080 SUSTAINABILITY
in the EU) will commit to hydrogen, which still entails the use of gas to produce the hydrogen. It can be extremely useful to us in the transition towards an ultra-low carbon economy, but hydrogen comes from three sources: using gas to produce it as happens today; using gas to produce hydrogen but capturing the emissions from burning that gas using carbon capture and storage (called blue hydrogen); and green hydrogen, which uses renewable electricity and electrolysis.
We can’t be doing with blue hydrogen. It’s just a scam being advanced by the fossil fuel industry. If we are going to get the real benefit that we need, it has to be green hydrogen. It makes the whole discussion around hydrogen very difficult, because the idea that every household in the UK can replace existing gas boilers with hydrogen-powered ones and solve the carbon problem is frankly insane. It really reminds us of the need to be very careful indeed about where our information comes from. If architects are thinking that the problem will be solved in homes of the future by switching to such boilers then they’re not really focusing on what the carbon challenge really looks like.
Electric vehicles seem the way forward for cutting emissions globally. Is there any sign that the pace of change will make a difference quickly enough. And will the infrastructure will become ‘joined up’ any time soon? It’s not happening quickly enough but it is definitely happening. It’s only fair to acknowledge that decision government decision making here has played a really important role. When the government decided to ban the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030, that sent out the clearest possible signal to the car manufacturers that this was the moment that they would have to accept the death of the internal combustion engine.
Petrol and diesel vehicles are essentially on death row. Te question is, how fast can we make that transition, and how do we do it with the best possible outcome? We could be moving much faster than we are, and we will see things gear up now that every major car manufacturer is geared towards an EV future. It’s definitely an improvement, and there will be significant gains to be made in terms of reduced emissions, but of course, every car entails an awful lot of materials and energy to manufacture and maintain, and this is all a highly carbon-intensive process. So when will we start to understand that the future of sustainable transport actually depends on fewer vehicles, not ‘more but cleaner’ vehicles? Tat’s the transformation that we really need. And that will involve our towns and cities using integrated transport systems – including car- sharing schemes – that are effective enough that in the future we will look back at the age of individual car ownership as some extraordinary aberration of the 20th century that lingered into the 21st century.
What is the UK government doing to address some of the key housing-related sustainability issues? Te Future Homes Task Force is the latest attempt by the government to work with the private sector to ensure that we have low or zero-carbon housing within this country within a definable period of time. Te key phrase to consider is ‘zero-carbon ready by 2025’, which does not appear to mean that it is actually zero-carbon by 2025. People may have already forgotten that it is this same government that in 2015 axed the code for sustainable homes and the zero- carbon built environment strategy that had informed government policy since 2003. Had they stuck with the code for sustainable homes for example, we would be building zero-carbon homes in the UK today.
We pay a very heavy price for this short-termist perspective. It’s a tragedy actually, because since that time,
we have built an awful lot of homes that will have to be retrofitted at some point in the future, at great cost to the homeowners and the environment. I call it policy vandalism, because there was no reason to axe the code – it had largely been bought into by many stakeholders including architects – and what we have had since then is six years of ill-informed procrastination from the government. No one gains from this apart from the volume housebuilding industry, which has seen profits increase significantly during that time.
Tis is a huge institutional problem, and it’s massively difficult for those who are trying to work intelligently over a period of time to offer consistent professional advice and services to clients to ensure we get the best possible outcome. Tey will come across clients who don’t quite grasp the seriousness of the climate emergency and the reason they are confused is that the government encourages them to delay, and to put off to tomorrow what we should be doing today.
At FX Talks in 2017, you told the audience ‘Perhaps it’s worth asking yourself: “What’s the balance here between sustainability credentials, and the cost and quality?”’ Where do you sense we have got to now with this kind of discussion?
We have made some progress in the four years since then. I recall that around that time, people were still scaremongering about the so-called sustainability premium – the additional costs associated with building low or zero- carbon buildings. Tere were all sorts of outrageous exaggerations about there being a 15–20% premium. In the intervening four years, we’ve got a much better handle on this now. We know that the additional capital expenditure associated with building to the highest low- carbon standard such as the Passivhaus standard. We know that the premium associated with that is between 3–6% depending on the scope and design of the building, but of course that premium is pretty quickly paid back by the massively reduced operating costs for those buildings in terms of reduced energy consumption, and the payback period looks pretty good now.
Te trade-off between the financials and the sustainability factor is narrowing. For those who want to set high leadership credentials for their practice and want to look to the market of the future and not just ensure success today, they need to get very good indeed at working with their clients on things like whole-life carbon calculations, life-cycle assessments and all of these kinds of detailed number-crunching analyses for prospective clients.
forumforthefuture.org
‘For those who want to set high leadership credentials for their practice and want to look to the market of the future and not just ensure success today, they need to get very good indeed at working with their clients on things like whole-life carbon calculations [and] life-cycle assessments’
Above The Beam in Sunderland offers grade-A ofice accommodation, with a design that promotes health and wellbeing
Supported by:
KIRSTEN MCCLUSKIE
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 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133
