Prince William and Kate Middleton will live an ultra-modern - and ultra green - royal fairytale

The over-riding reason for William and Kate’s decision to spend their first few years of married life in remote North Wales, instead of in a royal residence, is that it will give them the privacy they will never know again.

The couple have already been living as man and wife for several months on the island of Anglesey, where William is based at RAF Valley as a Sea King search and rescue pilot – although Kate ostensibly kept on her childhood bedroom at her parents’ house in Bucklebury, Berkshire.



They are currently staying in a rented whitewashed farmhouse for which William pays £750 a month, and sources say there are no immediate plans to move.

Clarence House has already sought legal help in protecting the location of their love-nest – we are even barred from saying how many bedrooms it has – but it is well off the beaten track with stunning views of Snowdonia and access to a private beach.

The couple have used the property as a base to explore the island.

Several pubs and restaurants have become regular destinations, including the award-winning White Eagle at Rhoscolyn on the north western tip of Anglesey.

The couple have been seen gunning along the quiet country lanes on William’s red and white 180mph Ducati superbike.

There have also been frequent trips to the Tesco supermarket in Holyhead.

When in London the couple will have the use of an apartment at Clarence House.

And after William finishes his three-year stint with the RAF he and Kate are expected to move into a six-bedroom house his father has had built at Harewood Park in Herefordshire.

Situated in prime countryside between Monmouth and Ross-on-Wye, the 900-acre estate was bought by the Duchy of Cornwall, which provides Prince Charles with his annual income, in 2000.

In line with his father’s green principles, William’s new home has been built with every eco-friendly mod con available, including a reed-bed sewage system, wood chip boiler, solar panels and walls lined with insulating sheep’s wool.  Read Full Story



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Super Green & Fast Computers

For those of you who like your supercomputers fast AND green, the latest list of the most energy-efficient ones in the world has just been published. The ranking is a twist on the well-known Top 500 supercomputers list; the green slice on this list ranked using the measure of FLOPs per watt.

The greenest system listed is a QPACE system that uses the IBM PowerXCell 8i processor. There are actually three tied for the greenest-fastest performance. They are housed at the Julich Supercomputing Centre, University of Regensburg and the University of Wuppertalare. All three produce 773 millions of floating point operations per second (Mflops) per watt.

IBM is also behind the list’s most energy-efficient x86-only cluster. The cluster, ranked 9th, is housed at Mississippi State University.

IBM actually dominates the Top 20 of this energy-efficiency, claiming 17 of the top 20 positions. The exceptions include three systems from China: the Nebulae at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen, China, (which shows up as No. 4); the Mole-8.5 Cluster Xeon system at the Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. 8) and Tianhe-1(TH-1) at the National SuperComputer Center in Tianjin/NUDT.

IBM used the list’s publication to publicize the fact that its Aquasar, a hot-water-cooled supercomputer design, is now live in a deployment at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. The technology produces about 450 Mflops per watt. It makes innovative use of the system’s waste heat.

 Building energy efficient computing systems and data centers is a staggering undertaking. In fact, up to 50 percent of an average air-cooled data center's energy consumption and carbon footprint today is not caused by computing but by powering the necessary cooling systems to keep the processors from overheating - a situation that is far from optimal when looking at energy efficiency from a holistic perspective.

Source ZDNet

This video explains on how the technology works:





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World Cup Stadium to Feature Green Design

 There’s hasn’t been an abundance of sustainability coverage for the upcoming FIFA World Cup South Africa. Perhaps the excitement around the first-ever hosting of the World Cup on African soil has monopolized the media coverage; or perhaps there just isn’t a lot of sustainability initiatives to report on.
Regardless of the reason, we did find it worthy to highlight a few programs, most notably the design of the newly-built Durban stadium.
Construction of the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban was completed in 2009 and is set to host  70,000 spectators for one of the semi-final matches and numerous group matches.
The design called for a “state-of-the-art landmark sports facility with excellent amenities and a sustainable recreational and multi-disciplinary sporting venue.”
The stadium is stunning in design. Its most notable feature is a large 150-meter arch rising high above the stadium center. A SkyCar funicular system transports visitors to a Skydeck, allowing a birds’ eye view of the stadium, city and nearby coast.
Though large scale event-driven construction is always heavy on resource use, the builders of the Durban stadium minimized construction and demolition impact by utilizing recycled materials from the old stadium. More than 30,000 cubic meters of concrete demolition material from the old stadium was used for construction of the new stadium.

The PTFE-coated roof membrane allows 50 percent of sunlight to filter through while protecting the stadium from glare and rain. The stadium also features a rainwater collection system, water-saving installations, energy-efficient heating and cooling systems and natural ventilation design.
When the World Cup comes to a close mid-July and South Africans find themselves in a sort of post World Cup hangover, the ten beautiful stadiums spanning the country, five new and five updated, will still be standing. The Durban stadium, among others, was built to Olympic standards in the hopes of hosting a future Olympic Games in South Africa.

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Gucci Goes Green

 Gucci is going green. The Italian luxury brand has announced that it is going to make a few green changes, including redesigning their packing to be eco-friendly, using 100 percent recyclable FSC Certified paper.
The Italian label will now forgo the usual plastic laminate surfaces found in their tissue paper, bags and boxes. The ribbon and garment bags have been switched to cotton from the original polyester material.
They will be packing their shoes in one flannel instead of two. They will also give out gift boxes only when requested.
Also, Gucci is replacing all of its mannequins with a new version, designed by Frida Giannini, which is made with shockproof polystyrene and finished with water-based paints.
Creative director Frida Giannini was quoted by vogue.co.uk as saying, "This project proves hat you sacrifice nothing creatively when working with environmentally friendly materials."
"The new packaging is very beautiful and evokes perfectly the combination of Gucci's values and the traditions for which is has become renowned since Guccio Gucci founded the company in Florence nearly 90 years ago."
"I believe we have a collective responsibility towards future generations to minimize our impact on the environment."
The initiative will be introduced in all of its 284 stores starting this month.

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Duke Energy Center gets highest 'green' designation

Wells Fargo & Co. said yesterday that the Duke Energy Center  has been certified at the highest level of environmental certification by the U.S. Green Building Council.
The 48-story building, which opened in January, is the first and tallest office tower to receive the certification.
The building initially was meant to be the new headquarters for Wachovia Corp. But after Wells Fargo bought the collapsing Wachovia in late 2008, Duke Energy Corp. took over the naming rights to the tower.
Among the center's green attributes are recycling rainwater, and a roof that reduces heating and cooling costs.  The Duke Energy Center is located in Charlotte, North Carolina.







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Wake Up America - Eco-Friendly Song

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Not Easy Being Green - Funny Peas Animation

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Grocery Store Wars, Check Out This Video

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Latest News in Green Building

The Philippines has received its first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold certification for semiconductor maker Texas Instruments Inc.’s new assembly and test facility in Pampanga.
The 780,000-square-foot Green facility is located on the former United States of America Clark Air Base. The facility is the company’s first site to install a section of vegetative roofing, covering 11,000 square feet with living plants to reduce heat gain and slow water runoff.
The facility also uses natural day lighting where possible and efficient lights equipped with sensors and controls to balance the building’s lighting needs.
Texas Instruments operates a desiccant wheel air handling unit at the facility to provide dehumidified fresh air for more efficient cooling. The desiccant wheel absorbs the remaining moisture brought by traditional chilled water cooling, and is then dried and regenerated through waste heat.
The company also sourced 20 percent of the building materials used from recycled content, and recycled and reused 96 percent of its construction waste. This included donating a truckload of waste crating material to the Philippines National Apiary project, which turned the wood into working beehives for honey production.
In addition, the Clark facility features low-emitting materials such as paints, adhesives, sealants and carpeting to reduce off-gassing while providing better indoor air quality.




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MassDOT Creating A Clean Energy Economy for Massachusetts

The Patrick administration today said it is remaking the state Department of Transportation into one of the most green-focused in the nation, a plan they are calling "GreenDOT."

“By making this commitment, MassDOT has declared its contribution to creating a clean energy economy for Massachusetts,” Governor Deval Patrick said in a statement. “In the coming years, we will see the results in smarter growth, cleaner vehicles, and jobs devoted to building a lower carbon transportation system.”
According to the administration, the major change will be in the department's value system – GreenDOT will look for ways to cut greenhouse gases, boost the search for "healthy transportation options'' and push "smart growth'' where economic development is concentrated around mass transit systems.

The administration said the greenhouse gases would be cut over the next several years by "balancing highway system expansion projects with other projects that support smart growth development and promote public transit, walking and bicycling.''

In the future, for example, streets would be designed to include bicycle and pedestrian accommodations as they are built, avoiding the sometimes costly effort to retrofit narrow streets and roads to allow motor vehicles and other modes of transportation to safely coexist.

 

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Wells Fargo Celebrates Green Store Opening with Free Document Shredding

 Wells Fargo will help San Fernando Valley residents go green and fight fraud by offering free shredding services on Saturday, June 5. Community members are invited to bring up to 50 pounds of paper documents to be securely shredded on site and recycled.
The free event, organized by Wells Fargo's Coldwater Canyon banking store team, will be held in the parking lot of the newest green Coldwater Canyon banking store. Way To Go Wells Fargo..
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Remove One Plastic item From Your Day

 
Inspired by her love of the oceans, plastic-free campaigner Taina Uitto challenges you to simply remove one plastic item from your day.Share

Government says Australia on track to meet Kyoto target

Australia is on track to meet its greenhouse gas emissions target under the United Nation's Kyoto Protocol climate pact in part because of the global economic downturn, the government said on Thursday.
Australia, among the developed world's top greenhouse gas polluters on a per-capita basis, generates about 80 percent of its electricity from coal.
Emissions from some sectors have soared over the past two decades, particularly power generation and transport. The government hoped an emissions trading scheme would push industry and consumers to boost energy efficiency and switch to greener power.
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Outdated Textbooks To Be Recycled- Watch Video

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