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Phil Clark and Fulcrum have put together a fantastic list of upcoming proposed policy changes relevant to construction. Though I couldn’t find the attached doc he talks about: Fulcrum’s housing chart - where is it? Phil’s promised to keep the list updated as more information is released.
That’s just saved me a pile of research this morning, Phil. Thanks.
The Draft Statutory Instrument (DSI) for Stamp Duty Exemption for Zero Carbon Homes, announced at the last budget, will undermine the majority of attempts to deliver the greenest of housing. The DSI doesn’t appear to be available online, but the link is to a copy we acquired from the Treasury after badgering them.
The DSI is to be laid before Parliament at the end of next week for Committee approval by the end of the month. It is at best a misguided piece of well-meaning legislation that will do more harm than good, or at worst a genuine attempt by central Government to limit the loss of stamp duty receipts from too many zero carbon homes.
A project I’ve been involved in at XCO2 won the Building Design /100% Detail Cool Wall contest last Sunday. It’s Far End House, set to be the first PassivHaus in the UK (fingers crossed). My involvement has been limited to working through the PHPP spreadsheets - Jayde Austin has done all the hard work - but I wanted to shout about it anyway.
In this case, mob justice was right.
The Green Building Council published a response in July to the Draft Statutory Instrument (which comes into force on October 1) for stamp duty exemption as proposed by our now Prime Minister in the last budget. I wish I had read it more carefully at the time…
Colleagues and I have been trying to disentangle the most cost-effective routes to achieving Code Level 6 of the Code for Sustainable Homes for a number of far-sighted and sincere clients who want to deliver the most efficient housing possible, and not just for those that can afford it.
Anyway, the budget announcement stated that zero-carbon homes would be exempt from stamp duty, which in reality is nothing more than a political gesture as the costs involved outweigh the stamp duty savings. Originally, the Code was written to allow for accredited offsite renewables which could demonstrate clear additionality, to be acceptable in achieving true zero carbon status. This was a bold step that, despite the uncertain mechanics of administration had the potential to allow developers the choice of investing in off-site renewables. Imagine being able to deliver say 30-50% CO2 reductions for the cost of a planning requirements of 10%? Or even a 100% reduction for an acceptable extra over to secure a particularly plum site. Too good to be true perhaps?
(Spotted by Mel at Elemental) Cyril Sweett have published their research into the potential for improving energy performance of existing building stock. The importance of greening existing buildings is brought home by two facts:
- 44% of all CO2 emissions in the UK comes from energy use in buildings
- According to one of the report’s authors, in 2050 60% of Britain’s buildings will still pre-date the 2006 revisions to Part L
So we can look forward to the carbon reductions required by Part L being ratcheted up in future, but the overall effect will be modest, even in the long term. If we want to save carbon NOW then energy consumption in existing buildings is too important to ignore.
Predictably, the report’s top recommendation is for “brave decisions” by the government. But in a political climate where politicians would rather engage in creative accounting than be decisive on climate change, it’s hard to be hopeful.
Following our recent blog conversation about the energy consumption of Portcullis House, Phil at the Sustainability Blog has pointed out the recently published consumption figures for another Hopkins scheme - this time the Gibbs Building owned by the Wellcome Trust. Like Portcullis House, it’s an office building kitted out with plenty of green gear. And like its cousin, the Gibbs Building is consuming more energy than predicted at design stage. So is the green office building just a myth?
Via zerochampion, the Guardian’s architecture commentator suggests that buildings
…should only really be offered prizes 20 years after their completion. While we can comment on the merit of the design, look and feel of a particular building when new, and celebrate the intentions of its designers, there is no guarantee that it might not prove to be a failure.
I know we ought to be happy that architecture is being discussed on TV at all. Having said that, if I were in charge of the Stirling Prize I’d consider actual measured energy use and give occupants a vote on whether they think the building is a success.
Client (on seeing the staircase dominating his hall): But I didn’t want a black marble staircase, I wanted an oak one!
Lutyens: What a pity.
This is driving me nuts. There’s now a huge emphasis on sustainability in architecture but some architects still don’t get it. Aflame with good intentions at the start of projects, they enthusiastically buy into sustainability concepts. But later in the design when there’s a perceived conflict between the energy performance and the architecture, the energy performance is chucked out the window.
Next year we reach a milestone unprecedented in history when more than half of all people will live in cities. This comes from the UN’s new State of the World Population report, which strikes an interesting tone. The authors acknowledge the huge risks of increasing rates of urbanisation, particularly for the poor, but also maintain that if we get our urban planning and public administration right, we can design out the worst of our environmental and social problems. And anyway, urbanisation is inevitable because you can’t have economic growth without it.
You could argue that here in the developed world, we’ve got enough urban planning experience under our belts to allow us to meet the challenge. Except that the developed world is not where the real expansion is set to take place. Most of the shift will occur in Asia and Africa where “the accumulated urban growth of these two regions during the whole span of history will be duplicated in a single generation.” So to describe the pace of expansion as breakneck is putting it mildly.
Phil Clark at Zero Champion sent a request under the Freedom of Information Act for figures on CO2 emissions for Portcullis House, the office building for Members of Parliament across the road from Big Ben. When he received a response he wasn’t sure if performance was good or bad. It’s bad:
There was an article in the Guardian last Saturday (thanks to Tessa for spotting it) by Alex James, the bassist from Blur, about having an architect come to his home to give green advice. It’s a scheme run by the RIBA where architects provide green advice in exchange for a donation to charity. At first glance this sounds positive. Certainly it’s a great channel to spread information on energy efficiency.
But things get a little weird when the article states that thick rubble walls keep the house warm in winter - which they don’t. Then architect George Stowell suggests that Alex installs a biomass CHP unit to generate his own electricity on site from wood chips. But there aren’t any commercially available biomass CHP units on a single house scale (or even twenty times that big). He may have meant biomass heating, but it’s a hell of a mistake to make, recommending something that doesn’t exist.
It might be better to send a services engineer. CIBSE should consider something similar to the RIBA programme.
A project I led at XCO2 is being featured in the Ecotech supplement in Architecture Today this month (no link yet). It’s a visitors centre for the National Trust in the Chiltern Downs expected to provide services to around 400,000 visitors a year. And it’s loaded with green goodness: woodchip boiler for space and water heating, rainwater harvesting for toilet flushing, and an earth coupled ventilation system that brings air into the building through a 90m long concrete pipe buried below ground. Read the rest of this entry »
A London borough used thermal imaging from the air to help identify properties with high heat loss and they’ve put the results online for anyone to see. Here’s the article in the The Times. And here’s the map showing the results.
I think it’s fantastic, provided the council follow it up with constructive advice to the worst homes and other buildings. Now what we need is a thermal version of Google Earth.
A few weeks ago at the end of a post about the myth of stone walls as insulation, I mentioned that high mass materials can be useful when included inside the insulation layer. Here’s why. Read the rest of this entry »
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