Opinion
Not yet fit for purpose
Despite national and international targets to cut CO2, new buildings simply result in a net increase in emissions. But there is an answer, says architect Craig White
A
s an industry, we’re very good at outputs – building on time, on budget and defect free. We take photographs, hand the building over to our clients and cross
our fingers that nothing goes wrong in the first 12 months. But carbon changes everything. Forty-five per cent of UK CO2 emissions come from operating buildings, and to meet Kyoto targets every new building would have to be carbon negative, not just low or zero carbon. Sadly, new buildings simply result in a net increase in emissions. And, I don’t mind admitting that architects
tend to over-promise and under-deliver on CO2 performance. On paper, low carbon buildings are not rocket science, we simply need to be Mean, Lean and Clean. Mean – design without any energy through passive design. Lean – minimise the use of active, energy-using systems. Then, and only then, go Clean – meeting residual demand using renewables. Instead, of course, out comes the eco-bling, such as wind turbines that sit sulking on top of buildings. There is still a way to go before building-integrated renewables really deliver. Then there are energy performance certificates (EPCs) and display energy certificates (DECs), eco- labels for buildings. We predict a B through the EPC, but the client discovers through the DEC that their building is D or E rated operationally. When challenged, we retreat from the issue saying: ‘It’s not our fault, the EPC only looks at regulated CO2, didn’t you know that?’ I don’t think clients will accept this as an excuse for much longer. And the gap between B and E is ripe for litigation. When it comes to low carbon heating the technology
and know-how is there, but low carbon power is still a pipe-dream, because people determine its control. Put simply, if you expect people to switch things off, they don’t. Occupants can more than double energy use; they can occasionally help to halve it – but mostly they double it. So now we need to understand behaviours and how they might be changed, which is more commonly the domain of psychologists rather than designers. There’s also the question of whether
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CIBSE Journal April 2010
clients should be willing and able to engage with buildings to help reduce emissions, especially if we haven’t designed them to make it easy. We also need to do a reality check and look at
the carbon footprint of our buildings as a whole. For example, 23 per cent of emissions from a UK domestic household are accounted for by food not operational energy (12 per cent). And what about embodied carbon? There’s a bigger picture to carbon. Is there a silver bullet? I think there is: we’ve got
to allow people to not want to switch things on in the first place. If they are switched on, we have to allow them to switch them off. Easier said than done. To help us, we have appointed a behavioural psychologist and we are now ‘carbon profiling’ building-user behaviour. A low carbon building that’s genuinely fit for purpose is not just the sum of its design and engineering parts. We need to understand how we can help people choose the low carbon option and then identify the design and technology solutions that support this. Not the other way round. Blaming our clients’ behaviour for a D rating is not good for business. Helping them achieve the A, is. It’s all about learning how to generate wealth in the new low carbon economy. To this end, we now offer our clients CO2 performance-linked fees. Some think we’re mad.
Architects, engineers and clients need to see that
a building’s CO2 emissions will not be reduced by design and technology alone. Instead, we are going to have a life-long relationship with our buildings, their users and CO2. Anything less will not be fit for
purpose. l
Craig White is co-founder of the architectural practice White Design. www.white-design.co.uk
I don’t mind admitting that
architects tend to over- promise and under-deliver on performance when it comes to CO2 emissions
www.cibsejournal.com
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