Sense and Sustainability (or joined-up Government part 2)

Abbotsford Road, Oldham – Some of the 8 million houses in Britain that have fallen below decency standards


Anyone who has even glanced at my book Integrated Sustainable Design of Buildings will be aware that I am passionate about the power of collaboration. I am firmly of the belief that most challenges can be more effectively met by a holistic approach that involves people from many different disciplines actually talking to each other.

Unfortunately a lot of people feel threatened by those outside their own discipline. They build walls of jargon and take comfort from the camaraderie amongst their peers that comes from a continuous state of conflict with ‘the opposition’. This enables them to blame anyone but themselves when things go wrong.

Of course we see this in the construction industry between architects and engineers, builders and sub-contractors; and in Government with the internecine strife between Departments and of course between opposing politicians.

In this posting I would like to focus on one particular issue where this lack of joined-up thinking could have a major impact on our futures. There are 26 million homes in the UK in some need of improvement. According to a BRE Information Paper from February 2010: ‘The real cost of poor housing’ (IP 16/10) some 4.8 million homes in England alone came within the Government's definition of ‘poor housing’ in the 2006 English Housing Condition Survey. BRE_paper

This rates hazards arising from deficiencies in housing under the Housing Health & Safety Rating System (HHSRS). The potential hazards range from excess cold, damp and mould, falling on stairs through to asbestos exposure. A similar number of homes in Britain come within the definition of fuel poverty, which, with the recent announcement by Scottish Power of a 19% increase in gas tariffs and 10% increase in electricity tariffs from 1 August, is set to increase significantly.

BRE estimates that the total ‘cost to society of poor housing’, that is housing that has a Category 1 hazard under the HHSRS (see list below) is around £1.5 billion per annum in England alone, including at least £600m cost to the NHS.

Cost to Society:

Loss of asset value
Poor physical and mental health
Social isolation
Higher home fuel bills
Higher insurance premiums
Uninsured content losses
Underachievement at school
Loss of future earnings
Personal insecurity
More accidents
Poor hygiene
Cost of moving
Adopting self-harming habits

Unfortunately Lady Thatcher’s notorious statement that ‘there is no such thing as society’ does apply when one is attempting to come up with one coherent body that will foot the bill for these costs. ‘Society’ neither has a bank account nor a cost centre. BRE estimates that some £17.6bn is required to bring the 4.8m houses in England up to standard, representing a simple payback period of some 12 years. The problem is that multiple agencies would benefit from the resultant cost savings; for example the NHS, police, local authorities, education authorities and of course the occupants themselves, where they pay their own utility bills, home insurance etc.

The Decent Homes Programme, introduced by the previous administration, aimed to refurbish all social sector homes to a minimum standard between 2000 and 2010. By 2008 the percentage of council housing that had reached the decency standard was 69%. This compared with 49% of private rented and 65% of owner-occupied, although housing association social housing had reached 77%. The most common reason for non-decency is the presence of at least one Category 1 hazard under HHSRS. Housing_report

The Coalition allocated £3.7bn in the Spending Review for Decent Homes funding, £1.6bn of which has been awarded to 46 Councils to refurbish 150,000 homes, the remainder being allocated to 28 large scale voluntary Housing Associations that manage Local Authority social housing.

In parallel with the Decent Homes Programme the New Deal for Communities scheme, run by the DCLG Neighbourhood Renewal Unit, was launched in 1998 and provided funding for improving 39 deprived neighbourhoods in England. One of the early projects in Newcastle upon Tyne’s West End has resulted in an impressive 21% fall in recorded crime between 2000 and 2010. Funding for Round 2 of this scheme comes to an end this year.

However the social sector constitutes only 18% of the total housing stock in England, with the owner-occupied sector taking the lion’s share at 70% and private-rented at 12%. These last two sectors are obviously difficult for public sector initiatives to reach, although under the Housing Act 2004 Local Authorities are expected to keep all housing under review, with initially a target for 70% of private housing with ‘financially vulnerable’ occupants to achieve the decency standard (approximately 5% of all homes in England).

Since the Coalition has come to power this target has been removed and specific funding for Private Sector Renewal is no longer available. With Local Authorities now being squeezed financially it seems unlikely that there will be funds available to divert to the private sector.
However in another part of the woods there are currently grants available through DECC and the Warm Front scheme for those on income-related benefits and who live in homes that are poorly insulated and/or that have inadequate heating. This will be replaced by the Energy Company Obligation in the autumn of 2012, whilst the Green Deal will provide loans to individual households for energy efficiency measures that meet the so-called ‘Golden Rule’ – i.e. that the annual saving in energy bill is equal to or greater than the annual repayment cost within a specified pay-back period or the lifetime of the product.

The Energy Saving Trust (EST) reported earlier this month that some 22.7% of homes in England fall within the two lowest energy efficiency bands (F & G) as reported under the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) methodology. EST_report

This represents around 5m homes, which the EST has estimated would cost an average of £3,000 to bring each home up to an E rating, resulting in a reduction of 5 million tonnes of CO2 per annum , or just less than half a Drax power station.

A recent amendment to the Energy Bill will require landlords to improve the energy efficiency of private rented homes that fall within these bands before 2018 or be forced to remove them from the market. This represents some 680,000 homes, most of which are also likely to fall below the CIEH decency standard.

It seems likely from the above that at this moment in time between 30 and 35% of households in Britain cannot be considered as decent by currently accepted standards. The collateral damage from this is not only socio-economic but runs into billions of pounds per year, much of which is a burden on the taxpayer. Although there has been a steady improvement in social housing, the private sector has been more difficult to reach, but even the limited funding that was made available through the Private Sector Renewal fund has been withdrawn. From 2012 householders will be able to take out long term loans to pay for energy efficiency improvements, but for those homes that remain below the decency threshold this will be like applying green wash to a mouldy wall.

The Department of Health also has funding available for ‘projects to prevent hospital admissions’ and support to Local Authorities and Primary Care Trusts to support social care. Perhaps DCLG, DECC and DH should pool their resources to tackle the outstanding decent homes problem.

Joined-up Government and Carbon Reduction

A solar farm in Germany - will we see the like in Britain?


OK, I can understand that incentives for carbon reduction should be focused on householders. After all there are some 26 million existing houses in Britain that need attention over the next forty years. However there is only so much that can be achieved by improving fabric insulation and installing solar panels. For a start the take-up of the Green Deal is far from certain, whilst many houses will be hard to improve, particularly those with solid walls or inaccessible loft spaces for example.

Despite extensive condemnation and compelling evidence from numerous parties who contributed to the consultation process, the Government is going ahead with their unscheduled modifications to the Feed-in Tariff for photovoltaics. 57% of 466 respondents disagreed with the change, whilst 81% of 442 disagreed with the new bands. The Government’s reason for ignoring this can be summarised by the following quote from its response: ‘the need for fiscal responsibility across all areas of Government spending is a key objective of the Coalition Government.’ FITS

This will effectively close the door on larger installations. The schemes that will be impacted include community installations and solar farms that could have contributed significantly to decarbonising the grid: an essential component of the Government’s legal mandate to an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050.

Contrarily it now seems likely that there will be two opportunities for householders to benefit from Government funding for renewables. As well as the current FIT of 43.3p/kWh for electricity generated from small PV installations for example, along with 3.1p for each unit exported to the grid, householders should be able to obtain loans via the Green Deal. “the Energy Bill (2011) makes clear that the Green Deal may cover measures which generate energy as well as those termed “energy efficiency” measures. If a measure is capable of paying for itself because occupiers use less energy as result of the installation – then it can potentially qualify.” Greendeal

However the Treasury has proposed that subsidy through Enhanced Capital Allowances (ECA) be removed from renewable technologies. In their consultation, which closes 31 August 2011, they assert that ‘expenditure could not qualify for an ECA where it is incurred on plant or machinery that could qualify for a tariff payment under either of the FITs or RHI (Renewable Heat Incentive) schemes.’ ECA

The Government is about to commence a further review of Feed-in Tariffs and Renewable Obligations due for completion by the end of this year. With this in mind DECC have commissioned a report from Arup, which was published earlier this month. Renewables

It is interesting to note that this report anticipates a growth in PV in line with historical trajectories for PV installations in Germany. With precisely zero solar farms commissioned in the UK to date and the likelihood of new ones in the future seriously diminished this does seem unlikely. The burden is likely to fall primarily on the offshore windfarm sector to meet the Climate Change Committee (CCC) Renewable Energy Review target of reducing carbon emissions through electricity generation from the current 500 gCO2/kWh to 50 mg by 2030.
CCC

This is recognised in Table 1.1 of this important report, which lists PV under the heading of ‘Technologies that could play a major role in the future UK mix, with limited role for UK deployment in developing the option’ (my underlining). In other words the CCC considers that electricity from solar farms is likely to be imported from overseas suppliers in the longer term, provided the replacement regime for ROCs covers imported renewable electricity.

The critical role of Government in this complex situation is to ensure that the balance is correct between cost effective investment in decarbonising the grid and improving the efficiency of both new and existing homes, whilst ensuring subsidy and loans reach the parts they are intended for.

The Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership (CPSL) has included my book Integrated Sustainable Design of Buildings as one of their 'Top 40 Sustainability Books of 2010'.

The list builds on their previous research which was published by Greenleaf in 2009 as The Top 50 Sustainability Books. The updated list appeared in their recent report A Journey of a Thousand Miles: The State of Sustainability Leadership, 2011, which highlights some of the most interesting practice and research in the sustainability field.

CPSL is a department of the University of Cambridge focused on working with business and government to build leaders’ capacity to meet the needs of society and address critical global challenges. They run a number of executive education programmes and also convene groups of business leaders to engage in the public policy process, for example through The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change.

My book is the only one in the list that includes 'building' in its title, the others primarily cover economics, politics, business, CSR, climate change and philosophy. Authors that feature in the list include such luminaries as Al Gore, Prince Charles, Lord Stern, Sara Parkin, Fred Pearce, Bjorn Lomborg and Mike Berners-Lee. A copy of the CPSL report can be downloaded from http://www.cpsl.cam.ac.uk/Resources/State-of-Sustainability-Leadership.aspx

A Rocky Road to 2050: The Coalition’s Budget 2011

This Government remains committed to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 80% by 2050 compared with a 1990 baseline, but perhaps not on its watch. The 2008 Climate Change Act made this a legal requirement of course, as well as an interim target of a 26% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020. More recently the Government’s 2050 Pathway Analysis has identified the need for massive investment in a combination of demand reduction and decarbonisation of the grid in order to meet carbon targets. The way forward for the construction sector has been eloquently signposted by the Low Carbon Construction Innovation and Growth Team (IGT) report, summarised in a previous posting.

New Homes
Recent policy developments from the Coalition have seriously undermined the likelihood of the 2050 carbon targets being met. Although there may be some good things in the 2011 Budget, it's not so good on the sustainable development front. Despite commitments in the recently published Carbon Plan and recommendations in the final report from the Zero Carbon Hub the Budget has removed the commitment to zero carbon homes being a requirement of Building Regulations from 2016. The requirement has been watered down to cover only those parts of the energy demand that depend on the design of the dwelling, and exclude the so-called 'unregulated emissions', such as white goods, TVs etc, which make up some 33% of carbon emissions. Combined with the recent row-back on the feed in tariff this is disastrous for an industry that has been gearing up for zero carbon for the last 4 years or so! Needless to say this will also impact on the proposals for zero carbon non-residential buildings, scheduled for 2019.
The reasons for this dramatic reversal in policy are clear. The Government is worried that the cost of achieving zero carbon will make homes unaffordable and hence inhibit growth. Unfortunately this results in a vicious circle since the demand for the materials and products required for zero carbon homes will be insufficient to bring the costs down to affordable levels. It also means that many of the manufacturers who have been gearing up for zero carbon will be left high and dry.
One side effect of the redefinition of zero carbon is that developers are less likely to be required to contribute to off-site community energy schemes, unless these are leveraged by Local Authorities through the Community Infrastructure Levy.
Only a few days before the Budget DECC came up with its unscheduled revisions to the feed in tariff (FIT). This dramatically reduces the FIT for PV installations of between 50 and 150 kW to 19p, between 150 and 250 kW to 15p and between 250 kW and 5 MW to 8.5p/kWh. These have been reduced from 32.9p for 10 to 100 kW installations and 30.7p for 100 kW to 5MW. The lowest rate also applies to any stand-alone installations, such as solar power stations. Ostensibly the reason for this is because there has been an excessive demand for FIT for large installations, although it could be argued that this is exactly what should be encouraged (see Germany), and the problem is one of under-funding. It will be interesting to see whether the Renewable Heat Incentive and the Green Deal suffer from the same under-funding problems. This seems highly likely for the latter since it will receive no funding from the Green Investment Bank and will rely instead on an extension of the existing Energy Company Obligation.
Last month the Zero Carbon Hub delivered its latest and final report on the path to zero carbon, which, in summary, recommends Carbon Compliance limits for built performance of various dwelling types. For example the maximum annual CO2 emissions, confirmed once constructed, were recommended to be 14 kg per square metre for a low rise apartment and 10 kg for a detached house. To get down to zero carbon an ‘Allowable Solution’ would have been required to offset the remaining carbon emissions. The aim was for Carbon Compliance to be achieved through some combination of building energy efficiency and on-site low or zero carbon energy generation. Allowable solutions include on-site energy and/or connection to zero carbon community energy. It seems likely that the Zero Carbon Hub will now have to revisit their recommendations since the requirement for 2016 will be, in simple terms, based on offsetting heat loss, hot water and lighting energy with zero carbon technologies.

Refurbishment/retrofit
It is clear from the IGT final report that the existing building stock represents the biggest challenge for the construction, property management and infrastructure sectors in meeting the 2050 carbon target. The majority of the 26 million existing homes and 2 million other buildings that need enhancing between now and 2050 will depend on a combination of a Green Deal type pay as you save arrangement to improve insulation and FIT/Renewable Heat Incentives or their successors to reduce connected demand. If these are not properly funded or the take-up is not adequate then they will remain ineffective.

Energy Infrastructure
Nobody can plan for the long term without an understanding of how the electricity supply is to be decarbonised over the next 40 years. The Government has recently responded to the evidence provided for its 2050 Pathway Analysis. The original report postulated a number of alternative pathways for achieving the 80% carbon reduction, including decarbonisation strategies based on some combination of renewable, nuclear power and fossil fuel with carbon capture and storage (CCS). Post-Japan it is interesting to examine the scenario in which no new nuclear plant is built. By 2050 all existing plants would be decommissioned and it is predicted that in excess of 500 TWh/year of electricity would be required from renewable sources and 220 from fossil fuels with CCS. The funding for this will be hundreds of billions of pounds, and presumably mostly have to be leveraged from the activities of the Green Investment Bank.
However if we are successful in decarbonising the grid there will be a corresponding drop in the carbon emissions associated with buildings, with a greater reduction in those buildings that rely primarily on electricity to meet their energy demands. This is the opposite of the current situation, which is why it is vital for those planning construction projects to be able to predict the carbon intensity of the electricity supply during the lifetime of their proposed buildings.

Planning
Continuing its measures to kick start the construction sector “(Government will make) radical changes to the planning system to support job creation by introducing a powerful presumption in favour of sustainable development; opening up more land for development, while retaining existing controls on greenbelt land; introducing new land auctions starting with public sector land; consulting on the liberalisation of use classes; and ensuring all planning applications and appeals will be processed in 12 months and major infrastructure projects will be fast-tracked.” (See page 24 of supplementary document: Plan for Growth, BIS).
There appears to be no mention of the recommendations from the IGT that Environmental Impact Assessments should include carbon targets and that all large projects should be scrutinised by a Major Projects Review Group.

Low Carbon Construction - The Road to 2050

Crossbank House, Oldham – a model of energy efficient retrofit

The Government in Westminster, no matter what its colour, has recognised that there is much to be done to meet the programme of carbon reduction targets set out in the 2008 Climate Change Act, culminating in a reduction in CO2eq emissions of 80% by 2050 compared with a 1990 baseline.
Interim targets include a 22% reduction in the years 2008-2012. It is interesting to note that, compared with a 1990 baseline of 777.8 MtCO2eq it has been reported that UK emissions (or ‘carbon budget’) for 2008 were 606.7, allowing for 19.3 purchased by UK companies under the EU ETS; a reduction of exactly 22% (carbon) .
Arising from the Climate Change Act the Government published its Low Carbon Industrial Strategy in 2009 and the Low Carbon Construction Innovation & Growth Team (IGT) was established under the auspices of the Department for Business Innovation & Skills (BIS) in September of that year. Its comprehensive and visionary final report was published in November 2010, setting out a strategy that strikes a tone of some urgency, whilst also taking the long view (can be downloaded from IGT). This might be considered a good start in achieving one of the objectives in the report: ie that Government set a clear strategy, vision and leadership in order to overcome barriers to low carbon construction.
Although this report has ‘construction’ in its title much of its content and a third of its recommendations deal with existing buildings and infrastructure. This is because approximately 75% of the stock that will be standing in 2050 is likely to be already built today. In the case of homes it is estimated that of the 27 million currently standing, 26 million will still be with us in 2050 with potentially a further 10 million built between now and then.
The report draws from work carried out by six working groups under the headings of Major Projects, Housing, Non-domestic buildings, Infrastructure, Cross-cutting and the 2050 Group, overseen by a Steering Group chaired by Paul Morrell, Chief Construction Advisor at BIS.
There are 65 recommendations across the headings, requiring action from both Government and industry. The following is distilled from the report, its recommendations and some of the references therein:
• A flexible and adaptive framework is required for delivery and monitoring of a programme of works resulting in a reduction of at least 80% in CO2eq across all sectors – new and existing buildings, public and private sector and infrastructure (Pathways to 2050, DECC, 2010 - Pathways
Different sectors have different lead-in times: for example decisions on power generation made today will impact on carbon emissions for the next 100 years, whilst low carbon construction products may have development periods measured in decades.
• A Major Project Review Group (MPRG) should be established which would provide approval for large projects based on an assessment of sustainability performance and legitimacy, following a similar model to that established by the soon to be abolished CABE.
• Environmental impact assessments should incorporate a mandatory statement on carbon reduction strategy and a carbon target based on an MPRG assessment.
• The cost of zero carbon homes should be no more than meeting 2010 Part L requirements.
• Government and industry should agree a standard method of measuring embodied carbon as part of a whole life carbon appraisal for use in feasibility studies and establishing a realistic price for carbon.
• Skills gaps will require an integrated approach to fill. A report produced by the NHBC, House Builders Federation, ConstructionSkills and Zero Carbon Hub has set out a long term strategy to address this (Home Building Skills 2020 - cskills)
Knowing how far adrift newly constructed buildings are from that predicted by current models used to assess Building Regs compliance (SAP and SBEM) is essential. Hence measuring carbon emissions associated with existing buildings requires a consistent and standardised approach.
• Barriers to the uptake of energy saving measures need to be overcome. For housing this could include linking carbon rating to stamp duty, Council Tax, Building Regulation approval and VAT, for example. For non-domestic buildings the situation is more complex and the report suggests solutions for overcoming barriers in Government, the supply chain and, in the case of existing buildings, owners and occupiers. The supply chain needs confidence to invest in innovation and work with others to provide a fully integrated approach to project management and delivery. Owners and occupiers need to see value in low carbon refurbishment and retrofit. Financial incentives for reducing carbon emissions include linking emissions to Stamp Duty Land Tax, levying differential business rates, reinstating and increasing Industrial Buildings Allowances for low carbon buildings and products and widening the scope of Enhanced Capital Allowances to cover not only products but whole-building solutions, such as natural ventilation and exposed structures.
• Government should set up an Existing Homes Hub on similar lines to the Zero Carbon Hub. Note that there already exists an Existing Homes Alliance (eha)supported by numerous commercial and public sector organisations and pressure groups. Their Finance working group produced a report in 2009 that compared various finance schemes that could be adopted by Government to support large scale retrofitting of existing housing stock, replacing the current Carbon Emission Reduction Target (CERT) and Community Energy Savings Programme (CESP) funding schemes that place obligations on utility companies, but which come to an end in 2012. The Government has launched its Green Deal funding package for home owners based on the ‘pay as you save’ concept which was one of the three packages favoured in this report. The Green Deal will become available in 2012 and is likely to fund insulation, double glazing and possibly renewable technologies, based on a loan repaid from savings in energy bills and attached to the property, not the occupier. This will be supplemented by the recently introduced feed-in-tariff (FiT) for renewable electricity and the similar Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), both of which will pay householders for the energy that they generate in-house. The RHI is yet to be published in its final form following criticism during its consultation process for penalising solar hot water schemes by providing a lower investment return than for the likes of air source heat pumps and biomass boilers. The IGT report recommends that to cater for small organisations which are not covered by the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency (CRC-EE) scheme (approx 50% of emissions) a ‘pay as you save’ mechanism should be extended to cover non-domestic buildings as well as an energy efficiency obligation on energy suppliers to offer low cost measures such as BEMS and optimised controls.
• The Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) came into force through regulation in April 2010 to provide a mechanism for Local Authorities to raise money from developers to fund local infrastructure projects. These funds may be used for energy projects, but also transport, flood defences, schools, hospitals, parks, green spaces and leisure centres. They differ from funds raised through planning obligations (Section 106 of Planning Act) and highways improvement (Section 278 of Highways Act) contributions in that they will be spent on general infrastructure, taking into account cumulative impacts of several developments and not subject to negotiation.
• In July 2010 the Coalition Government announced the foundation of a Community Energy Fund which will enable developers to contribute to a district energy scheme serving a community that includes their development as an ‘Allowable Solution’ within the proposed definition of zero carbon.
• Community Energy Online ceo is esource to support local authority and community groups to initiate and develop local low carbon and renewable energy projects.
• London is benefitting from the Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas (JESSICA) initiative with is providing funds for the £100m London Green Fund, including the Energy Efficiency Urban Development Fund (UDF) enabling investment in climate change infrastructure projects. Initially UDF will prioritise public and voluntary sector projects along with social housing.
• London is also one of the cities chosen to benefit from the Clinton Climate Initiative through the Building Energy Efficiency Programme (BEEP), currently funding energy efficient retrofits to a number of public buildings, managed by energy services companies (ESCo’s) and based on a similar pay-as-you-save model to that which will be employed for the Green Deal.
• The ability of the construction industry to deliver the necessary refurbishment programme must be assessed; based on an approach that incorporates standardized retrofit solutions, improved warranties and a ‘Strategic Retrofit Research Agenda’, with the social housing sector taking the lead.
• Schemes for improving the energy management and sustainability of existing non-residential buildings, such as the Green Building Management Toolkit and Green Leases (Better Building Partnership, 2010) and BREEAM in Use, should be more widely disseminated.
• An improved and enhanced DEC scheme should be extended to all existing non-residential buildings in advance of the July 2013 date required by the EPBD, with a worst-case carbon performance equivalent to an EPC rating of F to be achieved by 2020.
• Building Regulations Part L2B should be extended to cover more types of refurbishment and building fit-out.
• Landlords and tenants to agree on an energy management plan to accompany the DEC, including improvements identified through the energy efficiency obligation measures. The British Property Federation has developed tools to assist landlords in developing an energy statement and tenants in producing corresponding energy reviews that can be downloaded from http://www.les-ter.co.uk/page/home
• There is inefficiency and waste in many forms in the construction industry, and modernisation through techniques such as (but not limited to) value-based procurement, lean processes, building information modelling (BIM), benchmarking and continuous improvement, offsite manufacture and supply chain integration will enable project teams to deliver low carbon refurbishment and new build packages at the higher quality required and for significantly lower cost. The construction industry is strongly recommended to adopt modern methods of construction (MMC) and in particular use the resources provided by Buildoffsite http://www.buildoffsite.com/introduction.htm which can be used to download a number of publications including a guide to MMC (NHBC Foundation, 2006), specifying modular buildings (CIRIA, 2009) and an Offsite Toolkit.
• The IGT report addresses the weaknesses in the UK construction industry in managing the risk associated with innovative projects. It recommends the use of suitable tools such as Building Information Management (BIM), with Government leading the way on all projects >£50m. BIM is widely used in the US and computer-based tools are available from companies such as Autodesk. In addition tools should be developed that not only provide life cycle/present value assessment but also evaluate risk associated with innovation.
• Greater use of standards such ISO BS EN for low carbon and renewable technologies.
• The Cabinet Office Efficiency & Reform Group (ERG) to mandate a requirement for post-occupancy evaluation for Government projects.
Although the Government’s strategy for decarbonising infrastructure has been set out in the Department of Transport’s 2009 Low Carbon Transport Strategy and the Treasury/Infrastructure UK National Infrastructure Plan 2010 the IGT report stresses the importance of engagement between the infrastructure owners, policy makers and regulators and the construction industry to produce optimal carbon efficiency. The IGT report recommends that this collaboration should focus on developing models and undertaking research to achieve carbon reduction through better engineering and associated training and professional development.
The Government is expected to respond to the IGT report in April 2011. It is to be hoped that they take up the majority of the recommendations. It is difficult to see how the 2050 carbon commitment and interim targets are to be achieved without the actions recommended in this important report being implemented.

The Future of Biomass

Looked at holistically it could be argued that there is no such thing as a zero carbon technology, let alone a zero carbon building. Even those technologies, such as photovoltaics and wind turbines, that convert natural sources of energy into heat or electricity directly require fuel and power for manufacture, transport etc. (embedded carbon).

Biomass however suffers because there are not only carbon emissions associated with the manufacture and transportation of the hardware, but also from the processing and delivery of the fuel itself. Furthermore its definition as a renewable fuel is contingent on the carbon released during combustion being balanced against that absorbed during growth. However as these occur over different periods and in different locations the processes involved are complex. For example the plants that are used as fuel may have taken years to grow, during which time they are both absorbing and emitting CO2 from and to the immediate atmosphere. Whilst the total quantity of CO2 sequestered by the biomass during its lifetime is emitted in perhaps minutes when used as a fuel. The 2009 version of SAP takes account of the process and transport CO2 but assumes a balance between CO2 absorbed and emitted over the life of the biomass, giving emission factors for woodchip of 0.015 kgCO2/kWh and for wood pellets of 0.037, compared with 0.206 for natural gas and 0.591 for electricity.

Some consider burning biomass as a return to the ‘bad old days’ of coal fires and wood burners, with the potential for deterioration in air quality that implies. Indeed the concentration of such pollutants as NOx and fine particulates (PM10 and PM2.5) is worryingly high. A study in 2007 for the London Councils by the AEA concluded that: “...potentially increasing the contribution from small-scale wood fuelled biomass combustion to meet energy requirements in London under the London Energy Partnership scenarios may lead to a potentially substantial increase in nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter concentrations.” The study predicted that this could result in Air Quality Objectives (AQO) required of Local Authorities under the 2007 Air Quality Standards Regulations being exceeded. London

In the US a more militant stance is being taken by the Biomass Accountability Project, which is lobbying to outlaw the burning of biomass altogether. US

For the UK the problem is one of scale. The historic situation of a relatively low number of small scale installations spread out across mainly rural locations had little impact. However a recent survey by the Forestry Commission has reported an increase in the use of biomass boilers by 25% in the last two years and 86% of schools under the now truncated Building Schools for the Future programme are reported to be proposing biomass plant. Many of these new installations have been proposed to meet Local Authority requirements for a percentage of energy/carbon to be offset using on-site renewable technologies. The marginal capital cost of a biomass installation compared with other technologies can be low, hence many schemes have gone through on the basis of the economic case.

However the availability of biomass in the UK has become a major concern. Building operators procuring fuel for biomass firing have been competing with the likes of the Drax power station in North Yorkshire, which has been co-firing coal and biomass for some time. Drax was planning to increase the proportion of power generated from biomass initially to 500 MW, with new plants at Immingham, Hull and another site, yet to be announced, potentially contributing a further 900 MW. Drax. Note that industry estimates that there is a potential 5 GW of biomass generating capacity in the pipeline.

However, despite investing £80 million in co-firing in recent years and the Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) awarded, in February 2010 Drax claimed that it was no longer cost effective for it to use Biomass. It complained that the low subsidy for biomass compared with wind power, along with the low cost of carbon under the Emissions Trading Scheme had forced this decision upon them. Indeed it was even considering selling 2 million tonnes of biomass it had stockpiled. Drax2

Furthermore with biomass generated electricity not benefitting from the Government’s new feed-in tariff the whole life cost of biomass is no longer looking so attractive for smaller schemes.
On the other hand the use of wood as a fuel is also being attacked, perhaps not surprisingly, by the Wood Panel Industries Federation (WPIF). Despite contrary evidence from Drax it claims that ROCs are encouraging power companies to use wood for electricity generation, since, as of June 24 2010, co-firing was eligible for 0.5 ROC and CHP could earn 2 ROCs, with the value of a ROC at that time being £49 per MWh. A study commissioned by WPIF estimated that, on average, electricity generators could pay more than double the price paid by the UK wood panel industry for its primary raw material. Woodpanel

Two reports commissioned by WPIF conclude that this is a major threat to jobs in the manufacture of wood panels, whilst the embodied carbon that would otherwise be trapped in the wood panels would be released as CO2 through combustion, potentially increasing carbon emissions by 1%, or around 6 million tonnes annually. Of course it could be argued that this carbon will eventually be released following demolition and disposal of the wood panels.

With regard to the future of biomass in the UK the Coalition Government's first Energy Statement, published in July of this year stated that it is “....taking immediate action to exploit the potential of bio-electricity and energy from waste, by grandfathering support under the Renewables Obligation (RO) for electricity from dedicated biomass, energy from waste, anaerobic digestion and advanced conversion technologies, such as pyrolysis and gasification.” A separate report on a consultation of proposals for grandfathering was published at the same time as the Energy Statement published. Grandfathering. Grandfathering is defined as “...the policy intention to maintain a fixed level of support for the full lifetime of a generating station’s eligibility for the RO (typically 20 years), from the point of accreditation.” However the support will only apply to dedicated biomass plant and not to the fuel.

In their response to the above consultation the anti-biomass lobby group Biofuelwatch expressed the view that “in the medium to longer term, we expect UK subsidies for biomass to accelerate the development of a new global trade in woodchips and wood pellets, leading to more destructive logging in many parts of the world and to more conversion of forests, grasslands and farmlands to monoculture tree plantations.” Biofuelwatch

Active Design

41 Cooper Square, New York

According to official statistics just under a third of the US adult population is obese, that is having a body mass index (BMI) of more than 30 kg/square metre. The figure for the UK for 2008 was 24.5% of those over 16 years of age. The proportion of the adult population of the US that is obese has more than doubled since the early 1960’s. Although this is in part due to diet, activity levels also make a significant contribution. There is incontrovertible evidence that active people are less prone to a whole range of illnesses. Regular physical activity contributes to the prevention and management of over 20 conditions including coronary heart disease, diabetes, certain types of cancer and obesity. For example, strokes cost the NHS £2.8 billion a year. Studies indicate that physical activity reduces the risk of having a stroke by a third.

With this in mind a federal programme has been launched in the US called the National Physical Activity Plan, whilst in New York City a inter-departmental initiative fronted by the Department of Design and Construction has introduced the Active Design Guidelines (see Reference 1).

In the UK Sport England, supported by the Department of Health, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), published Active Design guidance in 2007 (see Reference 2).

As one might expect the New York Guidelines are tailored for high density inner city development and cover neighbourhood issues, urban design and architecture including:

• Develop and maintain mixed land use in city neighbourhoods;
• Improve access to transit and transit facilities;
• Improve access to plazas, parks, open spaces, and recreational facilities, and design these spaces to maximize their active use where appropriate;
• Improve access to full-service grocery stores and fresh produce;
• Design accessible, pedestrian-friendly streets with high connectivity, traffic calming features, landscaping, lighting, benches, and water fountains;
• Facilitate bicycling for recreation and transportation by developing continuous bicycle networks and incorporating infrastructure like safe indoor and outdoor bicycle parking.
• Increase stair use among the able-bodied by providing a conveniently located stair for everyday use, posting motivational signage to encourage stair use, and designing visible, appealing and comfortable stairs;
• Locate building functions to encourage brief bouts of walking to shared spaces such as mail and lunch rooms, provide appealing, supportive walking routes within buildings;
• Provide facilities that support exercise such as centrally visible physical activity spaces, showers, locker rooms, secure bicycle storage, and drinking fountains;
• Design building exteriors and massing that contribute to a pedestrian friendly urban environment and that include maximum variety and transparency, multiple entries, stoops, and canopies.

Most of these issues figure in LEED and perhaps it is no surprise that 41 Cooper Square, an exemplar Active Design development, is targeting a Platinum award under the Scheme
(http://morphopedia.com/projects/cooper-union). One of the iconic features of this stunning building is a four storey staircase that dominates the entrance area (see image above). The lifts are deliberately made inconspicuous to encourage all able bodied occupants to use the stairs.

The Sport England guidance is based on a similar agenda but orientated to masterplanning of sustainable communities, covering many of the transport issues in BREEAM, as well as those that figure in current proposals for Planning Policy Guidance and Department for Transport long term strategy. Guidance is provided under three headings:

• Improving accessibility
• Enhancing amenity
• Increasing awareness

The emphasis is on creating access routes for pedestrians and cyclists between “Everyday Activity Destinations”, such as homes, workplaces, schools, shops and community facilities. A reasonable walking distance is defined as between 400 and 800m, or a 5 to 10 minute trip one way, whilst for cycling a maximum distance of 5 km is suggested.

One innovative scheme, developed by the Smarter Travel Unit at Transport for London and Intelligent Health Ltd and known as Step2Get, encourages children to walk to school by offering incentives (http://www.intelligenthealth.co.uk/step2get/). School pupils are issued with personal cards which they swipe at touch points along a designated walking route. They accumulate points for each walk and are rewarded with Topshop or Odeon cinema vouchers when they have reached a set target.

Intelligent Health uses Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to monitor the walking route. The ‘receivers’ which act as the swipe points are designed and manufactured by the company. The scheme can also be used to direct children along specific routes for safety reasons or to reduce overcrowding on local public transport services.

This system is at the heart of the Wimbledon Schools Walking project, which was also designed to reduce congestion and dwell times of buses, and involved some 300 pupils at Wimbledon schools.

A review of current good practice in the planning and design of sustainable transportation schemes is provided in my book Integrated Sustainable Design of Buildings, details of which can be found elsewhere on this blog.

References

1 New York City Active Design Guidelines: Promoting Physical Activity and Health in Design (2010). Produced by NYC Department of Design and Construction. http://ddcftp.nyc.gov/adg/downloads/adguidelines.pdf

2 Active Design. Sport England (2007) http://www.sportengland.org/facilities__planning/planning_tools_and_guidance/active_design.aspx