Elemental

What caught my eye today, March 16th:

• A Reporter at Large: Big Foot: newyorker.com – Long but good piece in the New Yorker on carbon footprinting, including quotes from Leahy at Tesco.
• Alice in Wonderland (Jonathon Porritt) – I missed this a couple of weeks ago. Jonathon’s on top form explaining why the govt’s price of 26 quid a tonne for carbon is a little on the low side.
• Dark Side of Solar Cells Brightens: Scientific American – Embodied energy in PV’s not as bad as once thought.
• Pro and anti-capitalism: the issues – Chris Dillow explains the difference between free markets and capitalism.
• Why You Do the Crazy Things You Do – Book reviews of 2 new behaviourial economics tomes – proving what we already knew, which is that real people are impulsive, shortsighted, and procrastinating?95% Homer Simpson and only 5% Mr. Spock.
• Dr David Strong warns against the dangers of ?zero carbon? – From MBS, more on David’s speech at EcoBuild

mel starrs News Chris Dillow, David Strong, Energy, Homer Simpson, Jonathon Porritt, Spock, Tesco

Welcome news in Building this morning that BREEAM is to be revamped in May (just in time for my return to the UK). The article states:

The new version of the 18-year-old BREEAM assessment tool will make post-construction reviews mandatory, set maximum levels for energy and water consumption and minimum requirements for material selection. It will also introduce an “outstanding” category to recognise buildings that surpass the “excellent” rating.

Given where CSH has gone, it should be no surprise that minimum standards have been reintroduced for energy and water. For those either not old enough to remember or those who didn’t come across BREEAM in the early nineties, the scheme used to have minimum levels for categories – so we are going full circle in a way. I welcome this, by the way. It is possible to pull off an “excellent” score by virtue of location and judicious spending with the current scheme without necessarily addressing carbon and water issues. Some might argue that this is making the scheme more prescriptive rather than the flexible scheme I dreamed of here . But I’m resigned to the fact that human nature being as it is, we’re stuck with checklists for the forseeable future. By the way, it’s worth checking out the comments on that post – some really good points from Matt Grace and David Strong amongst others.

PCR’s are also long overdue to become mandatory. As I have explained before, a D&P certificate at stage E is no guarantee that your building is still “sustainable” at completion after several rounds of “value engineering”.

The only issue I have with this announcement is the “Outstanding” label – it’s like awarding A* for GCSE’s. Why do we need to introduce a new level? The whole mantra of BREEAM over the past few years is that the goal posts shift from year to year. That is why certificates are dated and buildings should only be compared with their peers e.g. an office gaining “Excellent” in 2004 should only be compared with other offices in 2004 – it makes no sense to compare it with an office which gained an “Excellent” in 2007.

This aside it looks like Martin Townsend is settling into his new job. I have a couple more points I’d like to see added to the “to-do” list:

• Instead of listing only the assessor organisations , list the actual assessors and their normal location, so clients can gauge the suitability of the organisation they are employing. Something like CIBSE have done with Low Carbon Assessors would be ideal.

• My biggest wish is that the methodology becomes freely available on the website. As this is the default for CSH (pdf, 225 pages) , I’m hopeful BREEAM will follow suit. Currently, only pdf checklists for BREEAM for Offices are available (D&P here and M&O here , pdf 16 and 13 pages). As far as I know, BREEAM will form the Code for Sustainable Buildings, although I don’t know for certain that this will happen in May – can anyone confirm?

If anyone at BREEAM would like to send me an advance copy* for further review, I would be more than delighted ;o). My email address is to the right of the page…

edit: Claire Howe has an excellent piece up at edie.net covering the changes in more detail and echoing some of my thoughts above.  Any chance of starting a blog Claire ?

* as I’m not technically working for anyone at the minute, I’ve lost my BREEAM extranet privileges

mel starrs Opinion assessment tool, Claire Howe, David Strong, Energy, Martin Townsend, Matt Grace, United Kingdom

On Wednesday DCLG announced details of the home energy certificates which must be in place due to EPBD (European Performance of Buildings Directive) by 2009. The UK version will be ready by next summer:

The certificates will give home buyers and sellers A to G ratings for their home’s energy efficiency and carbon emissions. They will tell them current average costs for heating, hot water and lighting in their home as well as how to cut costs with energy efficiency measures.

Commercial buildings will be following soon, but the implications on the domestic housing market could be enormous. All those poorly built, electrically heated flats built over the past 15 years could be facing a very sticky future. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on the existing housing market. It’s all very well building new buildings correctly but we have a huge stock of existing housing which accounts for a much greater proportion of the carbon emissions. There was a fantastic report published in 2003 by BRE called ‘Domestic Energy Fact file 2003′ which has 103 pages of facts and figures.

In a no doubt related move, BRE have recently announced the launch of EcoHomes XB:

David Strong, MD of BRE Environment comments: ‘Reducing the environmental impact of the existing housing stock is a vitally important issue. BRE has worked closely with the Housing Corporation to develop EcoHomes XB – an environmental assessment tool for existing managed housing stock. We are delighted to have been able to assist the Housing Corporation by developing EcoHomes XB, a valuable addition to our family of environmental assessment tools.’

mel starrs Uncategorized David Strong, energy efficiency, energy efficiency measures, environmental assessment tool, environmental assessment tools, home energy certificates, Housing Corporation, News, Part L, Sustainability, United Kingdom