News

News in Brief Industry ‘must embrace’

BREEAM Data Centres

A new BREEAM scheme for data centres has been launched by BRE. Data centres – facilities used to house computer systems and associated components – are very different to most other buildings and are generally unoccupied. The BREEAM 2010 Data Centres scheme has three categories to accommodate these variations.

www.breeam.org/datacentres

BASEC suspends firm’s cable licence in Turkey

The British Approvals Service for Cables, BASEC, has suspended the product certification licence of Atlas Kablo Sanayi Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, of Denezli, Turkey, due to an unexpected sudden decline in product quality across their range of cables. The manufacturer is now fully co- operating with BASEC. Additional audits and products testing will now begin.

USGBC LEED launch

The US Green Building Council (US GBC) and co have launched the LEED Neighborhood Development rating system. According to the US GBC, this will integrate the principles of smart growth, new urbanism and green building. www.usgbc.org

BSF win for AECOM

AECOM’s programme management team has won three contracts to provide technical advisory services on the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) framework. The team will now become the technical advisor on the Enfield, Darlington and Havering BSF projects. Work is expected to begin on all three schemes in the next few months.

Pushing standards

The Electrical Contractors’ Association and the National Federation of Property Professionals have signed a formal ‘Partners in Building Services Excellence’ agreement to help the groups influence policy makers and drive industry standards. By becoming partners, both parties are committing to develop and promote excellence in building services engineering.

8

CIBSE Journal June 2010

embodied carbon issue

n

The building services industry needs to embrace

embodied carbon as a tool for measuring the performance of buildings – but the concept is not yet workable. That is the view of Sean Lockie,

director of sustainability at Atkins, in response to the publication of the latest RICS Research report,

Redefining Zero: Carbon Profiling as a Solution to Whole Life Carbon Emission Measurement in Buildings.

At present, UK legislation only

calls for the partial inclusion of the sources of CO2 generated by buildings’ specific operational carbon use – the amounts of carbon used to build and maintain the building are ignored. The RICS paper argues that there

is no common way of measuring embodied carbon – something that is essential for the industry – and goes on to propose the industry uses carbon profiling to measure all emissions associated with buildings. Lockie explained: ‘Mitigating embodied carbon is often put in the “too hard” basket – it is not, for example, included in any of the major policy triggers, such as Energy Performance Certificates, Display Energy Certificates, the Building Regulations (Part L) or the definition of zero carbon buildings. ‘The BREEAM system, which

awards points for environmental compliance, gives embodied carbon mitigation very low numbers of points so it’s a low priority for

Sean Lockie... industry needs a workable methodology for embodied carbon.

most users. There are good reasons for this, which include a focus on reducing the operational energy (such as building fabric measures, lighting, heating, air-conditioning avoidance) because these aspects are easier to measure and gains and costs easier to apportion.’ But Lockie said the RICS

report, along with advice from

other bodies, could lead to big changes within the industry – if not immediately. He said:‘This report goes some

way towards making the case for embodied carbon, but there is still some way to go before we get a workable methodology and a tool that the industry can use.’

www.rics.org

Extreme design

The second construction season of the new scientific research station in Antarctica, Halley VI, is complete. The design of the first re-locatable and modular facility includes high-efficiency combined heat and power generators fuelled with AVTUR diesel, and exceptional levels of insulation. It will use 26 per cent less fuel per square metre than Halley V. The facility was designed by AECOM and Hugh Broughton Architects for the British Antarctic Survey.

www.cibsejournal.com Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64