News

News in brief

Guidelines on renewables

New guidelines have been published by the UK government to help regional authorities in England assess the potential for renewable and low carbon energy in their area. It is hoped that the guidelines will enable the regions to set themselves ambitious renewable targets to help the UK meet its overall target of using 15 per cent renewable energy by 2020.

www.communities.gov.uk

Fire review commissioned

The UK government has commissioned research into the spread of fire in apartment buildings, following recent cases where blazes have spread through roof voids. The research will include a review of current building practices and the detail of ‘compartmentation’ presently being used by the building industry.

Excellence rewarded

This year’s winners of the BREEAM Awards 2010 have now been announced. In order to win an award, each building must have excelled in every environmental category within BREEAM (for example, from energy to ecology). To see the full list of winners, visit

www.breeam.org

Flexible cities

Funding totalling £250,000 has been announced to research ‘the flexible city’ by the University of Oxford. Six projects have been selected to benefit from the study, which aims to deliver scientifically robust, cutting-edge research into the social, technological and climatic changes cities will face over the next 50 years, and how cities can be made more flexible to meet these challenges.

Energy Institute merges

The British Energy Association has merged into the Energy Institute (EI) and changed its identity to become the UKWEC – the UK member committee of the World Energy Council. UKWEC will offer members access to seminars, research activities and networking events. The EI retains its branding.

www.worldenergy.org/uk

14

CIBSE Journal April 2010

Morrell questions demand for early 50% carbon cut

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The UK government’s new chief adviser on construction

has raised doubts over a call to cut carbon emissions by 50 per cent in just 10 years’ time. The target is contained in a new ‘manifesto’ from the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC). The manifesto, launched at the annual Ecobuild conference in London last month, identifies five steps that the UKGBC believes are essential to meet the UK government’s 2020 and 2050 carbon targets. Those steps include committing

to a 50 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 – 16 per cent higher than current government policy stipulates under the Climate Change Act. Paul Morrell, who recently took

up the newly created post of chief construction adviser to government, said he welcomed the manifesto. But he added: ‘My only reservation is a target that may actually defeat the purpose of the exercise. I love the idea of cutting 50 per cent carbon emissions by 2020,

Paul Morrell at Ecobuild... Question marks over UKGBC manifesto.

and if it were that good and that simple we should say yes to it. ‘But the thing that worries me

is twofold; firstly that this is a massively complicated landscape, and some people are just beginning to get it and then you move the goalposts. ‘Secondly, we are not going to

get into people’s houses twice. The price of quick wins here may be that we don’t get the more important, bigger, longer win because we won’t get back into people’s houses.’ Other points in the manifesto

include creating a national accreditation scheme to ensure tradesmen have the right skills, and using sustainable community infrastructure, such as heating and water harvesting, more widely. Morrell added that he wholeheartedly agreed with making better use of sustainable community infrastructure, describing it as a ‘mistake’ for government to support on-site renewables as a non-cost effective way of addressing the issue.

See Ecobuild coverage, page 26

Roadmap call for British homes refurb

The UK government needs to set out a roadmap for upgrading Britain’s homes if it is to have a chance of reaching its targets, according to an independent advisory body. Ministers have said that they

want 7m homes to have makeovers by 2020, to increase their energy efficiency. The Energy Saving Trust said this would require as many as 13,400 home makeovers every

New build set for BREEAM Excellent

De Montfort University’s Hugh Aston building in Leicester, UK, is set to achieve a BREEAM Excellent rating, according to engineers working on the £35m project. Natural and hybrid ventilation techniques are being used, and sustainable features include ground source heat pumps, adiabatic cooling to air handling units, solar hot water arrays and daylight-linked lighting. The engineering works were carried out by Pick Everard.

week up to 2020. The trust said whole-house refurbishment would likely include upgrading the basic insulation of a home and then adding other measures such as water efficiency, advanced insulation or micro-generation. Philip Sellwood, chief executive of

the trust, said: ‘We need a roadmap towards a low carbon existing housing stock – laying out a set of

standards that we expect our homes to reach in 2015, 2020, 2030 and 2050.’ The trust said the scale of the challenge is huge, with an estimated 6m homes still needing cavity wall insulation – nearly a quarter of all UK homes. There is still an estimated 13m properties that need loft insulation.

www.energysavingtrust.org.uk

www.cibsejournal.com

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