Many of you know about the devastating magnitude 7.9 earthquake that hit China in May of this year which killed over 69,000 people and left hundreds of thousands without shelter. After this many designers needed and tried to figure out a way to make shelter for all of those people. Ming Tang did just that with his idea for folding houses. The government first intended to make 1.5 million temporary homes for the victims but this idea came along which is a much cheaper and more environmental friendly alternative. The concept of the bamboo house is basically a series of bamboo poles that are assembled to create a rigid shape. Once the shape of choice has been made it is covered with pre-consumer recycled paper.

When you start seeing more and more counties get involved in the solar energy and cleaner energy field that’s when things start to make a difference. Located in Ningbo, China the University of Nottingham’s new Center for Sustainable Energy Technologies is China’s First Zero-Emissions Building and it will not be the last.  The building uses a double glass skin to reduce solar radiation and it has a huge rooftop opening which creates a natural ventilation hole. This building can also store any unused energy for up to two weeks in case their is a few consecutive cloudy days. The building is 1,300 sq. meters and has an estimated coal use reduction of 448.9 tons and carbon emissions by 1,081.8 tons. These numbers are in the course of 25 years but still a very nice way to help the environment.

There are many winery’s using solar energy but here we bring to you the worlds largest solar powered winery. This is set to be built for Constellation Wines Gonzales winery in Monterry County, CA and will expand over 170,000 square feet producing 1,700,000 kilowatts hours a year. This amount of energy will be able to power over half of the winery’s energy consumption. That’s not all thought, the energy that the Winery does not use will go to powering the energy needs of the residential area surrounding the winery. That’s over 1,600 homes receiving about 25% of solar energy from the winery. It’s always great to see big businesses helping out the people around them.

At first glance at this picture you may say to yourself that this looks to be unreal as I thought myself but it is a real building and the view is probably one of the best that you could possibly wish for. The Monte Rosa Alpine Hut is located right outside of Zermatt in the Swiss Alps and the greatest part about it, besides the view, is that this hut is 90% energy self-sufficient. Most of the energy used comes from photovoltaic panels and solar energy thermal systems.