Opera House Goes Carbon Neutral Five Years Ahead of Schedule

The Sydney Opera House was notoriously behind schedule on most things during the 14 years it took to build but will be five years ahead of schedule when it meets its target to reduce emissions and become carbon neutral. This move puts it up there with New York’s Empire State building and Paris’s Eiffel Tower as global architectural icons which are actively working to become world symbols of energy efficiency, its Environmental Sustainability Manager Emma Bombonato said. … Officials at the Sydney Opera House have been working to increase its energy efficiency and decrease its waste for the past decade. In 2014 it replaced incandescent bulbs …

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Greening the Concrete Jungle: How to Make Environmentally Friendly Cement

Cement is the world’s most widely used material apart from water, largely because it is the key ingredient in concrete, the world’s favourite building material. But with cement’s success comes a huge amount of greenhouse emissions. For every tonne of cement produced in Australia, 0.82 tonnes of CO₂ is released. That might not sound like much, especially when compared with the 1.8 tonnes emitted in making a tonne of steel. But with a global production of more than 4 billion tonnes a year, cement accounts for about 8% of the world’s CO₂ emissions. The electricity and heat demands of cement production are responsible for …

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