Myth 1: Sustainability is all about new ‘zero carbon’ buildings
We can take it as given that new commercial and public buildings should incorporate green design and installation. Eliminating carbon demand in new buildings offers considerable rewards to those who can offer a whole building approach to the problem. Cal Bailey of NG Bailey has said that, with early involvement, the modern M&E contractor can effectively be the ‘second architect’, advising clients how to get the very best energy performance from their premises. But there is never enough new building going on for this to be the route to huge carbon savings – only around one per cent of the UK building stock is being built at any one time. So, we must put the spotlight on existing buildings. M&E contractors often refer to the widely regarded
Many energy- efficiency measures, such as modern controls and heating and lighting systems, deliver carbon savings with impressively short payback times
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ECA Today Summer 2010
‘hierarchy’ that highlights the cost effectiveness of reducing energy losses. Design comes first, followed by low to medium cost and ‘ready to use’ measures such as lighting, monitoring and control. Renewables come last in the hierarchy, even with feed-in tariffs. For most existing buildings, there is far less scope for design changes, which moves us on to energy-efficiency measures. Many energy-efficiency measures, such as modern
controls and heating and lighting systems, deliver carbon savings with impressively short payback times – even more so when big commercial users factor in the cost
To reduce a building’s carbon footprint, it is important that a simple energy hierarchy is used
Reduce the need for energy in the building’s design
Use energy more efficiently in the building
Supply energy from renewable sources
1. 2. 3.
The Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC)
Expect much more commercial interest in carbon reduction as the highly innovative Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), ‘feed-in’ tariffs and other measures come into play. The CRC covers around 5,000 organisations, which together generate more than 10 per cent of UK carbon emissions. These include industrial sites, offices, banks, supermarkets, major retailers, the NHS, universities, local authorities and government premises. These very big energy users (at least 6,000 megawatt hours of electricity p.a.) now have to join a ‘carbon allowance’ scheme, while thousands of other organisations must monitor and report their energy use to the Environment Agency. The first sales of carbon allowances are in April 2011 (at £12 per tonne of carbon dioxide).
Examples of the cost of carbon allowances
CRC Footprint (tCO2
): Approximate energy bill:
5,000
Annual CRC allowance cost: £60k
50,000 100,000
~ £750k ~ £7.5m ~ £15m £600k
£1.2m
The price on carbon is vitally important, because virtually any carbon reduction measure that offers a ‘marginal cost of abatement’ of less than £12/tonne will move the boardroom discussion from ‘nice to have’ to ‘how quickly can we get on with it?’ Technologies such as metering and monitoring, intelligent controls systems, sensors and heating and lighting systems are set to deliver stunningly short paybacks when carbon trading is factored in. On top of this, many building operators can take advantage of useful technical fixes such as power factor correction or voltage reduction. This rapidly moves the client’s question to ‘how do we do all this properly?’
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