APPG for EBE - Inquiry into Sustainable Construction and the Green Deal

Second Session - 22 April 2013

Evidence given by:

  • BuroHappold- Mark Dowson, Adam Poole
  • Chartered Institute of Building - Stephen Wielebski
  • Adapt Low Carbon Group – Dr John French, Dr Bruce Tofield

BuroHappold - Domestic UK Retrofit Challenge

Mark Dowson, Adam Poole

The speakers from BuroHappold started off with an overview of the problem:

  • UK must reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050 (against 1990 baseline)
  • Over a quarter of current emissions are attributed to the 26 million homes in the UK
  • Approximately 80% of the homes welive in today will still be in use by 2055
  • Back-log of thermally inefficient homes
  • Across the UK, this amounts to 10 million hard to treat homes,
  • 7.5million of which have solid walls and 8 million are not fully glazed. (useful graphs on the breakdown of types of houses)

The barriers to improving energy efficiency:

  • Up to 1.2 million homes are in conservation areas
  • Up to 300,000 homes are listed
  • Added cost, disruption, time, planning issues and technical expertise (e.g. moisture control) required to improve these properties
  • Industry does not have the capacity to retrofit all solid walled homes by 2050
  • ~180,000 installations/year required to retrofit all 6.6 million by 2050
  • EEPH estimate the industries maximum capacity is 15,000-20,000 installations/year
  • Capacity (and expertise) must increase 10 fold.

The barriers the Green Deal faces:

  • Lack of public engagement (studies by Affinity Sutton and B&Q show that it is difficult to get people to be interested in energy efficiency measures)
  • Size of Green Deal loan – which is limited by Golden Rule
  • Lack of incentives
  • Solid wallshave low pay back periods.

Presentation then consisted of talking about using War Games to model success of Green Deal.

This exercise concluded:

  • Complex agenda and a very challenging target
  • A lot of technical expertise is required
  • A greater appreciation for marketing and public engagement
  • Better understanding of investor incentives required
  • How the finance market will operate in a competitive situation
  • Energy companies are being invited to sell substantially less product
  • Doesn’t work with cost of money
  • How ECO funding gets spent looks to be poorly policed
  • Effort being put into increasing demand while leaving supply unaddressed
  • Suppliers have created a monopoly vehicle
  • Everyone went after the low-hanging fruit.

CIOB - Sustainable Construction and the Green Deal

Stephen Wielebski

Half of the housing stock in the UK is more than 50 years old and one fifth more than 100 years old. 80% of the UK building that will exist in 2050 has already been built, said Stephen Wielebski.

“It is crucial to close the gap between design intent and the ‘as built’ carbon emissions calculations – an area requiring much more dedicated research.

There is the need for regularly updated, simple to understand building operations and maintenance manuals for building end-users –in order to help them understand technology and energy usage. Hence, it is essential to work together to understand knowledge,” he said.

The emerging role of BIM can make a huge impact towards reducing waste at the design and procurement stages.

Regarding the Green Deal,Wielebski concluded:

  • There is a lack of long-term structural or permanent incentives for consumers to actually take up the green deal, particularly in the private market.
  • A large number of consumers lack the knowledge and or motivation to make their property more energy efficient.
  • Consequential improvements could have played a big part, but have now been dropped - there doesn’t seem to be anything else to guide the Green Deal into place.
  • It is crucial to develop the appropriate range of skills to deliver the Green Deal from apprentice level upwards.

Adapt Low Carbon Group, University of East Anglia

Dr Bruce Tofield and Dr John French

(Notes based on the written submission)

The group is a pioneer of Passivhaus and involved with one of largest schemes in the Commercial sector - £16.2m Norwich Research Park Enterprise centre on own campus.It will use materials that have been locally sourced.

The speakers said that Passivhaus is building to ‘Rolls Royce Quality’ – and will eliminate fuel poverty over time, have far healthier and comfortable homes, as well as, the rents will be more affordable because of far lower bills.

Adapt had worked with number of housing associations in the east of England, monitoring the performance of Passivhaus buildings, including the Elizabeth Fry Building, which was built to ‘Rolls Royce’ standards at no extra cost.

They said that constructing to Passivhaus will help prevent the performance gap – where, almost whenever measurements are made, buildings seem to use far more energy than their design predictions.In addition, Passivhaus is the only approach to quality on construction of homes and the only reliable way to eliminate the performance gap.

They accept that initial capital cost may be sometimes slightly higher than other methods, but say that over a two to three decade timescale, the financial case for Passivhausis very strong.

The speakers claimed there is a performance gap because of three things:

  • Compliance tools, such as SAP, not good enough
  • Poor quality processes on site
  • Virtually no measurements to monitor how buildings perform – so if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.There is also danger of a second housing crisis if quality, in housing construction in particular, is not improved and the performance gap eliminated. Energy bills for new and retrofitted homes will be higher than anticipated, occupant health may suffer from poor air quality and the UK may not be able to meet the climate change targets. Damp, mouldy or cold homes have major adverse impacts on the health of young and elderly.

ThePassivhausCase study findings - Build with CaRe report – delivering a low energy building.

  • One quarter of all final energy used in the UK goes to heat homes and provide their hotwater; this proportion increases to at least one-third, if we include buildings of all kinds.
  • Energy used for heating homes has increased by 40 per cent since 1970, even thoughthe thermal efficiency of homes has improved by one-third (because people heat theirhomes more uniformly and to a more comfortable temperature – the so-called reboundeffect).
  • If we are to retrofit up to 20 million of the UK’s 25 million homes by 2050, we must treat500,000 homes each year from now until 2050, or one home a minute. This country hasnever ever built that many new homes in a single year and only 104,510 new homeswere registered in 2012.
  • A passivhaus home uses only ten per cent of the energy for heating that the averageUK home does and there is no rebound effect because the buildings are very energyefficient.
  • There can be no fuel poverty in a passivhaus home, while the outstanding air qualityensures a healthy and comfortable internal environment. Just like previously mentioned Elizabeth FryBuilding, passivhaus homes and schools recently built in the UK show some of thehighest levels of occupant satisfaction ever measured.
  • The UK's dependence on energy imports increased in 2012 to its highest level since1976 because of diminishing domestic production. Increased imports will add to energybills and increase fuel poverty.
  • We see that, if homes are built or retrofitted to the passivhaus standard, then UK energydemand can be reduced by up to one-third.

Passivhaus and the Green Deal

  • At very best, a Green Deal retrofit can achieve only half of the potentially available savings in energy use.
  • Retrofitting new buildings is also more complex than new build, as unexpected problems will almost always rise and need on the spot solutions. TSB should continue to develop know-how and skills, while the supply chain is developed via new build construction.
  • More innovative financial packages need to be developed.
  • The sums already committed by the Bank of England, in quantitative easing, are comparable.

Q&A

Q.Nick RaynsfordMP

You’ve told us that the whole-house green approach results in a house worth 10% more.The problem is that there seems to be very little correlation between value and energy efficiency in housing. How do you come to your assumption that this type of house will be worth 10% more?

A. Bruce Tofield

You’re right – the problem at the moment is that there are not enough low energy homes for valuers to respond and change valuations. We need to educate surveyors. We have not had any learning curve in this country.

OliverColvile MP: I think we said last time that it’s very important that sellers should identify how much money it was going to cost to run the house.

Q.Patrick Bellew –

What is the difference between PassivHausandBritish standards

The discussion centred around whether Passivhause was appropriate for the UK and would it be better to adopt a UK version. Also because it was expensive, was it a victim of law of diminishedreturns?

  1. Adam Poole

Passivhaus can be difficult and expensive. A study they had been involved in for passivhaus retrofit showed that it had cost£4500 for a door, so for refurbit is not a sensible standard.

It achieves air tightness ten times higher than building regulations,but it is expensive to achieve.

A. John FrenchI think we need more case studies on retrofit.

Earl of Lytton

My personal experience is that payback - time means different things to different people, depending on whether you’re dealing with an owner or a tenant. Also, you don’t get a bean more rent – domestically or commercially – for putting all this stuff in.

Unless you can boil the Green Deal down to bite sized chunks for people to get their minds round – “Yes, putting in that will save that”, it’s not going to succeed.

[He also said that regarding Passivhaus, humidity conditions in UKare different to Germany and Austria].

Q.Peter Bonfield OBE

It’s reassuring to hear about this fabric-first approach to retrofit. It should be better quality, and a better solution.However, although it’s great to use natural materials, they don’t last long,do they? So what about resilience in the face of over-heating, high-wind events?

One of the risks is we’re going headlong into insulating our homes only to find out we can’t keep them cool in the summer.

How do we get resilience, and have confidence in natural materials?

Ends

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