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This paper addresses the superior issue of systems for the achievement of very low carbon and very low energy urban buildings. In many larger European cities contemporary major urban renewal is carried out through development of large building and housing complexes, either as separate renewal projects or as parts of more extensive urban renewal programs. This is taking place in what we may term a meso-level in urban development. Besides the importance in current large city development, the focus on large urban building and housing complexes may play crucial functions in the broader context of urban sustainability. These building complexes are major nodes for the generation of many forms of stationary as well as mobile (transport) energy use, giving a context for the development of innovative systems both for increased energy efficiency and utilization of alternative energy sources. As large energy use nodes in the urban structures, the building and housing complexes give particularly favorable conditions for development of common renewable energy systems for stationary purposes; however, also conditions favorable to the implementation of systems to substantially reduce energy use and increase alternative energies in various forms of transportation.

This essay focuses on conference tourism, aeromobility and ecological crisis. It is mostly based on the author's own diary notes—participatory observations—from many years of travelling to and fro and participating at international research conferences. Conference tourism is in this context mainly considered to belong to leisure time, a view elaborated on in the article. Crucial concepts are: grobalization, aeromobility, life in corridors, something-nothing continuum, all analysed and conveyed within a humour–tragedy tradition, much used in Norwegian ecophilosophy. The essay claims conference tourism to be as globalized as most other major forms of tourism; it is part of the globalization of academia, and it serves to make academics players in the processes of grobalization, which is the sociologist George Ritzer's term. Conference tourism is a global industry where competition on a global market is an important factor. Along a something–nothing continuum, it belongs to the nothing end, as the grobalizati...

Interdisciplinarity has been a key term in the ecological debate ever since its advent in the early 1960s. The paper addresses these historical links and how the two terms ‘interdisciplinary’ and ‘ecology’ have influenced each other. The later concept ‘sustainable development’ is also truly interdisciplinary, including physical, biological, socio-economic and cultural, as well as normative, mechanisms, contexts and effects operating at scales ranging from the microscopic to the macroscopic. Policies to promote sustainable development need to be based on the type of interdisciplinary thinking that has been advocated for several decades within the ecological debate. This applies not least to research into the sustainability aspects of urban development, the case discussed in this paper. Despite longstanding requests for interdisciplinarity, the development within the academic world has proceeded in the opposite direction. Many of the most influential metatheoretical perspectives virtually prohibit, ...

The article describes and presents a critical analysis of the long history of alternative fuels and propulsion technologies, particularly in automobile applications. Cases are electric and hybrid cars. The term “critical analysis” refers to the analysis of the various alternative technologies in relation to their societal contexts. In particular, these are the varying contexts of energy security, energy policy, environmental problems, sustainability, and also the later more explicit climate change context. This approach gives some knowledge with relevance to the current discussions on implementation issues. The work is first of all founded on the knowledge field of “Social Studies of Technological Systems”.

The environmental company strategy of the case company Oslo Sporveier includes scenarios for the development of person transport in Oslo up to year 2016. The basis for three different scenarios is described. This paper presents the use of scenarios as background for environmental reporting. Emissions, energy, land and time use from person transport in the three different scenarios were determined. The scenarios were (i) a private car scenario, where the main growth in person transport is to be met with a strong increase in the use of private cars, (ii) a public transport scenario, where the increase in person transport is to be taken care of with a strong increase in the public transport, and (iii) the sustainability scenario, with a reduction in total person transport, increased share of public transport and walking/bicycling, and reduced share of private car use. The total energy use, CO2 emissions, NOx emissions and particle emissions from person transport in Oslo are reduced in all three scenarios compared with the situation in 1996. The reduction is smallest in the private car scenario and largest in the sustainability scenario. The land use increases in the private car scenario and the public transport scenario, while there is a reduction in land use in the sustainability scenario. The total time consumption connected to person transport increases in all three scenarios. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

The research presented in this article shows that the extent of environmentally harmful household consumption varies substantially with the physical/structural conditions in housing areas. The empirical results regarding urban size, density, and distance to the city centre can be related to the concept of the compact city. This is a concept which has been highly focused on in the 1990s discourse on sustainable urban development, and the amount of international research literature has become quite impressive. The authors' research supports the assumption that compact urban structures would lead to reductions in the ecological footprints of households and their houses. Firstly because shorter internal distances between the houses and public and private services give less mobility. Secondly because dense and concentrated types of housing give less energy use for heating and other technical equipment. In addition other forms of environmentally harmful consumption – the material housing consumption – are also less extensive in compact urban structures.

The increase in professional trips to conferences and seminars made by employees in the 'knowledge industries' presents an environmentally worrying trend in mobility in contemporary post-industrial society. A number of factors are involved. Globalisation and regional competition encourage host cities and institutions to put themselves on the conference map. For the individual traveller, conferences and seminars offer escape from daily routines and the chance to experience new, perhaps exotic, places. But trips to distant conferences can have serious environmental impacts, especially if made by airplane. Because of the aggressive impact of greenhouse gas emissions in the upper atmosphere, their threat to the global climate is more serious than similar trips made at surface level. In addition, the time spent on such trips competes with other tasks: conference participation takes scarce time resources available to university academics for research. In the age of electronic communication, it is questionable w...

Using the development of the building stock and physical infrastructure as an example, this article highlights the difficulties in combining continuous economic growth in wealthy countries with the requirements of environmentally sustainable development. There are clear limits as to how far we can get by means of ‘eco-efficiency’, and the effect of a transition to less environmentally harmful types of consumption is not sufficient if the consumption volume keeps on increasing. This is particularly evident for societal processes such as the construction of buildings and the development of physical infrastructure. Increased consumption is both a result of and a precondition for economic growth. The development of the building stock and physical infrastructure in cities is a case showing that economic growth—at any rate, in the longer term—can hardly be consistent with the preservation of species, ecosystems and food-production resources. The growth in the building stock also makes it increasingly difficult ...

This paper presents a critical discussion of the internationally prevailing understanding of the concept 'sustainable tourism'. It is argued that the current focus on stationary activities and local, intensive environmental issues is too limited both in relation to the concept of tourism and the concept of sustainable development. There is no tourism without travel. And, as shown in a Norwegian research study, tourist travel is a major source of serious environmental problems. The paper emphasises that sustainable tourism should be linked to a concept of sustainable mobility. However, this mobility would imply not only a change in the means of transport but also a reduced level of mobility in the rich part of the world. As this would entail new forms of tourism, other than those solely based on auto- and aeromobility, it represents a major challenge for the future development of tourism.

1. Introductory Perspectives. By: (Roy Bhaskar),Karl G. Hoyer and Petter Naess, 2. Critical realism in resonance with Nordic ecophilosophy: ecophilosophical themes in the development of critical realism By: Roy Bhaskar, 3. Nature, Technology and Environmental Crisis By: Arne Johan Vetlesen, 4. Towards an Ecophilosophy. The Nordic Contributors, By: Karl G. Hoyer, 5. A Biosophic Perspective. Humans as a Tragic Species, By: Peter Wessel Zapffe, 6. The Deep Ecological Movement: Some Philosophical Aspects By: Arne Naess, 7. Gaia versus Servoglobe By: Sigmund Kvaloy Setereng, 8. The Myths of Progress, By: Georg Henrik von Wright, 9. The Extension of Time and the Order of Things By: Torsten Hagerstrand, 10. Human Rights and Ecology as Premises for Practical Standpoints By: Jon Wetlesen, 11. From Ecophilosophy to Degrowth,By: Karl G. Hoyer and Petter Naess, 12. Ecophilosophy, Precaution, and Theory of Science, By: Karl G. Hoyer, 13. Between Critical Realism and Nordic Ecophilosophy, By: Trond Jakobsen, 14. Selected titles, published in English, By: Karl G. Hoyer and Petter Naess.

Introduction- Chapter 1 - Contexts of Interdisciplinarity Chapter 2 - Coda to 'Contexts of Interdisciplinarity': The Case of Climate Change-Critical Realist Interdisciplinarity: A Research Agenda to Support Action on Global Warming Chapter 3 - Seven Theses on CO 2 -reductionism and Its Interdisciplinary Counteraction Chapter 4 - The Dangerous Climate of Disciplinary Tunnel Vision Chapter 5 - Consumption-A Missing Dimention in Climate Policy Chapter 6 - Global Warming and Cultural/Media Articulations of Emerging and Contending Social Imaginaries: A Critical Realist Perspective Chapter 7 - Climate change: Brokering Interdisciplinarity across the Physical and Social Sciences Chapter 8 -- The Need for a Transdisciplinary Understanding of Development in a Hot and Crowded World Chapter 9 - Knowledge, Democracy and Action in Response to Climate Change Chapter 10 - Technological Idealism -The Case of the Thorium Fuel Cycle: A Critical Analysis Chapter 11- Food Crisis and Global Warming: Critical Realism and the Need to Re-institutionalize Science Chapter 12- Towards a Dialectics of Knowledge and Care in the Global System Chapter 13-Epilogue - A Conference Tourist and His Confessions: On the Travelling Circus of Climate Change

In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development (often called the Brundtland Commission after its chairwoman, former Norwegian Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland) launched its repor...

This paper compares 16 alternative energy chains in a Well-to-Wheel analysis including three indicators: energy use, emissions of climate gases and emissions of local/regional pollutants. The analysis includes a private car which uses natural gas, biological fuels, electricity and hydrogen, respectively. The analysis shows that an alternative witch scores favourably on one indicator often scores unfavourably on other indicators. Sustainable mobility, however, requires favourable scores on all indicators. Thus, sustainable mobility must combine three different approaches: the efficiency approach - which includes the use of alternative energy - the substitution approach and the reduction approach.

The paper gives a global view on the historical development of electrical cars. It is a history described in five major waves; the first one starting about 1835 and the last one ending about 2000. With two cases, important aspects of the two last waves are described in detail. The cases are the French VEL car and the Norwegian Think car. They have had their more specific setbacks. Problems in electrochemistry have caused important limitations, as they have through the whole history of electrical cars. This is the background for the paper title: The Battle of Batteries.

An important element in the discussion regarding sustainable development in our part of the world is directed towards the large growth in private consumption, and the clash of interests that arises between this growth and sustainable development requirements. A considerable part of private consumption can be related to our houses and the living situations of which they are part. It is of considerable interest to obtain more knowledge about the variations in patterns and volumes of consumption between different living situations, as well as to explore the important factors behind these variations. The acquisition of this type of empirical knowledge is an important aim in the present study. It is based on the superior thesis that it is possible through land use and housing planning to achieve substantial changes in living situations and thus contribute to a development in a direction of "sustainable production and consumption". The article first sums up the state-of-art regarding research on relations between physical planning, household consumption and environment. A theoretical framework and the methods applied in a Norwegian research project acquiring new empirical knowledge into these relations are also presented. The project was intended to be finished by the end of year 2000. Parts of the investigations are, however, completed and the material has been analysed. Two different types of urban structure, Oslo and a small rural town, are included in the investigations. The article presents some of the findings and relates them to former research.