Portfolio Environment Housing
Making housing sustainable
George Thomson Environment Correspondent
Experts are calling for greater urgency in the transition to low carbon home building In the coming decade, Scotland faces a dual
problem. Tere is an urgent need to both accelerate the transition to low carbon housing and to revive the country’s housing stock, developing tens of thousands of affordable homes. Te double challenge should provide a significant opportunity to tackle both problems simultaneously, but there are growing fears the Scottish house-building industry lacks the capability or inclination to deliver large numbers of what are still largely considered unconventional homes. Tied as they are to inflexible planning cycles and weighty bureaucracy, it can be difficult for governments to keep pace with a sector where
new technology produces an almost constant churn of renewal and technical expertise. Harnessing the latest thinking inevitably comes at a premium, and with minimising costs of paramount importance, government-led developments are often behind the technological curve. Economic rigidity hampers the private sector too. “Private house builders, because they don’t own the houses and the idea is immediately sell to somebody else, pass the buck if you like…are not worried about the long- term impact they’re going to have,” says Gokay Deveci, Professor at the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment at Robert Gordon University. Te Scottish Government is set to publish its
Strategy for Sustainable Housing in Scotland document next year. Te aim of the plan is to integrate policies on climate change, energy efficiency, fuel poverty, planning and the built environment into a cohesive framework. Critics say there is much to address. In 2009, a study by researchers from Glasgow School of Art and the Tenants First Housing Co-Operative identified three challenges the Scottish homebuilding industry faced in producing affordable low or zero-carbon homes. First, “an absence of clear definition (or value standards) of housing affordability and zero carbon homes”; second, “a relative unfamiliarity with passive energy and
environmental design techniques and innovative building materials and systems”; third, a “lack of technical knowledge transfer training activities which often generates extra time and money in the building process”. Te report noted a key failing of the current mechanism to define affordable housing is that it fails to take into account future fuel costs. It blamed an obsession with the up-front costs of construction too often ignores the future costs accrued as a result of poor energy efficiency. Te report further argued that as the people allocated affordable housing are often among society’s most disadvantaged, it is a dangerously blinkered view. For those pioneering new methods of building energy-efficient homes, such as the Scottish Passive House Centre (SPHC), the reluctance of the private sector remains a frustration. Passivhaus (passive house) is a standard of building that uses innovations such as rigorous air-tightness, superinsulation and triple glazing to remove the need for traditional heating or cooling systems. Te standard can achieve a 90 per cent reduction in energy bills in comparison to a conventional house. “Te construction side of things is incredibly similar to building a conventional house,” says Steff Bell, a designer at the centre. Developers, though, are reluctant to build; according to Bell, a passive house costs
Supporting the transition to a Low Carbon Economy
SETN was founded in 2006 to support the development of the environmental and clean technology (ECT) sector in Scotland.
Ideally situated in the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, SETN have laboratories where trials and testing can be carried out. Meeting facilities are FREE and available to members. SETN connects industry to resources and expertise across all Scottish Universities and research institutes.
FREE membership for Scottish businesses.
www.setn.org.uk 64
www.holyrood.com 19 September 2011
info@setn.org.uk
• Access to technical expertise • Laboratory facilities for trials/testing • Market intelligence
• Seed funding from the SETN Innovation Grant
• Support securing funds for R&D • Internship programme for businesses • Support in growing businesses • Help reaching international markets • Networking and events
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