A 363 meter high tower – nearly as tall as the Empire State Building – has been granted planning approval for the heart of Manhattan.

The planning authorities in New York have given permission for the building to begin construction, the owner of the Empire State Building tried to have the building stopped but his attempts failed after the city council voted 47-1 for the building to begin constriction at 15 Penn Plaza.

The tower is designed by Pelli Clark Pelli, will only be 18 meter smaller than the Empire State Building, which is 2 blocks away. The owner of the Empire State, Anthony Malkin said the new tower will ruin the city’s skyline.

In a statement, Malkin said: “This is not about banning tall buildings, but about preserving the very uniqueness of the New York City skyline.”

But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said: “Anybody that builds a building in New York City changes its skyline. We don’t have to run around to every other owner and apologize. One guy owns a building, and he’d like to have it be the only tall building. I’m sorry that’s not the real world.”

The Empire state building was built in 1931 and was the tallest building in New York before the construction of the World Trade Center in 1970. After the horror of 9/11 destroyed the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building regained its title as the city’s tallest building.

Here at BuilderScrap we believe that magnificent building such as the World Trade, Empire State and this new building is a feat of engineering brilliance. Building such as these will stand the test of time and will be admired the way we admire The Great Wall of China and the Pyramids of Egypt.

(The Geothermal Plant in Iceland)

Plans for the first commercial geothermal plant in the UK could be approved in Cornwall and could be generating heat and electricity as early as 2013.

The news comes after an exploratory drilling project was granted local planning permission in the Cornwall area. Engineers will be drilling a 4.5km deep borehole at the beginning of next year at a site near Redruth and another site at the Eden project is still awaiting approval.

The drilling is the first sign of a possible geothermal power sector in the UK, the Government hope projects such as these can contribute one to five gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy in the next 2 decades. Germany has an estimated 150 geothermal power plant project in the pipeline.

Geothermal energy involves pumping water up to 5km underground where it is heated by hot rocks then is pumped back up to the surface and can either be converted into electricity or used as a source of renewable heat. A massive positive for using geothermal is that is it able to operate consistently 24 hours a day.

After extensive research which took place in the 1970s and 80s it is thought that Cornwall will be the best site for geothermal power due to the county’s granite bedrock.

The Department for Energy and Climate has backed both of the projects with over £2 million in funding to help get the ball rolling.

If successful in its exploratory drilling, the Redruth project would produce 10 megawatts (MW) of electricity and 55MW of renewable heat for the local community.

According to Ryan Law, Managing Director of the company behind the project Geothermal Engineering Ltd, the energy produced over the course of a year is the equivalent to 21 wind turbines.

The new design standard for houses could mean that the number of houses being built in London could fall by more than 2,400, according to the London Development Agency (LDA).

The LDA last week published its updated version of the London Housing Design Guide, which will set standards for areas such as minimum size and bicycle parking provision.

Research carried out for the LDA by agent GVA Grimley, and published alongside the guide says the space requirements could lead to 2,430 fewer homes being built on existing sites every year, as a worst-case scenario. It said the guide, part of Mayor Boris Johnson’s crusade against “hobbit homes”, was “most likely” to mean between 240 and 1,220 fewer homes.

The research also found that these changes would add anything between 3% and 16% to the cost of building a new home, depending on the type of dwelling, apartment will be the worst affected. The study says the new standards will add £24,000 a unit.

This increase could be enough to make apartments uneconomic in some areas of the capital. “There will be many instances where the viability is sufficiently robust … to be able to afford the requirements. However, in a number of cases, especially those where sale values are less than the average for London, the initial impact may be significant.”

Meeting the standard will be mandatory for homes receiving social housing funding, beginning April 2011.

The guide goes back on some items in the 2009 draft, including that flats should have windows in more than one side, following protests from developers.

Tony Pidgley, the chairman of Berkeley Group, said the guide was “balanced” but that it did raise some viability concerns. “You need to spend £100m to get on site in London, so developers have to be allowed to offer a range of products,” he said.

The guide has been welcomed by architects; with the RIBA saying new standards were crucial.