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The building of the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) is seen as an international example of environmentally friendly design. However, visitors looking at the sunlight-powered complex in front of a sometimes functioning fountain, could be forgiven for comparing it with an international space craft or a fortress of steel.
It’s difficult not to notice the 140 solar panels, heat pumps, air-handling units and other complicated equipment that make this roughly three-million dollar conference center work.
Yet, speaking to curious reporters sitting on — environmentally friendly — somewhat uncomfortable chairs made of cardboard, the building’s designer, Professor Frederico Butera from Italy, defended his creation at Friday’s official opening.
"All the solutions that were proposed by architects were based on the fact that they could solve everything just pumping more oil or more gas in it,” he noted. “And this becomes a culture, this is a way of designing. Well, this [building] is also a step, a contribution to a different architectural language that will change."
ARTISTIC TOWN
The conference center in Szentendre, an artistic town 20 kilometers north of Budapest, replaces a communist-era building that never won a beauty contest either. The new building aims to have zero annual emissions of carbon dioxide, which has been linked to global warming.
Being dependent on sunlight has a dark side. Builders admit that at night or peak hours the conference center will need electricity from a regular electricity plant. But, they say, the center will compensate for that by supplying electricity back to the grid when it has a power surplus during sunny days.
The building is run by the REC, which was proposed by former American President George Bush Sr. and founded by the United States, Hungary and the European Commission in 1990. The REC has been helping especially former Communist countries to face environmental challenges after decades of neglect and outdated industries, such as coal mines. There was also concern about pollution left behind by withdrawing Soviet troops in the early 1990s.
NOT INVOLVED
While Washington has been spending millions of dollars in the REC in the past, it was not involved in its almost completely CO2-free conference center, officially because of different priorities. The Program Manager Europe of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Anna Philips, denied to BosNewsLife that the US is reducing involvement in the REC because of international criticism that it is the world’s biggest emitter of heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
"Of course there are efforts on the way in the United States to reduce carbon footprints, just like there are here in Europe, and I also believe that again there is always more to do and that the horizon should always recede and we should always be moving forward toward it," she said during the opening ceremony.
"I don’t think you can [or] you need to draw the distinction between what happens at home and what happens abroad because again these are global problems and they require global solutions," Philips added. But for now, the conference center is mainly financed by Italy, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. (BosNewsLife’s NEWS WATCH is a regular look at key news developments impacting the Church and/or compassionate professionals. Part of this BosNewsLife News story also airs on the Voice of America (www.voanews.com) and Deutsche Welle networks. (www.dw-world.de)
