Daylight & Architecture 12

Daylight and Architecture - issue #12

VELUX Editorial
Flows
In December 2009, the entire world will be looking towards Copenhagen. 10,000 politicians, representatives of civil society and the media are expected to attend the COP 15 summit in the Danish capital. The aim is to get a new agreement off the ground to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Goals for 2050 will be agreed and great expectations are held for the conference, some observers calling it “the last real opportunity to keep climate change within limits”.
The VELUX Group believes that it is of immeasurable importance that an ambitious climate agreement with broad-reaching support is reached at the summit. We propose that buildings be put on the agenda as they account for up to 40 % of all energy consumption. We take responsibility as a company, and we strive to optimise our products and devise solutions for sustainable, CO2-neutral buildings. Implementing solutions in practice requires legislative frameworks and political incentives.

We welcome incentives for energy renovation of housing that will improve the overall energy performance through renewable energy solutions like active and passive solar gain – with the objective of healthy buildings with good indoor climate, generous daylight levels and high air exchange rates with natural ventilation.

Words on CO2 reduction must be transformed into realistic frameworks for action at COP 15 – also for the building stock. There is a huge potential in changing our energy consumption in housing and other buildings if we want to reduce CO2 emissions significantly. The path VELUX proposes is Sustainable Living. Basically, this is the concept of continually improving the quality of our homes and maintaining high living standards at the same time as reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions; to achieve this goal, the three key parameters are energy efficiency, healthy indoor climate and renewable energy.

The VELUX Group can contribute with solutions and know-how to reduce CO2 emissions in buildings through products that will contribute to a sustainable future.

This issue of Daylight & Architecture puts the focus on flows in cities. Cities, being a constellation of buildings, are huge crossroads of a constant flow of resources; materials, energy, people, daylight, money and much more keep on flowing into and out of them day after day. 75 % of the world´s energy is used in cities, which represent a potential 75 % of the solution to the major questions of how to minimise and optimise our use of resources.

We have asked eleven experts to depict a specific urban ’flow’ and an action point in terms of urban sustainability. The authors have developed scenarios of how urban flows could develop by the year 2050 and how we can make that development as sustainable as possible. After the scenarios, we then shift the focus to the decision makers, the key stakeholders for influencing developments towards 2050. How, today, can we define and implement strategies and tools that will bring us to our desired goals more than 40 years hence? C40 is a group of the world’s major cities that have assumed leadership on how to reduce carbon emissions. We have interviewed the C40 secretariat on its approach to climate change. We also asked the local governments of London (founder of C40), Warsaw, Paris, Berlin and Copenhagen how they tackle the huge challenges.

Furthermore, the Danish Minister of the Environment, Connie Hedegaard, explains what is at stake at the COP 15 summit and how the business community can act against climate change. “The price to be paid for delaying action on climate change will just go on rising the longer we sit on our hands and do nothing”, she argues.

Finally, we bring an interview with the CEO of the VELUX Group, Jørgen Tang-Jensen – holding up a mirror to ourselves and asking: how does the VELUX Group address and approach climate change problems and how do we actually reduce CO2 emissions, by what means and timeframe?

In this issue, we have taken a different approach from all the previous issues of Daylight & Architecture, breaking with the usual categories and sequence. This is essential when discussing how we are to ensure a sustainable 2050, with resources and wealth for future generations.

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