Get Sust! issue 35

FEATURE

Don't wait for the starting pistol — just get on with it!

Climate scientists in the US said last month that “the world is virtually certain to overshoot the limits of greenhouse gas concentrations” and that every day we delay taking action makes it that bit harder for any mitigation strategies to work. Writing in the journal Climate Change, the team from Princeton University led by Bryan Mignone say that even immediate and drastic cuts may not prevent dangerous temperature rises in the future.

This news may not have percolated through to visitors to last month’s EcoBuild, but judging by the number of exhibitors and visitors, the ‘get sustainable’ message IS finally hitting home to the construction sector.

The trouble is, although everyone who’s anyone is now poised on the starting line, most of them are still waiting for someone - preferably the government - to fire the starting pistol.

This was so frustrating, it made me want to take over the Earls Court PA system and simply shout “Just get on with it!”

But changes are on the way, and if you’d toured the seminar rooms at EcoBuild, you’d have learnt far more than watching the ‘novelty’ debates in the central gladiatorial Arena.

First on Get Sust’s agenda was the less-than-glamorous topic of site waste management...

Are you waste aware?

Site waste management plans (SWMPs) will be mandatory from 6 April 2008 for all projects over £300,000; and more detailed waste plans will be needed for projects valued at more than £500,000. But as Mervyn Jones of WRAP explained to the EcoBuild audience, there are sound financial arguments for ALL projects to pay more attention to waste.

For example, a study by WRAP (the government-backed Waste and Resources Action Programme) looked in detail at on-site waste costs and found that the true cost of waste disposal – i.e. if you factor in the cost of unnecessary waste, missed opportunities for recycling and all the handling and removal costs – is around 15 times the cost of basic skip hire. Mervyn Jones cited the Comely Green Place development of 95 housing units as a case in point. There, simple waste management routines saved £4000 per unit (i.e. around £400,000 across the whole scheme).

So contractors who are worried about the additional cost of reaching Code for Sustainable Homes standards could easily off-set that expense by adopting straight-forward waste management strategies.

However, this is only part of the equation. Clients need to be on-board too, to drive forward the requirement for re-use and recycling of construction materials. Jones suggests that a ‘skip strategy’ could be a good starting point for contractors and clients alike, adding that whereas some sites might try to manage up to ten material types, they would be better to concentrate on just three. The 3-skip principle – one skip for timber, one for plasterboard, and one for “other” – can save around 60% of skip and waste costs.

In order to help everyone who’s getting to grips with site waste, WRAP has produced three short guides, as well as wording that can be used or adapted for tenders and contracts, and an online template for monitoring your waste management performance. (Details below.)

Victoria Hill of Taylor Woodrow then explained how her team is helping the company to meet the new SWMP requirements. Her key advice is to allow time to get the plans in place. She estimates that preparation time can be as little as 3 hrs for a domestic-scale project, up to around 20 hrs for major projects (worth more than £300,000). Having said that, though, she acknowledged that things will speed up once people are familiar with the process and can learn from previous projects.

Her top tips for driving forward waste reduction include:

• project league tables
• comparing performance
• naming and shaming
• rewarding good performance.

Get to grips with EPCs

The government’s “Energy Performance of Buildings Regulations” is, says BSRIA’s David Belcher, a “very readable document”. And given that by the end of this year all new domestic and non-domestic buildings will need an energy performance certificate (EPC) when they are sold or let, he recommends that everyone should read it!

But legality is not the only reason why people should take an interest. Both David Belcher and Paul Davidson of BRE, whose presentation came next, mentioned that managers of property portfolios have already caught on to the idea that they can use EPCs to quickly and simply compare buildings across their portfolio and beyond.

Indeed, EPCs look set to become an important factor in improving the energy performance just where we need it most – in existing buildings.

This is because all the information that is fed into SAP or SBEM (simplified building energy model) software in order to calculate the EPC can be used to generate additional information about the property over and above the A–G ranking. For instance, the ‘output report’ from SBEM and related tools identifies the main energy uses in the building; and the system will also generate a ‘recommendations report’ of energy efficiency measures.

The energy assessor should review the recommendations report, and can manually select other options where some are clearly unsuitable. The assessor could even use SBEM to run a trial – virtually implement some of the recommendations and see what, if any, effect the measures would have on the building’s overall ranking (e.g. a move from Band D to Band B).

Another interesting feature of the whole set-up is that all EPCs and Display Energy Certificates (for large public buildings) have to be officially registered with an organisation called the Landmark Register. Landmark is implementing this system on behalf of the Department for Communities and Local Government.

There will be two registers – one for domestic and one for non-domestic certificates. Energy assessors, trading standards and building control officers will be able to access certain aspects of the register. But the register won’t just hold a copy of the building’s certificate, it will also hold the data that was used to calculate the ranking. In other words, the Register will be a database of energy-related information from ‘real’ buildings – a potential benefit to many researchers.

Move towards zero-carbon

Just half an hour later, at the other side of the vast EcoBuild exhibition floor, Get Sust’s final appointment of the day was at a presentation by the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) centring on their on-going research into the development of a “Code for sustainable non-domestic buildings”. Energy data was on the agenda here too.

Arup’s Thomas Briault gave a very thorough presentation of the UKGBC’s extensive work. The study began by trying to estimate current energy usage in the non-domestic sector, then to model changes that would be necessary to take the ‘standard’ building into the realms of ‘zero-carbon’.

Given the wide range of building types and uses in the non-domestic sector, this was a complex project, with different research teams contributing different skills and expertise. For example, a team from Heriot-Watt University defined three building types – shallow plan, low-rise; deep plan, high-rise; and ‘shed’ minimal glazing. Meanwhile, real energy consumption data from UKGBC members was collated and analysed so that it could be used in conjunction with the three building types for further study. However, with an incomplete dataset, the team reverted to using data for non-domestic buildings from the government's Energy Consumption Guides, including ECON 19/ECG019 (for offices). This was deemed to be acceptable because work by Heriot-Watt had shown that average energy use in non-domestic buildings had not risen significantly in proportion to floor area since the ECONs were published.

Armed with sufficient data for offices, they then used dynamic modelling first to evaluate typical energy use, then to see how the designs might be adapted to be zero-carbon buildings. Costings were added into the equation, and – to cut a long story short – the final step was to draw up a trajectory of how, if we follow a six-step approach to reducing carbon emissions in new non-domestic buildings, we could deliver zero carbon buildings by 2020.

UKGBC and DCLG have published a full report of the study (see below), which includes a number of recommendations. But one in particular attracted my attention:

* “that a national building performance database should be established in order to properly understand energy use in the non-domestic stock”.

Now, the thought of setting up a ‘national database’ may set the £-signs rolling in civil servants’ eyes, but as we’d already heard earlier that afternoon – all non-domestic buildings, regardless of size, will need an EPC by October 2008. In other words someone, somewhere will be gathering data from a wide range of buildings. It may not be full-blown ‘operational’ data (which is only collected for the Display Energy Certificates), and it’s important to bear in mind that modelled energy use using iSBEM can be significantly different from actual building energy consumption. But at least it will catalogue the various heating, lighting and air-conditioning equipment installed, together with construction type and fabric measures such as insulation.

And if EPCs are going to take off as already suggested, this could quickly grow into a useful and useable source of information, that will be available in months rather than years.

Going their own way

On the other hand, you could decide that action is needed right here, right now. That’s what the sustainable building association, AECB, has done. Formerly known as the Association for Environment Conscious Building, the AECB used EcoBuild as the launch pad for its CarbonLite Programme (CLP) which offers “a radical new approach to ‘zero carbon’ design, while also complementing and supporting existing government legislation and frameworks”.

Funded by the Carbon Trust, the CarbonLite Programme is trying to make the designers’ lives easier, by concentrating on simple design principles to achieve low carbon dwellings – namely, maximising use of passive solar gain, super insulation, rigorous airtightness standards, and the use of mechanical ventilation and heat recovery systems.

CarbonLite proposes three steps to improved building energy performance, and these correspond to the higher levels of the Code for Sustainable Homes. The AECB says that houses built to CarbonLite standards would be extremely cost-effective to build, would require very little energy to heat and could cut energy use by between 70-95% compared to the UK average.

Liz Reason, the AECB’s Director of CLP said: “We hope CLP will influence the current debates about ‘zero carbon’ buildings and that its standards will be widely adopted in the UK. CLP offers a comprehensive package of training and design guidance and is working with the supply and manufacturing industries to create approved details for key building elements.”

So no more excuses – just get on with it!

Learn more:

	•	“Atmospheric stabilization and the timing of carbon mitigation”, by Bryan K. Mignone et al http://tinyurl.com/2cme4y (DOI: 10.1007/s10584-007-9391-8)
	•	WRAP site waste management guidance: www.wrap.org.uk/construction. See also the Comely Green Place case study (PDF) at  www.wrap.org.uk/document.rm?id=2318.
	•	“The Energy Performance of Buildings (Certificates and Inspections) (England and Wales) Regulations 2007”, Statutory Instruments 2007 No. 991,  www.england-legislation.hmso.gov.uk/si/si2007/uksi_20070991_en_1.
	•	The UKGBC “Report on carbon reductions in new non-domestic buildings” can be downloaded from  www.communities.gov.uk/publications.
	•	See also “Improving the energy efficiency of our buildings; A guide to energy performance certificates for the construction, sale and let of non-dwellings” published in January, which includes the schedule for full implementation of EPCs etc  www.communities.gov.uk/publications/planningandbuilding.
	•	Access to the AECB’s CLP web-based materials is free to AECB members. For more information visit www.carbonlite.org.uk.
	•	PowerPoint presentations from EcoBuild and co-located events can be downloaded from www.ecobuild.co.uk/seminars; password: Green.

© Melanie Thompson 2008