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For housing, the allowable solutions have to voltaics would be reduced from 70-80 years new and existing buildings, including: town
cover all the remaining emissions from the site, down to 15 years. This is still a long payback, centre district heating systems, waste gasifica-
including those not covered by the Building but is much more palatable. This will mainly be tion and energy infrastructure and micro-gener-
Regulations (unregulated emissions). These of interest to owner-occupiers as it is unlikely to ation installations.
emissions are related to appliances and other translate into much of an increase in property It will be interesting to see what happens as
equipment installed by the occupants of the value for speculative developments. projects start competing for the same off-site
building. In fact, one of the allowable solutions Current planning policies also often promote solutions, particularly in an area where a lot of
for housing refers to the installation of energy on-site renewables. The proposals for the zero new development is happening. Presumably,
efficient appliances as a way to reduce carbon carbon definition will be implemented through there would come a point in time where there
emissions. It is not yet clear whether unregulat- Building Regulations, but zero carbon starts to would be no cost-effective local off-site
ed emissions will also be included in the defini- cross over into planning when it comes to solutions left in an area, which would
tion of zero carbon for non-domestic buildings, importing heat (carbon compliance) or export- mean developers being forced to revert back to
or whether it will be sufficient just to address all ing heat and power (allowable solutions). This is on-site solutions.
of the regulated emissions. For some non- mainly because Building Regulations really Ultimately, decisions on achieving the
domestic buildings, the unregulated loads can only applies to individual buildings whereas different levels proposed in the zero carbon
effectively double the energy use of the building planning can deal with decentralised energy consultation are going to be based on cost-effec-
and they can’t be controlled by the designers. It generation at the community scale. tiveness, which will require more work on cost-
is difficult to see how allowable solution could The new Planning Policy Statement (PPS1) ing out energy efficiency measures and
be applied to speculative buildings. supplement on planning and Climate Change is low/zero carbon technologies on projects to
There are other reasons why on-site renew- starting to provide a more logical approach to determine the most cost-effective routes to
ables may be preferable to jumping straight to community energy generation by requiring all achieving the targets.
an off-site allowable solution – current planning local authorities to identify suitable locations The Government is proposing to consult
policy and the newly proposed tariffs for gener- and opportunities for decentralised energy gen- further on aspects the definition of non-domes-
ating heating and power both provide potential eration based on an evidence base. This requires tic zero carbon buildings that are not yet fixed
incentives for on-site generation. an in-depth understanding of the potential for later this year.
The Feed-In Tariff for electricity and the energy technologies and carbon reductions for
Renewable Heat Incentive were proposed by both new and existing buildings in the area. David Cheshire is a regional director in
the Government in the Low Carbon Transition This co-ordinated approach should mean that AECOM’s Sustainable Development Group.
Plan and they are intended to provide money sites with potential to generate energy on-site AECOM is working on various zero carbon
for electricity and heat generated on site. The will be expected to install more renewables on- projects including Target Zero (targetzero.info),
Feed-In Tariff will considerably reduce the pay- site and constrained sites will be able to use the a project sponsored by the BCSA and Corus,
backs on renewable technologies such as photo- evidence base to identify opportunities to and the recently completed zero carbon Defra
voltaics, wind turbines and electricity generated connect to local energy infrastructure. headquarters building in Alnwick which
by biomass or anaerobic digestion. A rough cal- Local authorities will need to co-ordinate and achieved the UK’s first A+ Energy
culation shows that the paybacks on photo- enable the delivery of energy projects that link Performance Certificate rating
Sustainable Business ❘ October 2009 17
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