PROJECT FOCUS GREEN RETROFITTING
GREEN
If you think that green retrofitting is a nice idea rather than a pressing concern, prepare for some sobering statistics. “Under the Climate Change Act, the UK must reduce its carbon emissions by 80% by the year 2050,” says Mike Sheehan, WSP’s director of sustainability in the UK.
“We estimate that 44% of those emissions come from the built environment and that 85% of the buildings that will be around in the year 2050 are already in existence now. We can do all sorts of clever things with new buildings to make them increasingly carbon efficient, but actually we have to look at the old buildings. That’s a huge challenge to the market.”
The picture in the UK is mirrored across Europe and around the world. No longer can the noise about new exemplar projects drown out the growing clamour for solutions for retrofitting older buildings. Sheehan estimates that the market for retrofitting residential properties is worth £200bn in the UK alone, as fuel prices drive demand for better performing homes. But there is an arguably even greater financial pressure on commercial buildings, as property rationalisation programmes throughout the public and private sectors and modern ways of
08 SOLUTIONS
RETRO FITTING
working lead organisations to dispose of poorly performing office space and shrink their operations into more efficient footprints. “There is more and more commercial property available on the market, and it's clearly going to be the best stock that gets taken up. That's a big driver to retrofit existing buildings to make them more competitive in the marketplace.” Estimates for this market are as high as £10bn per year.
Green retrofitting is a much greater challenge than building sustainably from scratch. And the sheer variety of the existing stock means that as this potentially huge new market develops, each building must be approached individually. WSP’s engineers are already building up a wealth of experience, skills and data on a range of retrofitting projects around the world, from some of London's most valuable commercial space to system-built housing in Sweden, and the UK’s town halls to libraries in Romania and 11th-century churches in Scandinavia. Here are a few of their stories so far.
mike.sheehan@
wspgroup.com
Improving the energy performance of existing buildings is one of the greatest challenges of our age. Here are just some of the ways that WSP is responding.
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