Skip to main content

Living Technologies

Ok, so of course coming fresh off the plane from the Living Future Conference in Seattle has really got me excited about the best and brightest in green building.

I will be sharing lessons learned , case studies, and knowledge nuggets in several posts. And sorry for falling off the map for so long to all my readers- life happens, eh?

So one of the most interesting innovations I learned about at the conference is the BIQ house in Hamburg, Germany. This is a multi-story apartment building that is completely powered by algae!

Algae sits inbetween panes of glass, eats carbon dioxide and sunlight, and produces oily algae that are digested by the building to create power. Neat huh? This building is a pilot/prototype but just opened several weeks ago.

This building brings up a lot of interest in algae for it's many uses. i've seen explorations in bioluminescent algae for street lighting, algae grown for biofuel for transportation, algae for wastewater treatment, and now to power an entire building. Besides sequestering carbon, different kinds of algae have different oil contents and can be utilized in different ways.

Isn't it incredible to think that during this building's lifetime, it will not only produce zero carbon emissions, but will actually absorb emissions in the city to feed itself and provide shelter for humans as well? Why didn't we think of this sooner??

If Germany can make this technology work, certainly our equally sunshine-short New Jersey and New York areas can find strength in these new technologies. Running on algae power would make this a truly living building!

For more information on the BIQ house, check out their website at: 
This Link here

Comments

  1. Could you explain "Digested by the building"?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The building website can better describe their particular system. But along the same lines of anaerobic digester, methane digesters, etc. They combust material and make power.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eating Garbage

Garbage is Beautiful. And let me tell you why. In 2010, the EPA estimated the US produced over 240 million tons of municipal solid waste. That is over four pounds of garbage, per person, per day. We travel through our day throwing things ‘away’. But where do they go? Does your trash go to a landfill, incinerator, or Waste to Energy Plant? Currently in NJ, thirteen counties have solid waste landfills and five counties have resource recovery facilities (incinerators). Of the five counties with resource recovery facilities, three also have landfills to receive waste that cannot be burnt. Eight counties have awarded waste disposal contracts and require that all waste be sent to one facility for disposal. The remaining thirteen counties have a free market system and transporters may send waste out of the county or state. The majority of us don’t know information like this, and don’t care as long as we don’t have to look at it. But if we were forced to look at the garb...

Covid, baby

Working in the sustainability field has been turned on its head during the Coronavirus pandemic. I went on a short hiatus to become a Mom (Elliott was born in March of 2020 only a few days before lockdown in NJ), and when I resurfaced, our approach needed to be different, here are some examples: Typically, the balance between ample fresh air within a building and energy use would result in driving the building toward lower energy use. Now, the ability to increase the outdoor air is desirable and is carrying more importance as a design consideration. We almost always pursued green cleaning operations and maintenance plans with our projects, however the Green Seal certified (or other healthy for people) cleaning products do not disinfect to the level desired for Covid- forcing teams to decide between abandoning their healthy cleaning policies and safety. Everything is packaged and sealed, and wrapped again. Cafes stopped allowing refillable coffee cups, towns that had plastic ba...

Breaking News- Renewable Energy can STILL power our planet!

Yesterday, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released an exciting report about the potential of Renewables and the world energy market. Over 120 world experts produced a scientific document over 1,000 pages long that provides a solution to 'business as usual' carbon emissions. They believe that we could meet the globe's energy needs with 80% renewable energies by mid-century . This would be a socially, politically, and physically strenuous task. If we eliminate all the complications and shift our paradigm, we still have issues like that which Ramon Pichs, Co-Chair of the Working Group III, added: “The report shows that it is not the availability of the resource, but the public policies that will either expand or constrain renewable energy development over the coming decades. Developing countries have an important stake in this future—this is where most of the 1.4 billion people without access to electricity live yet also where some of the best conditi...