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INDUSTRY VIEWFINDER: WORKING TOWARDS ZERO CARBON
These Sustainable Outcomes are as follows: • Good Health and Wellbeing • Sustainable Water Cycle • Net Zero Operational Carbon Emissions • Sustainable Life Cycle Cost • Sustainable Connectivity and Transport • Net Zero Embodied Carbon Emissions • Whole Life Carbon Emissions • Sustainable Land use and ecology
The guidance framework is built around three key metrics: operational energy, embodied carbon and (potable) water use, and the Climate Challenge guidance presents targets across these comparing ‘business as usual’ with 2025 targets, and 2030 targets. It also produced ‘Best Practice Health Metrics’ to be applied to all buildings.
“Is carbon offsetting a necessity for clients given the timeframe to 2050?”
Many commentators have said how expensive and challenging achieving zero carbon across the board would be, but added that the cost of inaction would be higher, long term. The chief executive of the UK Green Building Council (who remains so until 2023 following an influential tenure), Julie Hirigoyen commented that the UK had to “accelerate action in all areas including improving the efficiency of our ageing building stock, and overcoming the challenge of decarbonising heat.” Of our 120 respondents, only 20% said they were actually working on a zero carbon project. A third were currently tackling the 31% reduction in emissions required within the updated Part L, as part of the 2022 interim Future Homes Standard provisions (which becomes enforceable from June 2023). However, 65% said they were not working to the new Part L for projects.
Assessing the challenge
In 2019 RIBA signed up to the UN Global Compact, as part of the COP21 outcomes. RIBA’s 2030 Climate Challenge, developed in consultation with other UK construction bodies, is a series of targets which provides a “stepped approach towards reaching net zero.” It’s based on voluntary performance targets for reducing operational energy, embodied carbon and potable water in designs. RIBA believes the targets provide a “challenging but achievable trajectory to realise the significant reductions necessary,” thereby supporting a “realistic prospect of achieving net zero carbon for the whole UK building stock by 2050.” While the organisation isn’t enforcing compliance, there is an expectation that RIBA Chartered practices will consider adopting the aims. The Version 2 of the Challenge emerged in 2021, editing down the 17 wide-ranging goals within the UN Global Compact to a set of nine “core goals which all buildings contribute to,” according to the RIBA’s head of technical practice, Alex Tait.
A reasonable proportion of respondents (69%) were aware of the RIBA’s Climate Challenge, this however showed that the organisation still has a job to do in communicating the initiative. Despite this, 74% of respondents believed that the RIBA targets were an essential step towards the industry’s hitting net zero 2050.
EXPERT VIEW
Louisa Bowles, partner and sustainability lead, Hawkins\Brown, comments on the practice’s approach to the RIBA’s Climate Challenge: “We set targets for each project based on the RIBA metrics. These are stepping stones to eliminating carbon emissions to zero by 2050, so are an important step in getting clients and design teams to start changing behaviours and design practices.”
Respondents saw the global economic situation’ as being the factor most likely to impact the sector’s ongoing efforts to implement zero carbon by the deadlines. Other factors cited were ‘industry supply problems’ (41%), skills shortages (39%), and war in Ukraine (36%). UK inflation was singled out as a key factor by 37%, but resistance to change within the construction sector was not far behind, chosen by 30% of survey respondents. Brexit was only picked by 20% as a key factor in itself. We asked architects whether they believed there would be compromises on aesthetics, and a reassuring two-thirds believed that there wouldn’t, however 27% did believe there would be an impact of some sort on aesthetic aims. Achieving a low ‘Heat Loss Form Factor’ (the ratio of the total ‘heat loss area’ to the habitable floor area) for optimum energy efficiency is increasingly the aim for many low energy designers, particularly in Passivhaus projects. This can mean the overall building form is dictated more by practical outcomes than aesthetic conventions.
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ADF NOVEMBER 2022
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