Just For Fun

I traveled to Stockholm last weekend. As luck would have it, the weather was the worst the city had experienced in decades. Trains and buses ran late, and cars piled up on the highways. The city was almost completely locked down. Undeterred, mailmen on their trusty bicycles forged on. I thought I should take a picture for you guys.

Buildings at Linneuniversitetet

Hello again from Sweden, it’s been a while. From the look of the blog, you’ve all been making quite a bit of head way. I thought I’d write a little about the buildings on campus today.

One evident piece of work being done to make the university here more sustainable is in the design of buildings. They have heavy doors, large air-locks, great insulation, and always an abundance of natural light. Nearly all the buildings have skylights and the floor to ceiling windows found in many rooms are extremely thick. (It’s quite cold out right now, but when I touch the window to my left it only feels slightly cooler than the room. I have a feeling the windows in Phillips might fail this test.) On many of these windows there are automatic shades that sense the level of sunlight coming in and lower to prevent glare. There are also rooms within the buildings that have glass walls, allowing sunlight to penetrate far past the periphery. Structures are also built with their exposure to the sun in mind. Over south facing windows there are awnings that work to shade against the summer sun, and the north face of buildings are typically less exposed. Overall, the theme here seems to be well thought out construction that focuses on energy conservation.

Hej från Sverige!

Greetings CNT 2010! I hope you are all as excited as I was when we began the carbon inventory two years ago. It was certainly an eye opening experience for me, and I am excited to see the improvements your fresh points of view will bring to this iteration of the project. While I am disappointed that I won’t have a chance to be doing any hands on with you, I can’t say I am disappointed to be here in Växjö.

Often called the “The Greenest City in Europe” (a title given to it by the BBC and adopted by over 500 other media organizations), Växjö has been making strides for several years to cut its carbon footprint and become more sustainable. I can see the efforts that are being made all over. However, they are often so well integrated they are not terribly obvious. The first thing that really stuck out to me was all the bikes.

I arrived in the city on a cold snowy night and when I got off the train there were people biking on the main street in the city center, right there with all the cars. The weather here is very similar to Wisconsin and as I am typing right now there are still people biking past me through the snowy campus mall. The bicycle parking on campus is abundant and often covered. Even though nearly all of the University’s 15,000 students live on campus, there are very few parking lots for cars. Walking along the lake into the city center people from youth to retirement age, men and women, all bike past. When I discovered the statistic that, as of 2006, 40 percent of households in Växjö didn’t own cars, I wasn’t too surpised.