Major occupiers of flagship headquarters commercial buildings may now wish these buildings to reflect their corporate engagement with sustainability principles.
A 40,000 sq m office block at 15 Canada Square in London Docklands built by Canary Wharf Group in 2009-2010 not only won a BREEAM ‘excellent’ rating for design and procurement, post-construction review, and management and operation, but was awarded a Green Apple Award for ‘innovation in construction’, and achieved a B Energy Performance Asset Rating.
At the outset the end occupier, KPMG, challenged the design team to exceed legal requirements for cutting carbon emissions by over 50%. Kohn Pederson Fox and Adamsons architects designed the exterior of the building and Swanke Hayden Connell architects designed the interior. The end result was a building with features including a CHP engine linked to an absorbtion chiller, active chilled beams to improve energy efficiency and environmental conditions, a ventilated façade, and which involved some 24 per cent of the building materials used having recycled content. (18)
A new development’s green credentials should also illustrate how embodied carbon, which is the carbon generated by the construction process itself, is being addressed. The greater the element of the construction processes which can be prefabricated off-site and assembled on-site, the lower a project’s true carbon costs are likely to be. Off-site prefabrication can also mean less materials waste, with engineered timber joists for example avoiding timber off- cut losses (19),as well as result in overall development costs savings being made as the critical path timelines of projects are less likely to be delayed and disrupted by risks such as poor weather during the construction period.
So How Affordable Are These Technologies?
No matter what renewable technologies or combination of technologies are decided on for particular development projects, to a greater or lesser extent they will all represent an additional development cost, so might usefully be assessed as part of a wider range of factors, such as occupiers or buyers demand and confidence (or lack of it) in the prospects of the national economy, in the making of judgements over the wisdom or folly of pushing forward with property development schemes.
There may be incentives to help mitigate some of these additional costs, with the most significant of late being a Feed-In Tariffs (FITs) scheme introduced in April 2010 to make possible the sale of unused energy back to the grid. This incentive appears likely to only benefit small scale investments in renewable technologies in future though, as Chris Huhne announced this March that FITs for large scale solar farms are to be cut, as the purpose of FITs is primarily to encourage small businesses, communities and homeowners to invest in renewables such as solar panels and micro wind turbines, rather than support large scale investors in the renewables industry.
A new incentive, the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme, was introduced this year with the scheme involving making year on year payments for fixed time periods to those installing renewable technologies, with the first tranche of payments
THE TERRIER - Autumn 2011
having commenced in May 2011. (20) The RHI is expected to benefit homes and offices heated by biomass, solar thermal, heat pumps and waste-to-energy technologies. A property owner installing a ground source heat pump to source a semi- detached house for example, could receive about £1,000 annually from the RHI scheme. (21)
Whether incentivised or not, new developments now have to comply with tougher standards to reduce carbon emissions than ever before. Under a Code for Sustainable Homes, which covers performance in energy and CO2 emissions, water, surface water run-off, materials, waste, pollution, health and well-being, management and ecology, all housebuilders will be required to meet Level 6 of the Code and deliver zero- carbon homes by 2016. At present, public sector homes are required to meet Level 4 of the Code. Private sector homes are required to meet Level 3, but will be required to meet Level 4 of the Code by 2013. (22)
A combination of renewables to meet Level 4, e.g. insulation to current standards, with say an air source heat pump and solar hot water system, can reduce CO2 emissions by 44 per cent to comply with this Code level. (23) Manufacturers of new innovative products such as aircrete advise that their products can enable Code 4 to be met without using other renewable energy technologies.
Commercial property developers may prove able to absorb the costs of renewable technologies through increases in the commencing rents charged to tenants, with agreement of these higher rent levels being easiest to achieve where
A niche management consultancy helping clients to improve asset and property performance.
Our services lead to corporate asset management with:
• Lean, fi t and performance managed property • Property that supports corporate objectives and sustainable communities
• Fit and skilled strategic client and property management teams
• Effective sourcing solutions - in short, an asset base rather than a liability base.
Keith Jones 020 8947 7606
keith.jones@
performentcarter.com
Elisabeth Carter 01664 434688
lis.carter@
performentcarter.com
19
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