in further detail, although
some of the terms used are outlined in the Glossary on pages 62–64.
2 Energy
Most modern indoor built environments depend upon some form of space and water
heating or cooling. Power for the appliances used inside buildings is supplied by
electricity, which has proved to be an extremely convenient and clean form of energy.
Fossil fuels produce about 85% of the world’s energy, and usage has climbed to five
times what it was in 1950. Modern technological advances mean that today’s is a
power-hungry world, but this dependency has serious environmental consequences.
An affordable energy supply can be taken for granted; yet few of us realise the
chain of events required to get it to our homes and offices. In the case of electricity,
generation takes place in locations relatively remote from the urban areas they supply.
Raw materials often have to come from overseas, involving mega infrastructure and
transport. The generated electricity is usually fed into a grid system which serves as a
mechanism for distributing the energy around a number of urban settlements. It is then
distributed to the points of use in buildings through lengthy systems of high tension
wire.
Involved in all these processes are significant efficiency losses. By the time electricity
is used at home or at work it provides only around one tenth of the total energy that
has been consumed to produce it. This means that 10 Kwh (kilowatt hours) of energy
from raw material such as coal are needed to run a 1 Kw electric heater at home for
one hour. The generation process itself produces a great deal of heat but, rather than
being used, this heat is removed through complicated cooling techniques and thus
effectively wasted. For these reasons fossil fuel energy generation and distribution
through the grid system is considered to have a low efficiency.
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76