Get Sust! Issue 29

Churchillian effort needed to bring buildings up to scratch

It’s four years since the journal Building Research and Information (BR&I) published a special issue on climate change; and co-incidentally, it’s four years since the first “trial” issue of Get Sust. This month BR&I publishes a new review, asking, among other things, whether the government’s aim for zero-carbon new homes is attainable, and whether the UK construction sector can deliver the sustainable buildings we need in future... Be warned! This doesn’t make for light summer-holiday reading.

In the UK, public awareness of climate change, energy efficiency and the role that buildings place in carbon emissions has grown considerably since 2003. This is only for the good, given the shocking fact recorded in BR&I by Jean-Luc Salagnac of Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment (CSTB), Paris:

France lost 15,000 people as a result of the 2003 heatwave, compared with 2,000 deaths in the US caused by Hurricane Katrina.

In the four years since BR&I’s last review, there has been a step change in activity at the strategic level. In the past year, for example, we have seen the publication of the EU Action Plan for Energy Efficiency, The Stern Review and the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. Domestic policies are now being introduced in their wake, but this is just the start, according to David Shipworth of Reading University.

His paper “The Stern Review: implications for construction”, concludes that the main legacy of Stern is “more and faster”, and that “the built environment will be an increasingly likely target to deliver improved performance”.

But Banfill and Peacock of Heriot-Watt University sound an alarm bell that, in the UK at least, we might not be heading in the right direction. Their paper, “Energy-efficient new housing - the UK reaches for sustainability”, assesses recent government proposals for new housing to move towards zero-net-carbon dioxide emissions.

They report that zero-carbon space and water heating is technically possible - providing sufficient education and technology transfer is given. It won’t be easy, though, bearing in mind that “the industry still finds it hard to do competent repairs on condensing boilers after two decades of experience”.

More problematic still, however, is the goal of zero-net-carbon electrical power. Banfill and Peacock recommend that any future policy on zero-carbon dwellings MUST make a distinction between electrical demand, and space and hot water heating, concluding:

“...As it reaches for sustainability, the UK runs a real risk of falling over”.

The Heriot-Watt team also point out that it is essential to think about the ability of new homes to adapt to warming climates. Salagnac’s paper “Lessons from the 2003 heat wave: a French perspective” flags up the challenges we face. He used recorded data from the heatwave to understand how buildings contributed to the death-toll - inhabitants’ behaviour, market boom in air-conditioning and subsequent increase in load - and reviews the risk factors for buildings (e.g. age, materials, insulation, numbers and positions of windows, vegetation around the buildings). His paper translates this assessment into a useful list of design priorities.

There are other clues on mitigation elsewhere in BR&I - in a paper by Ürge-Vorsatz et al, which reports on a study commissioned for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report chapter on “Mitigation options for residential/commercial buildings”. However, Robert Lowe, the Guest Editor for this special issue warns that the paper includes “deficiencies” in its methodology that would not normally have passed through BR&I’s review panel. He justifies its inclusion by saying that the paper is published here because it is a large and significant piece of work, and it neatly illustrates the very difficult task ahead for both practicalities and policies.

And it is this difficulty that looms large throughout the Special Issue of BR&I, which deserves to be widely read by politicians, researchers and practitioners alike.

On new housing, Guest Editor Robert Lowe says:

“Most dispiriting is the fact that in no developed country, with the possible exception of Switzerland, is the housing construction industry capable of building more than a few per cent of new dwellings each year to such [high] standards.”

But it is clear that the more important task is to address the energy efficiency of existing housing - and that is the really bad news. Lowe likens the effort required to that of UK industry war production of 1939 and 1940.

Do you see anyone of Churchillian stature poised to take charge of construction in the long-awaited Gordon Brown cabinet?

Learn more:

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“Building Research & Information special issue: Climate Change and National Building Stocks”, Guest Editor: Robert Lowe issue 35(4) July-August 2007, will be available shortly at www.rbri.co.uk.