ICE - Institution of Civil Engineers - Virtual Library

Although reservoirs benefit the performance of hydropower schemes there is no overriding operational need for them. Wind and solar power projects function well without storage, as will the planned range of marine energy devices. This paper reviews the equivalent features of ‘run-of-river’ hydro schemes which in essence operate in response to rainfall, that is, according to the variation of river flow resulting from the natural release of water from catchments.

The complex, fragmented and diverse aspects of a sustainable development perspective are translated into an eight-point framework that defines a problem boundary larger than that traditionally adopted by civil engineers. This leads to practical questions intended to inform engineers who ask ‘am I being sustainable?’ during project implementation. The value of the questions is tested against a case history of a wastewater treatment project. This demonstrates the relevance of the questions to successive project delivery phases of defining the problem, choosing a solution and implementing that solution through design, construction and operation. The case history highlights that answers to several of the additional questions raised by considering this wider problem space are currently buried within government and clients' policies, regulations and standard practice; these answers may not be accessible to the professional engineer.

Eastside, a 130 ha brownfield site located to the eastern side of Birmingham's city centre, is undergoing social, economic and environmental changes, driven mainly through public and private investment estimated to be worth £6 billion. The regeneration programme is well under way and it aims to turn a once deprived inner-city area into the regions first ‘sustainability quarter’ Achieving a sustainable quarter, in terms of energy, will require reductions to be made in energy demands compared to typical practice, for example through more thermally efficient buildings and utilisation of low-energy technologies. In addition it will require these demands to be met through renewable technologies rather than fossil fuels. This paper presents estimates for the total energy demands from the various developments planned within Eastside assuming typical and good-practice scenarios. The paper then assesses the feasibility of introducing various renewable energy supply technologies and combined heat and power (CHP) technologies in order to meet these demands. Finally the paper presents a simplified costing scheme for assessing the potential of renewable technologies to secure energy supplies while limiting carbon emissions. The renewable technologies are compared directly, aiming at providing an independent viewpoint for decision makers when considering which technologies to adopt. While the study focuses on Eastside, the lessons learned from this study are vitally important for redevelopment programmes being undertaken elsewhere.

Sustainability legislation in New Zealand (NZ) provides an interesting challenge for decision-makers such as planners, architects and engineers. NZ's Action Plan for Sustainable Development requires ‘taking account of the social, economic, environmental and cultural effects of our decisions’. The assessment of sustainability in NZ thus occurs in four dimensions. Internationally, cultural effects are generally considered within the analysis of societal effects. The separate consideration of cultural effects is necessary in NZ to acknowledge the status of the indigenous people, the Tangata Whenua. The requirement for separate consideration of cultural effects was created in NZ's founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. Although the addition of a cultural criterion to decisionsupport tools (DSTs) could be considered a viable solution to accommodate the partnership obligations created by the Treaty, the extension of international sustainability DSTs in this way has not worked in practice. The acknowledgement of a specific cultural dimension in the definition of sustainable development seems to accept that NZ's prevalent societal values and beliefs are not representative of its indigenous people. Therefore, in order to incorporate effectively indigenous values and beliefs into sustainability decision-making in NZ, an approach based on indigenous concepts is essential. The indigenous concept of mauri (binding force) has been identified for inclusion in a new DST that provides a culturally consistent measure of sustainability. The NZ context is used to identify and illustrate the requirements of a culturally consistent model for including sustainability in decision-making. A preliminary ranking of the four dimensions of sustainability assessment is presented using an established hierarchy definition process. The result is a methodology for sustainability assessment, developed specifically for the NZ context, but which may also have wider international applications where decision-makers have limited knowledge and understanding of the indigenous people's culture, values and beliefs.