Masdar City Chooses SoFi to Monitor Carbon in Buildings

Masdar City has selected PE INTERNATIONAL’s SoFi system to monitor carbon embodied in buildings for its ambitious project to construct one of the world’s most sustainable cities, the two companies announced today.

Masdar City, one of the integrated units of Abu Dhabi’s multi-faceted renewable energy company Masdar, has captured enormous worldwide interest by demonstrating how sustainable cities can be developed. SoFi is PE INTERNATIONAL’s high performance tool which provides a central platform for benchmarking and forecasting sustainability performance and developing sustainability strategies. The system plays a key role in helping Masdar’s supply chain team and contractors to track and monitor the carbon embodiment of building materials, thereby calculating the amount of carbon associated with construction activities.

Having now implemented SoFi, Masdar has the capability for target setting and monitoring the evolving project. The city can also use SoFi for benchmarking against targets and comparing how much CO2 would be involved in producing a building in the city compared to a standard building in, for example, London, Paris or New York.

Truck Freight vs. Rail Freight – the next round

Environmental studies usually came to the conclusion that rail is generally the better and preferable environmental transport solution. In our recent study we demonstrated that a general statement, i.e. that rail is more environmentally friendly than road, cannot be made.

In the upcoming update focusing on Germany, we took into account most recent data available from rail companies. The results of the update confirm the findings of our previous study. A new case study, investigating the shift from road to rail of long-distance freight transport over distances beyond 300 kilometres, as proposed in the EU White Paper, revealed that CO2 emissions of rail and truck are in the same magnitude.

Depending on specific case parameter such as load factor, empty trips, precarriage and oncarriage either truck or rail performs better. This is a fact underlining our claim that a case-to-case investigation is required. 

Read the summary of the study 

For more information please contact Michael Spielmann

Australian Dairy study to establish industry´s carbon-cred

The Australian subsidiary of PE  is conducting a Life Cycle Assessment to establish the Australian dairy industry´s carbon footprint. The study aims to quantitatively evaluate the carbon footprint from a systems analysis point of view, i.e. farm-to-distributor´s warehouse or export harbour and focuses on the major dairy products produced for export and retail. Once completed in 2012, the assessment will identify the life-cycle phases with the highest environmental impact and highlight areas of potential improvement along the supply chain.

In the magazine Food & Drink Business, Neil van Buuren, the project leader, states “The study will generate a reliable basis for carbon footprinting, environmental product reporting and product labelling, for example environmental product declarations and carbon-reduction labels. It will enable benchmarking at both the farm and the corporate level to help drive best practice.”

More widely, it will support strategic decision-making to promote a more competitive Australian dairy industry and build the basis for sustainable leadership.

Australia is being told that it needs to increase its food supply by 50% by 2050 without increasing the amount of resources it uses. “All food production comes at an environmental cost and CO2 emissions arise at all points of supply chain,” van Buuren says.” This study is part of the dairy industry´s response to that challenge.”

For more information please contact Barbara Nebel

Forbo Flooring: GaBi i-report pushes product development and process improvements

“PE’s Life Cycle Assessment software is the base for our green development and evaluating our environmental impacts with our focus on reducing the CO2 emissions and the related irreversible climate change caused by global warming.”

Forbo Flooring, one of the world’s leading flooring system manufacturers, has long been committed to improving environmental performance and has commissioned many peer reviewed LCA and benchmark studies. Forbo recently decided to form an internal LCA team to take on the role of building knowledge in house and allowing more individuals, within the organisation, to get involved with the LCA process.

Fred Seifert states: “GaBi software will enable us to further drive down the environmental impacts associated with the entire life cycle of our products and processes by providing us with the information that we need to identify areas for improvement. The GaBi i-report in particular will allow us to push product development and innovation based on environmental performance information.”

GaBi 4.4 update release

We are happy to announce that the GaBi 4.4 update will soon be released. This update includes a number of new features and functionality in response to changes in the Life Cycle Assessment industry.

We’ve implemented the ILCD format, and added a number of features that should make documenting process information, and preparing documentation for EPD certification, much easier. We’ve also updated and extended database content by adding life cycle working environment and land use data, adding the complete ELCD database and splitting the existing carbon dioxide flows into CO2 from fossil resources and CO2 from biotic resources. These changes should improve your modelling flexibility and improve your analysis. For those using GaBi’s automatic update function, the software will update automatically. Others will receive the update via email or post. Once successfully updated, you will have the opportunity to view a short video explaining the improvements in more detail. We look forward to the release!

www.gabi-software.com

Life Cycle Analysis in the building planning

The resources used for a building, the resulting environmental impact and the costs caused during its useful life exceed the costs emerged from its production and construction. In particular, this concerns the expenditure of energy and CO2 emissions.

With the development towards a more intensified sustainability in the building sector, an extreme increase of requirements to buildings came along during the last years. Already in the planning there have to be taken into consideration topics like climate change, preservation of resources, demographic change and monetary stability. Furthermore, the temporal horizon has widened: in addition to the building phase, the whole life cycle of buildings becomes integrated progressively into the process of planning, including maintenance, overhaul and renaturation.

The book “Lebenszyklusanalyse in der Gebäudeplanung”, released by the publishing company DETAIL, imparts necessary knowledge to planners, which they need to react appropriately on the change of requirements. Johannes Kreißig, expert in sustainable building of PE International and his co- authors explain the development of buildings during their life cycle and the influence, the risks of ageing and obsolescence can have in this regard.

They describe the methods of life cycle assessment and life cycle costing and present the most important tools for integral planning. The practical application of the life cycle analysis is illustrated by examples of buildings and these examples furthermore show how environmental impacts and life cycle costs can be taken into consideration already in the phase of planning. The book is an indispensable tool for all those who dedicate themselves to the certification of sustainability of buildings and can be obtained at DETAIL.

Order online:

Life cycle analysis in the building planning

Contact

In case of questions concerning the topic of sustainable building please contact Johannes Kreißig, our expert in building and co-author of the book.

E-Mail: j.kreissig[at]pe-international.com

CO2 - the new currency

1.2 tons of carbon dioxide have been caused by Andreas Große Habuer, Tobias Bayer and Joachim Zepelin through their research for the story „CO2- the new currency“, published in the november edition of the business magazine Capital. PE INTERNATIONAL calculated a carbon footprint of about 1.2 tons as the result of every journey, telephone call and piece of paper, which the journalists needed for their research.

Among others, they communicated with Deutsche Post, one of our SoFi software customers. „Years ago, as we were experimenting with carbon- accounting, we were even sneered“, says Michael Lohmeier, CO2 manager of Deutsche Post. Nowadays, nobody laughs. „Because of the extensive system of numbers we now exactly know how to save CO2 and therefore money“.

The big problem in accounting CO2 is, that Deutsche Post is just able to detect and have an effect on 20 percent of their emissions. The big rest arises from the suppliers, who have to make up the balance for the emission of CO2 for themselves to enable Deutsche Post to provide significant data. „We just started to ask our business partners for their emissions of CO2“, says Lohmeier.

Factoring primary products and supply chains which provoke emissions of CO2 into the own accounting of C02 gains immensely in importance. In the future, the huge trading company Wal-Mart claims C02 data of its 100.000 suppliers, for instance. Therefore, selecting a supplier will become a question of C02 emissions.

„Now, questionnaires are sent back and forth around the world“, says Michael Spielmann, Coordinator Carbon Management at PE INTERNATIONAL. „It will not take much longer and  the smallest companies will have to expose their C02 emissions“, mentions Spielmann. „Soon each company will be affected by the topic of C02 – in effect, carbon dioxide is developing itself into a currency. The sooner companies adapt themselves to it, the better“.

read the full article (german)

Nachhaltige Kraftstoff- und Antriebskonzepte für den Linienbusverkehr

In den Medien und in politischen Diskussionen stehen Themen wie Klimawandel, Klimaschutz, CO2-Einsparung sowie Feinstaub, Tempolimit und Umweltzonen in den Städten derzeit tagtäglich im Fokus. In diesem Zusammenhang wird auch die Rolle des öffentlichen Nahverkehrs kritisch hinterfragt. Der VDV hat mit Unterstützung von PE INTERNATIONAL eine wissenschaftliche Untersuchung zu aussichtsreichen Kraftstoffen und Antriebskonzepten für Linienbusse durchgeführt. Die Ergebnisse lassen klare Tendenzen erkennen und bieten eine fundierte Unterstützung bei der strategischen Planung von Fahrzeugbeschaffungen.

Das ausführliche Positionspapier steht hier zum Download zur Verfügung.

"Die Bilanz des Klopapiers" - Artikel bei Süddeutsche.de

Heute ist ein interessanter Artikel in der Süddeutschen Zeitung zum Thema Product Carbon Footprint erschienen. Bei der Erstellung der CO2 Bilanzen war unter anderem auch PE INTERNATIONAL beteiligt.

Hier geht es zum Artikel bei süddeutsche.de

New to GaBi DfX – import your Bill of Materials

With the new version of GaBi DfX, you can now import product information directly into GaBi DfX from your bill of materials. This accelerates the modelling and analysis of your complex products enormously. The import interface supports standard file formats; client-specific interfaces can be generated upon demand.

All new and current GaBi DfX users receive this new feature free of charge as part of our complimentary service and support package!

More information: gabi(at)pe-international.com