Elemental

These are my links for October 30th through November 5th:

• GEO DYNAMICS – How sustainable are heat pumps? -:- Construct Ireland – Great, but long, article on the pros and cons of air source heat pumps. Level of detail is just right, with plenty of graphs and good argument.
• BSRIA review of NG Bailey’s Solais House – Great review of Solais House. I hadn't realised that it was a spec office before, having seen David Frise present it recently. That explains why it's aesthetically…dubious. Despite this constraint, promises to be a great example – although we await the POE results.
• A place for PVC in a sustainable world? | Forum For The Future – Fascinating article on PVC. Still not convinced about the green guide rating of A for PVC windows, but things are getting better: "It’s not the first time that TNS has wrestled with the issue. It originally grappled with the stuff in 2000, when, with the support of the UK Environment Agency, it investigated whether PVC could have any place in a sustainable society. The answer was a cautious ‘yes’ – providing the industry addressed some of its most pressing challenges."
• Sir Nicholas Grimshaw – People – Dwell – Great quote from Grimshaw on sustainability: "You’ve got to do a bit of lateral thinking on these green issues. It’s quite important to be pragmatic. The one thing we have to watch very carefully is polarization"
  Unusual to find a pragmatic architect – consultants and engineers usually much more pragmatic as they don't play the same zero-sum game as architects are forced into.
• Footprint » You should have been at the RIBA tonight… – Intriguing – anyone know anything more on Bill's views?: "Dunster also made a strong plea on behalf of the Code for Sustainable Homes, calling it ‘an enlightened piece of legislation in danger of being dumbed down by the UK-GBC and the ZeroCarbonHub.’"
• News : NDS – From Mandelson's Hinto Engineering Lecture: "Snow didn’t use the term, but he was angling at the idea that Britain was becoming a scientific knowledge economy. This is certainly the case now. We need to understand more clearly than ever the way in which our pure science and applied science underwrite our prosperity, not least so we can strengthen their contribution to economic growth.
  The wider costs of any failure to do this are very high, both for our own economy and society, but also globally. Snow was worried about how a scientifically illiterate society might fail to feed the expanding populations of the developing world. That concern is still very much with us, and to it our society would have to add the massive problem of decarbonsiation and the management of our environmental impact on the planet. "
• Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment » Blog Archive » Never Waste a Good Crisis – Another report added to my 'must read and comment pile': "Government, as a client, needs to understand the enlightened thinking that better and more intelligent designs improve patients’ recovery in hospitals and learning outputs in schools. So, rather than reduce the number of schools and hospitals being built, it must sponsor smarter and more productive solutions and reduce the amount of money wasted on the procurement process. For Government as a policy maker, the challenge is to create an environment that incentivises innovation and speeds up the modernisation process."
• Thoughts on Copenhagen: Nicholas Stern | News | Architects Journal – Good series of interviews from Hattie in the AJ, on COP15, including this one from Nick Stern: "Energy consumed in the construction and operation of buildings is responsible for more than one third of total energy use. According to the fourth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in 2007, the building sector has great potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
  It concluded that the energy consumption of new and existing buildings can be cut between 30 and 50 per cent without significantly increased costs.
  Architects, together with other built environment professionals, have the strategic and technical skills to deliver buildings that both lead to lower emissions and withstand those impacts of climate change that are now inevitable. With existing technologies, these buildings are now affordable. New technologies are constantly being created. What is required is the vision, leadership and commitment to make a low-carbon future reality."
• Thoughts on Copenhagen: Pooran Desai | News | Architects Journal – The run up to COP15 has started, with this snippet the most interesting thing I found in AJ's recent piece, from Pooran Desai: "To achieve effective change, we need elegant solutions and a sensible systems-based approach to zero carbon; for example, recognising electricity as a pooled resource and not unnecessarily converting buildings into power stations. Land use is as critical as carbon emissions."

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The UKGBC released a report called “Biodiversity and the built environment” on 31 March 2009. The portal was a couple of days late but was available when I checked on 3 April. I would recommend reading the full report (a quick read at 38 pages, mostly appendices). Below, I pull out the pertinent information regarding BREEAM and LEED.

Biodiversity and ecology are the areas I am least qualified to talk about under sustainable buildings, so it’s good to see some more guidance.

The report focuses on new build, rather than existing sites, but most of the advice seems suitable for both scenarios. There is a useful section on page 14 which covers UK Biodiversity Action Plans – the portal has much more information on this:

The UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) has established the framework and criteria for identifying priority species and habitat types for conservation. National priorities and targets are set and action is to be taken at a local level. Today there are over 160 Local Biodiversity Action Plans (LBAPs) in England, Scotland and Wales and LBAPs are currently being set up in Northern Ireland.

The BAP system classifies priority habitats into broader habitat groupings. The most relevant broad category for the construction industry is ‘Towns, Cities and Development’. However, within this category there is currently only one priority habitat, which is ‘Open Mosaic Habitats on Previously Developed Land’ applicable to some brownfield land.

The task group recommends that further additions should be made to the broad ‘Towns, Cities and Development’ category, in order to ensure that features of the built environment are recognised as important in their own right.

The group recommends that features of the built environment that provide vital habitat to species and plants should be recognised for their importance such as living roofs and walls and other biodiversity features. This would recognise industry efforts to provide for building-reliant species in new structures where traditional roosting or nesting places would no longer be present due to the need to employ techniques to reduce carbon emissions from housing, such as swift nesting and bat roosting features incorporated into new housing projects.

Part of the report reviews existing tools, including BREEAM and LEED and assesses the quality of the biodiversity credits within each. From page 11:

Each of these tools incentivises the consideration of biodiversity in new construction, and tools are therefore a significant driver for changing industry practice.

…

In summary, the task group found:

• There is no common approach to assessment of biodiversity across the principal sustainability tools.
• Sustainability tools could be improved to assess biodiversity in a more meaningful way, which better assesses the value of habitats that are gained and lost.
• Improvements could be made to the tools which focus users on making a genuine contribution to local ecological value, rather than unintentionally encouraging a ‘tickbox’ approach.
• Sustainability tools do not encourage the industry to appropriately monitor and therefore meaningfully maintain and manage habitats created through development.

The results of the review of BREEAM and LEED is below:

A comment in Appendix 5 covers some concerns regarding the need for a professional ecologist:

During initial consultations both parties raised strong concerns over the task group’s suggestion that a professional ecologist should be appointed to the project team as a pre-requisite to achieving credit for biodiversity. The inclusion of an ecologist could potentially increase costs and not be a viable option for smaller projects.

Anyone looking at the list of letters after my name can work out I am a fan of professional qualifications. Whilst a small job may be able to ‘get away’ without an ecologist, I would agree that suitably qualified and experienced ecologists should be used on most BREEAM projects. And as I say above, it is the area I am least qualified to do myself.

It is possible to roughly map the land use and ecology credits in BREEAM to LEED in order to compare the two. This covers more than just diodiversity and ecology, with land use intrinsically linked:

The other credit in LEED which indirectly affects biodiversity is SS7.2 Heat Island Effect – Roof which has no BREEAM equivalent. This credit could encourage the use of green roofs, which will have an effect on biodiversity.

As the UKGBC note, LEED does not promote habitat and wildlife as well as BREEAM. I’m not sure why this might be, but I do expect the two schemes to continue to converge in the next few years. Perhaps LEED 3.0 will address this shortcoming.

There are plenty of opportunities to improve biodiversity in new build projects – the portal looks a great resource for finding out how. It also looks as if other topics will be added in the future.

edit: I was clearing out some old drafts when I came across this nugget of information which has relevance to the above: “From 1st October 2006, all public sector bodies, from the police to the BBC, will have to consider biodiversity in the work they do. The new duty comes under Section 40 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act.”

For further details, search on the portal.

admin Accreditation biodiversity, BREEAM, guidance, LEED, UKGBC

What I’ve been reading about:

• Design Builder – (Relatively) new kids on the DSM software block, 30 day free trial, uses the DOE Energy Plus engine. Anyone got any experience – good or bad?
• Task force gives housing the green light – "This is not about dumbing down or abandoning the concept of zero carbon. This is about ensuring the same high level of carbon savings, but allowing developers more flexibility" Paul King
• Definition of Zero Carbon Report – UKGBC pdf report (41 pp.) on more flexible definition of zero carbon. More on this when I get a chance to read it and others reactions…
• Feedity – Looks like Feedity has a revamp – turn any page into an RSS feed. Now have to go through the ones I did on on the old version and update. So not backwards compatible – bah!
• Smart opportunity missed – Smart metering threshold raised from 73,200 kWh per annum to 732,000 kWh reducing the number of potential businesses covered from 400,000 to 40,000.

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