THIS MAN is Paul Bright, sketched amidst my notes for his afternoon session on The Green Build Hub: A Living Laboratory.
Paul is from the Cornwall Sustainable Building Trust (CSBT) and believes the world must shift to a renewable economy and, naturally, that Cornwall is the sustainable heart of the UK even though it’s way down there at our island’s toetip.
• Cornwall’s sustainability credentials:
• Birthplace of UK wind power
• Birthplace of UK ground source heat pumps
• Birthplace of geothermal stuff
• Birthplace of the UK Wave Hub
• And home to the most solar installations in the country
Here is an actual photograph of Paul.
The Green Build Hub - GBH
Green Build Hub - GBH. A play on the grievous bodily harm so often dealt to the land by building projects. The Green Build Hub is something gentler. It’s designed to be a ‘living laboratory for the growing green building market in Cornwall and beyond’.
The Eden Project people liked the idea of GBH so much they suggested it be larger than originally planned and situated on Eden Project land. So now Paul’s project is located on the Eden Project site.
As a showcase for green building GBH will be open to the public but will also serve as the HQ for CSBT and a couple of associate Cornish sustainability groups. Here are some drawings showing where the GBH will be situated in relation to the Eden Project biomes, and showing it from different angles.
Paul explained new technologies and building materials will be tried and tested at the Green Build Hub. GBH will be perpetually rebuilt during the course of its life, a demonstration site for people to understand more about how this fabric or that technology performs in the actual environment. A living laboratory.
It’s hoped GBH will function as a training center too, educating on how to use new building materials and how to create a sustainable structure – the Hub is being built to achieve a BREEAM Outstanding rating.
Paul was speaking about his belief that green building begins with the fabric itself. As part of its remit is to test materials, Paul mentioned he was accepting samples of sustainable materials from companies, for testing as part of the Green Build Hub. After his speech I saw him agreeing to take something from one of my fellow audience members. ‘Yes, I can do that,’ I heard Paul say.
I was glad to see him so eager and open. His enthusiasm is clear. If you’re interested there are some events down in Cornwall. Here's the events page.
A few other comments Paul made that I found interesting:
• Wind turbines are tending towards fewer, taller structures. This changes the way we should envision our countryside to look in the future.
• Solar installations in Cornish fields make little sense. PV should live on every unshaded rooftop across the nation and provide power to its host building. Power where it’s needed, not in fields. Besides, Cornwall is right at the very end of the National Grid. It’s not the best place to be feeding in electricity.
I wrote about another Sustainability Live session here. It was the Energy Policy one.
