Building a house from the ground up can be environmentally damaging. Buildings have a significant carbon footprint, with over 41% of global energy consumption attributed to buildings and structures. Buildings and materials also produce dangerous emissions that pollute our air, and the construction industry alone generates more than 170 tons of debris annually. There is also the issue of landfill waste, excessive use of water and noise pollution caused by the construction of buildings and houses.
SPEE Architecten, an architecture firm in the Netherlands, may have found a sustainable solution for building houses. Their projects focus on innovation and sustainability and creating healthy elements for both the residents and the environment. The architects created their newest project Speehuis House to create a site that minimally impacts the surrounding trees and wetlands with a structure that could be dismantled and recycled.
The house was built in a wooded area adjacent to a wetland area. The house’s form, size and layout are tailored to the needs of a family with three and adjoins SPEE Architects’ office premises. Large, strategically-placed windows offer a lot of natural light to the inner spaces and views of the outdoors. The entire house is made of circular and biobased materials. For example, the exterior walls and sloping roofs are made from untreated, high-density, biobased bamboo slats.
The team used Bamboo X-treme beams which consist of more than 90% of thermally modified bamboo strips. Bamboo absorbs a lot of CO2 during its growth, which remains stored throughout the product’s lifespan. Bamboo X-treme is extremely durable, dimensionally stable, and harder than most types of wood. When the bamboo fibers and resin are compressed at high temperatures, the natural sugar in the bamboo caramelizes, rendering it rot-resistant. These materials can be conveniently dismantled, adapted and recycled as need be.
Most of the home’s shell, including the stairs, interior doors, desks and cabinets, is made from cross-laminated timber that was chosen to avoid using concrete. The entire shell was prefabricated in less than a week. The wood was sourced from responsibly managed forests and was selected to create a natural and healthy indoor environment and a carbon sink. The architecture team estimates that over 93 000 kg of CO2 is stored within the building. In comparison, the same building built in concrete would produce 46,694 kg of CO2.
The home that SPEE Architecten has built shows us a future of what the construction industry can look like and how we can live more sustainably. The design is spacious and tasteful and allows for comfortable living without causing harm to the environment. If more architecture firms transitioned to building homes like the Speehuis House, the environmental impact from the construction industry would decrease substantially.
Winding past the ochre-coloured plateaux of the Bardenas Reales natural park in northern Spain, Roel Grooten nudged me to take my foot off the accelerator.
The car continued to barrel down the open stretch of road, its speed dipping only slightly. “It keeps on going,” said Grooten, the lead engineer for the Dutch car company Lightyear, as we whizzed through the lunar-like landscape. “What you feel is nothing holding you back. You feel the aerodynamics, you feel the low-rolling resistance of the tyres, of the bearings and the motor.”
It is this streamlined design that the company credits for allowing it to muscle its way into a space long overlooked by most car manufacturers. As early as November, the company will start delivery of what it describes as the “world’s first production-ready solar car” – the Lightyear 0, a €250,000 (£215,000) sedan draped in 5 sq metres of curved solar panels that top up the electric battery while the car is driving or parked outdoors.
“If we would have the same amount of energy that we harvest on these panels on any other car that uses three times the amount of energy to drive, it becomes useless. It becomes a very expensive gimmick,” said Grooten. “You have to build this car from the ground up, to make it as efficient as possible, to make it this feasible.”
In optimal conditions, the solar panels can add up to 44 miles a day to the 388-mile range the car gets between charges, according to the company. Tests carried out by Lightyear suggest people with a daily commute of less than 22 miles could drive for two months in the Netherlands without needing to plug in, while those in sunnier climes such as Portugal or Spain could go as long as seven months.
In optimal conditions, the solar panels can add up to 44 miles a day to the 388-mile range the car gets between charges. Photograph: Nacho Bueno Gil/The Guardian
But whether the company’s gamble on solar will pay off remains to be seen, said Jim Saker, professor emeritus at Loughborough University and president of the Institute of the Motor Industry.
“You’re having to pay an awful lot of money and have solar panels stuck on the car for just 44 additional miles. The question mark at the moment is the fact that, in reality, is that actually worth it? The actual concept isn’t bad. It’s just whether the technology is actually viable to make it economically sustainable for anybody wanting to do this.”
Sales of the Lightyear 0 would probably be limited to a handful of early adopters, he added. “But in reality, it’s not a commercial proposition at the moment.”
Others questioned the idea of a car being touted as a salve to the ever deepening climate crisis. “The most sustainable way to approach car ownership is actually to avoid it entirely, if you can at all,” said Vera O’Riordan, a PhD student focusing on low-carbon pathways and policies for passenger transport at University College Cork in Ireland.
While electric vehicles may have a limited role to play in rural areas that lack public transport, she cited research suggesting these vehicles are often sold to high-income households in urban areas. “So you have to ask yourself the question: are you serving this individualised, very inefficient, very harmful and traffic-inducing transport in urban areas where it could otherwise be perfectly met by public transport and walking and cycling?”
The need to move away from cars to tackle the climate emergency is – perhaps surprisingly – echoed by Lex Hoefsloot, the 31-year-old chief executive of Lightyear, who has raised about €150m in investment to get it running.
“It would be great, I fully agree,” he said. “But I think we’re not going to change our lives too much. Perhaps, when we’re really panicking in 20 years, we might. But in the meantime, we have to work around that.”
Since 2016 the company has championed solar energy as a key part of this work-around, envisioning solar cars capable of running on clean energy and accelerating the transition away from polluting fossil fuels. “People were saying it wasn’t possible, mostly because of the limited amount of solar power you could get on a car,” said Hoefsloot.
Roel Grooten, the lead engineer, explains the car’s controls. Photograph: Nacho Bueno Gil/The Guardian
His own experience, however, suggested otherwise. The Lightyear 0 – a sleek four-wheel drive – traces its roots to a squat box-on-wheels that ferried four helmet-clad university students across the Australian outback to win in its class in the 2013 world solar challenge.
“If it works in Australia, then it works everywhere. That was the thinking,” said Hoefsloot, who founded Lightyear with four other members of the solar challenge team. “Early days, I must admit there was a hesitation whether we should go full car manufacturing, because we all know it’s not the easiest thing. But there was nobody else out there that was really willing to or doing something similar.”
In recent years there has been an upswell of interest in integrating solar panels into cars: Mercedes-Benz recently revealed plans to outfit an upcoming electric car with rooftop solar panels, while Toyota has at times offered limited-capacity solar panels as an add-on to its Prius hybrid.
Next year, Munich-based Sono Motors plans to roll out a €28,500 solar-assisted family car, while the California-based startup Aptera Motors said in 2020 that preorders for its futuristic three-wheeled solar electric vehicle sold out in less than 24 hours.
With months left before the Lightyear 0’s production run, there are still kinks to be worked out, from a stiff steering wheel to the buzz that at times fills the car when the air conditioning kicks in.
Once you are in the car, there is little about the driving experience that feels different from other electric cars – “That’s a huge compliment, that’s what we’re aiming for,” one staff member tells me – save for a smattering of reminders about the constant drip feed of solar energy. One screen shows exactly what cells are feeding off the sun at any given moment, while another quantifies how much solar energy is being absorbed.
The car’s body panels are made from reclaimed carbon fibre. Photograph: Nacho Bueno Gil/The Guardian
In an effort to use as much of this solar energy as possible, the windswept design eschews side-view mirrors for cameras and runs off lightweight electric motors tucked into its wheels. The body panels are crafted from reclaimed carbon fibre and the interiors are fashioned from vegan, plant-based leather with fabrics made from recycled polyethylene terephthalate bottles.
The 20-minute test run is probably the only time I will sit at the wheel of the Lightyear 0. With its hefty price tag – ideally paid by those who have an outdoor parking space to maximise the car’s gain from the sun – it is not a car for the masses.
Instead, the company envisions the production run, which will offer up to 946 vehicles for delivery across Europe and the UK, as a beginning of sorts. “This is a small scale to validate to the world that we can produce a car,” said Telian Franken, the prototype team lead.
From there, the company will shift its focus to a second solar-assisted electric car it is aiming to sell for about €30,000 as early as 2025. “We’re trying to make the difference, not for the millionaire who can afford a €250,000 car, but to get us to the point where the average person can get off grid – get a reliable sustainable vehicle that beats toe-for-toe any econo-box you can get at the time,” said Franken, citing the Toyota Corolla or Honda Accord as examples. “That’s what we’re trying to beat – and replace – because it’s not sustainable.”
A major offshore wind farm in the Netherlands is now fully operational, with its owners, Danish energy firm Orsted, claiming it provides enough green electricity to power one million households.
Situated 23 kilometers (around 14.3 miles) off the coast of Zeeland, in the southwest of the Netherlands, the 752 megawatt (MW) Borssele 1 & 2 offshore wind farm spans an area of 112 square kilometers. It uses 94 wind turbines from Siemens Gamesa.
In an announcement Friday, Orsted described the facility as the second-largest operating offshore wind farm in the world. The largest, Hornsea One, has a capacity of 1.2 gigawatts (GW) and was also developed by Orsted.
News of Borssele 1 & 2′s commissioning is the latest example of European countries embracing offshore wind and comes after the European Union said it wanted to increase its offshore wind capacity from 12 to 300 GW by 2050.
The “Offshore Renewable Energy Strategy” from the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, also aims for 40 GW of ocean energy such as tidal and wave power within the same time frame.
A number of major offshore wind projects located in European waters are now in the pipeline. These include the Dogger Bank Wind Farm in Britain, which left the EU in January 2020.
A 50:50 joint venture between SSE Renewables and Equinor, the Dogger Bank facility will have a total capacity of 3.6 GW once completed, making it the largest in the world.
At the end of last week, it was announced that a deal to fund the first two phases of the project had been completed. According to SSE, investment for Dogger Bank A and B will amount to approximately £6 billion (around $8 billion).
While Europe is now home to a mature offshore wind sector, the one in the U.S. is still relatively new.
The next few years could see the sector develop, however, with companies starting to invest large amounts of money in schemes located off the East Coast.
Back in September, for instance, oil and gas giant BP took 50% stakes in Equinor’s Empire Wind and Beacon Wind projects, which are located off the coasts of New York State and Massachusetts respectively.
15 islands, made up of more than 70,000 solar panels are being built in the Netherlands
The sun-tracking panels face the sun all day, so they’re able to absorb more energy
The famous poem “No Man is an Island” – meaning no one is completely self-sufficient – has resonated with Western society since the 17th century. But what if a man is an island comprised of solar panels? The odds of survival would be much higher.
In the Netherlands, the largest solar panel island project to date is currently being developed. Set to consist of 15 islands on the Andijk Reservoir in North Holland, 15 floating solar islands, containing 73,500 panels, will be the first sun-tracking islands of this size in the world.
Arnoud Vandruten, managing director of Floating Solar, a solar panel supplier of the project says the islands are in the engineering phase and will be put into the water in September, October, and November of this year. It’s no coincidence that this adaptation was born in the Netherlands, as people there already live below sea level.
Why on the water?
“We can fight the rising of the sea level in the Netherlands with building even higher dikes or living on the water,” says Vandruten. “So that is the reason why we changed our focus from putting solar panels on rooftops and land to water. We adapt by moving the energy supply from land to the rising water. We can also experiment with moving complete housing districts to the water, while being energy positive or at least neutral.”
Because the sun-tracking panels face the sun all day they’re able to absorb more energy. Additionally, being on water provides useful dynamics that aren’t possible on land.
“You have to make the system flexible so it can adapt to the energy of the waves and at the same time the panels can act as sails,” says Vandruten. “Because we can turn the island with the sun, the other advantage is you can put an island in such a position that it’s not harmed by the wind.”
Solar panel islands are also being built in Japan, China, Chile and the UK. Ramez Naam, Co-Chair of Energy and Environment at Singularity University, says that ultimately, cost savings and scarcity of land or water are what will drive the floating solar trend forward and bring more governments on board.
“Where land is scarce like in Japan, solar on reservoirs is a great way to deploy it in an area that otherwise couldn’t be used,” explains Naam. “When water cools down, the solar panels increases their efficiency and they then actually produce more electricity. Plus, solar over water can reduce evaporation losses from those reservoirs, ponds, canals and so on.”
Naam added that the price of solar electricity has dropped dramatically.
“In sunny parts of the world, solar is now just plain cheaper than coal or gas electricity,” he says.” In some places, building new solar or even new wind is cheaper or is about to be cheaper than continuing to operate on existing coal and gas.”
