Brazil Begins Awarding Building Efficiency Labels
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009Earlier this year I posted about Brazil’s trailblazing initiative to provide energy efficiency labels for buildings. Well, the National Institute of Metrology, Standardization and Industrial Quality (Inmetro) has just announced that first five Brazilian buildings were given the labels in the form of steel plaques about the size of an A4 sheet of printing paper. […]
Brazil Proposes Energy Labels for Buildings
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009Yesterday Brazil’s National Institute of Metrology, Standardization and Industrial Quality (Inmetro) published for public comment in the official gazette (the Official Daily of the Union – Diário Oficial da União) a draft administrative rule (portaria) on the award of certification labels for energy efficiency in public, commercial and service buildings. It is supplemented by an […]
Brazilians Seek to Design the Eco-Efficient Home
Sunday, November 19th, 2006In a prior entry I introduced you to the experiments of the Federal University of Santa Catarina’s (UFSC) Construction Systems Laboratory with constructing homes using PET bottles. Today I’ll introduce you to the work of another innovative part of the UFSC, the Energy-Efficient Construction Laboratory (LabEEE). LabEEE’s main mission is research and development in improving […]
“Trash Photos” III: Houses Made of PET
Monday, September 25th, 2006Photo: Rodrigues Moura, in Eco-Pop I mentioned in my prior “Trash Photos” post some of the creative ways Brazilians are thinking about reuse and recycling of materials from end-of-life products and their packaging. Here’s another one: constructing houses utilizing empty PET bottles. Yes, those plastic bottles everyone’s soft drinks come in these days, particularly the […]