'Green building' movement gaining momentum

Drive to form Green Building Council.

It is quite common for people, even those quite close to the issue, to say that the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive must be implemented by January 2006.

Now that the appointed day has come and gone it is clear not only has the directive not been implemented but that many important aspects of its implementation are still to be decided.

The United Kingdom Government is however, as it must do when the directive has been transposed into British law, throwing its weight behind the directive's demands and generating an impression of urgency over its implementation.

So far this sense of urgency has been imparted by bringing forward the Building Regulations on improved ventilation and fuel conservation by two years, and more recently by cutting the customary transition period for such changes from three years to one.

The way the Government put it in its release last September, incidentally prior to informing Parliament of the decision, was that new measures to make buildings more energy efficient would save one million tonnes of carbon per year by 2010.

That seems a fair measure of the time it will take to bring the directive to full implementation, about four, probably five, years.

There is one aspect of this that has been generally overlooked, though it is plain enough in the directive.

This is the provision that Member States of the European Union have the option of an additional three-year period to meet the requirements for energy performance certificates for both residential and non-residential sectors.

The idea is sensibly enough to allow time for the industry to develop suitable energy rating systems and certification schemes for buildings, as well as accreditation and training of sufficient numbers of personnel qualified to undertake the performance assessments, equipment and systems inspections.

It is a vast task, not merely to do the job but to train sufficient numbers of people competent to do it.

At the well-attended BRE seminar on the revised Part L Building Regulations last week, during the Ecobuild conference and exhibition at Earls Court, the view was confidently expressed that the United Kingdom would be able to take advantage of this provision on the grounds that the trained and accredited people necessary to supervise the work do not at present exist.

BRE itself has made considerable progress in providing the tools whereby the job may be done.

The first is the 'simplified building energy model' developed for ODPM which facilitates calculations of the annual energy use of buildings other than dwellings, which should be of great help to designers of new buildings now faced with the demand for compliance with the directive by April next year.

Similar methods of calculation may be applied to the production of asset ratings in accordance with the directive when the building has been completed.

There is a subtle difference as the BRE presentation team explained between the performance standard set for a building at the design stage and its actual performance as built.

It is the latter that will actually determine the grant of an energy rating certificate without which the building cannot be brought into use.

This includes airtightness which will prove the ultimate test not only of the influence the building exerts on heat losses and gains by air infiltration though the fabric, but its quality of construction.

Such tests are going to be of high importance to the contracting side of the industry because it is on them that the responsibility falls to ensure the necessary standards of performance.

Moreover, such performance certificates will be required whenever buildings change ownership or tenancy.

From this brief summary it is evident that considerable numbers of accredited and trained personnel are going to be needed to make sure that, given the technology, the requirements of the directive are applied correctly and efficiently.

If it is true that such personnel do not exist as things stand, that factor alone is going to exert restraint on the rate at which the scheme can be introduced.

Acceleration is hardly the appropriate mode of progress here.

As the European Commission has been keen to stress, on frequently visited public buildings the energy performance certificate must be prominently displayed, and for that purpose it will have to be right.

Drive to form Green Building Council.

There are other concerns however which surfaced at the Ecobuild meeting.

One was the disclosure of what the independent Association for Environment Conscious Building claim is strong evidence demonstrating the urgent need to adopt more rigorous building standards, and that quickly in the effort to combat climate change.

Such adoption of higher standards would of course heighten the demand for trained and accredited personnel who do not now exist, at least in nothing like the numbers required.

The association says that recent research has shown that current energy performance measurement tools are inaccurate, causing substantial under-prediction of carbon reductions in new homes with an improved thermal envelope and energy efficiency standards.

No doubt BRE will look into this, as it is their domestic energy model that is alleged to be at fault.

The other development is the pending formation of the Green Building Council for the United Kingdom along the lines of the council bearing that name in the United States, said to have been highly successful in motivating the entire U.S.

construction industry - quite an achievement! This industry-led proposal seeks to resolve one of the major problems identified by the Sustainable Buildings Task Group - the overabundance of different organisations trying to engage with government on reducing carbon emissions and the environmental impact of buildings.

The task group recommended that these diverse interests should coalesce into a single entity to provide not only a better conduit for dialogue with government but also as a means of motivating the United Kingdom construction industry to take 'green building' seriously.

There is no doubt it will do so as soon as the full implications of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive are realised.

It seems most appropriate that Dr David Strong, BRE Environment managing director and chair of the Government's building performance directive implementation advisory group, should be given the task of assembling the United Kingdom's counterpart Green Building Council.

He has received pledges of support in principle from a number of organisations who recognise the desperate need for an entity of this sort.

When Dr Strong attended the U.S.

Green Build conference in Atlanta last year he found himself in the company of 10,000 delegates, and described what they had achieved as 'quite phenomenal'.

There is no doubt that such a unitary body would do much to promote implementation of the energy directive, or at any rate prevent the movement from losing momentum and direction amid all the complexities involved, not the least of which are the politics of this highly emotive issue.

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