Getting off Gas

Before the invasion of Ukraine, the idea of getting off gas was a minority interest, but now suddenly it has become a moral as well as an environmental one. Last month I managed it, partly through luck and partly by planning. There are three areas in a typical home in London where gas is used, for cooking, for hot water and for heating, so most people have a gas hob/cooker, and a gas boiler. I have neither, now. After having both for most of my adult life.

I changed my gas hob to an induction hob a couple of years ago, because it’s safer, cleaner, and greener, it was a pretty simple process and I haven’t regretted it at all. Getting rid of the boiler took a bit longer and I had some help.

Samsung 12KW Air Source Heat Pump

In 2020 the UK Govt introduced the Green Homes Grant (GHG) to assist people in the expensive process of upgrading their homes to be greener. The scheme was stopped by April 2022 because of poor takeup and administration, but I managed to get a grant, having applied for it when the scheme was announced for a number of reasons.

• I was curious about how such schemes are administered and I wanted to be knowledgeable about the process so that I could advise clients and friends about it. At that point, I was expecting the scheme to be a long term one and to run for a number of years.
• Like many others, I live in a draughty Victorian home in London and I was keen to improve its energy performance while still living in it.
• I had planned to replace a second batch of single-glazed windows, I did the first batch about five years ago and since the GHG covered single-glazed window replacements I thought that I could speed up this work.
• The original aim of the GHG was to encourage people who were planning work to include some energy efficiency improvements as a secondary measure.

Fast forward twelve months and I now have a solar thermal system installed but I have made no progress with the window upgrades. The plan was to change my windows and I added a solar thermal system because that worked well with the gas boiler and cylinder system I already had, or so I thought.

The path to getting an installation done was tortuous and really only happened because I was both knowledgeable and determined. How anyone who wasn’t a professional in the field managed to get work done I don’t know.

I couldn’t have managed it without a committed and enthusiastic solar installer. (Dominic Skeaping and London solar Co.) this was the second installer I engaged with during the process. The first one had to pull out of doing my installation because the GHG scheme awarded them too many projects in too short a space of time for them to fund or manage, so I had to find a replacement after all the paperwork was done and the grant approved.

I had intended to do the windows at the same time and split the funding between the two measures but in the end, I couldn’t proceed with the window replacement because there was no timber sash window installer who met the bureaucratic requirements of the scheme. I called a number of companies and their response typically was “too busy mate, I have better things to do with my time” The only company that did meet the requirements couldn’t renew their accreditation in time because of the pandemic, so I had to abandon that idea. There seems to have been little or no effort on the part of the administration of the scheme to engage with companies, particularly SMEs and get them involved.

Some of them needed administrative support to deal with the bureaucracy, but without their involvement, some measures couldn’t be done. How can you have an energy efficiency programme in London, or anywhere else in the UK, that doesn’t include timber sash windows? I could have had plastic ones installed but (a) they are plastic and (b) they don’t look as good and (c) they tend to have larger frames which cut out more light which is unhelpful. After all, the reason most people like old Victorian properties is the large windows with plenty of light!

There was a second fundamental problem for small installers as the scheme only paid on completion of the works. They were paid directly by the administrator. This meant that small companies had to pay for the equipment upfront and carry that cost until the installation was finished and then wait for weeks or months for the administration to pay them. This risked the solvency of small companies and led to them limiting the number of installations they were willing to carry out. Future schemes should investigate a solution to this as it seems fundamental to get the involvement of SMEs.

Another unexpected consequence for me was that the MCS scheme (MicroGeneration Certification Scheme) which certifies renewable energy systems requires installers to upgrade existing plumbing systems to comply with current rules if a major change is made. In my case, the old vented 150l cylinder wasn’t big enough to cope with a solar thermal system so has to be replaced with a pressurised 220l cylinder and this led to a number of small changes elsewhere in the system. This added unanticipated time and cost for the installer. There are long-term benefits to the householder in moving to a pressurised system but it made life difficult for the installer who had other projects to complete before the scheme deadline.

The system has a 3m panel on my roof which I expect to deliver most of my domestic hot water from April to September. Part of the control system includes an energy monitor so I will be able to check this in the coming months and years.

A potential longer-term benefit, or so I thought, is that the cylinder was going to make the system heat-pump ready. So if I were to install one I could do it without changing the cylinder. Given the long-term plan for the UK seems to include heat pumps, this seemed to be a good strategic move.

Discussing this with my installer I was surprised at his suggestion that I could move to a heat pump immediately, without installing external wall insulation. The received wisdom across the industry is that older homes need to be insulated to bring down the heating demand to a point where the heat pump can cope.

His point was that, provided the heat pump is sized correctly then there is no problem with moving to heat pumps now, it just won’t be as cheap to run as it would be if the house was insulated. It would need to be a larger capacity system to cope with the larger demand at the coldest point in winter, although for a Victorian terraced house with the capacity to have a roof extension it makes sense to over-specify the heat pump anyway to cope with future demand if I do decide to extend upwards. If I insulate the house meanwhile the heat pump would have more spare capacity.

This opens up a potential path to decarbonisation of our older housing stock where people are not in danger of fuel poverty. (which is relevant to large parts of London) Switching to heat pumps immediately lowers the home’s carbon footprint, and is relatively painless compared to the issues around installing external wall insulation. The appearance of the home doesn’t change, the resident doesn’t need to move out, but they will need a new cylinder and potentially larger radiators depending on the original radiator design. Both changes are relatively easy to make and are much less problematic than installing insulation inside or outside the dwelling, particularly at the present when high-performance insulants are being avoided due to perceived fire risks.

There is a potential path where the existing gas boiler stays in case there are concerns that the heat pump can’t meet the demand, and the heat pump deals with the average hot water demand and some of the heating demand, but the gas boiler augments it mid-winter. But since all cylinders have an electric immersion this can take the place of a gas boiler for peaks where the heat pump cannot cope or is down for maintenance. The heat pump can be specified to meet the midwinter demand in any case. Whether a heat pump will be more expensive, at the moment, will depend on usage, but with the recent gas price rises, the long-term likelihood is that electricity costs will come down and gas prices will rise.

Fast forward a couple of months and now I have a heat pump installation in use, thanks to Dave Turner and the London Heat Pump Co. The RHI Renewable Heat Incentive finished in April 2022 but the installation was finished in time to qualify, and met the MCS certification required (v. important). This is likely to make the heat pump a cost-neutral installation albeit over many years.

The system is a 12kW Samsung that connects to my cylinder in place of my gas boiler which was decommissioned at the same time.

I have collected my energy bills for several years so I will be able to identify cost and energy changes over the next six months.

In some ways, it would have been better to run the solar hot water for a year before installing the heat pump, so I can identify the heat pump efficiency more easily, but once work starts it’s better to continue and finish and leave a substantial period of time before embarking on further work. Family relationships tend to fray when the heating system is not working in winter!

Fast forward again and the heat pump is installed and working. The installation was pretty straightforward and took three days or so with a team of two people. It is working well in terms of efficiency at a CoP of 3.3, (a measurement of heat pump efficiency, above 3 is good, 4 is better) but has a configuration problem that means that the heating sometimes has to be on to run the hot water circuit, obviously not helpful, so the controller board will be switched out to solve the problem. I was surprised that this couldn’t be solved by a firmware update, but the manufacturer is the one holding the warranty so that’s what is going to happen.

The system is being controlled by weather compensation as this seems to be the agreed best approach for heat pumps. This is where the heat pump measures the temperature of the returning water from the home and tries to heat the hot water going into the home to a set temperature relating to it, rather than using an internal thermostat as the goal. The logic is that in colder weather more heat is required and the heat pump can meet the need by building up slowly to the required temperature and then minimizing the effort to maintain the temperature of the return water.

Once the house is at a steady temperature the heat pump doesn’t have to work hard to inject large amounts of heat quickly when it is least efficient. The quoted benefit of using weather compensation is that it reduces demand by about 10% which is quite a lot of performance to give up by using a thermostat.

A related issue is that heat pumps are most efficient when used to bring the home or the hot water cylinder to the right temperature, and then keep them there with small amounts of input. They don’t like to produce a lot of energy quickly, which leads to a change in behaviour. Instead of bringing the heating on early in the morning, it’s best to leave it on constantly, and control the ventilation to manage heat losses. This ends up making the home more comfortable, and reduces those points in the day when the house is cold sometimes and then perhaps too hot when the gas heating is on. A heat pump is less dramatic, and slower to respond.

So, within a couple of years, I have gone from using gas, to not using any, my bills haven’t gone down (like everyone else) but my carbon footprint has. When I get my changed EPC I will post the impact of the combined solar thermal and heat pump on the house CO2 footprint and I will post some data on the temperature and energy use of the system which I am tracking carefully.

To summarise, it’s perfectly possible to install a heat pump into an old property, but it’s not always going to be the cheapest way to heat the home Because of the way gas and electricity tariffs are set up, gas is artificially cheap because most people use gas to heat their homes. Because of the efficiency of the heat pump (3.3) I am getting 3.3 kwh of heat for every 1 kwh I buy. So every kwh is about 8.5p compared to current gas tariffs of 7.5p per kwh,(dividing 28p for electricity by 3.3) so heat pump users are effectively being penalised 1p per kwh. UK govt has signaled a set of future changes to reduce electricity bills by moving some taxation to gas, but perhaps in the meantime, the energy companies need to set up a tariff for heat pump users to reward them for moving off-gas? (or more accurately, to not penalise them for moving away from gas). Meanwhile I will work on reducing my heating demand to see if I can nudge my heat pump up to 4, which will make it cheaper than gas. More soon.

Come back Electricity, all is Forgiven

A decade ago in sustainability thinking, electricity was the baddie, the thing to be avoided, it came from the Grid, it wasn’t very clean, it carried a high carbon footprint and gas was the better alternative. If you wanted to achieve low or zero carbon, you had to generate the electricity onsite or use biomass.

Fast forward to today and the picture is pretty much reversed. Biomass is rarely considered at all, and the carbon footprint of electricity is now on a par with gas so why use gas at all? In addition, if the designer uses a heat pump they can get 2.5 times the energy from each kWh of electricity used, so the outcome is much less CO2 for every unit of energy delivered.

The effect of this is seismic, and it poses questions about how we develop policy and approaches to decarbonisation. How is it that an approach that was deemed problematic a decade ago can change so quickly?

The answer partly lies in Government inactivity in one area and success in another. DECC and now BEIS have been successful in bringing down the price of new electricity generation from wind. Wind turbines are a huge success. They are delivering energy far more cheaply now than when they were first introduced. It turns out that climate sceptics and those arguing against wind turbines were wrong, quelle surprise!

MHCLG can take some of the blame for failing to take this success into account earlier because everyone in the sustainability sector has known for years that the carbon footprint of the Grid has been dropping like a stone, but that tools for assessing the impact of this have not been updated since 2012! They appear to have had other things on their minds.

Finally, late last year we had the consultation on changes to Part L, the regulations governing domestic energy and building performance, and electricity finally gets its recognition as a cleaner fuel than gas. London Plan projects have been using more accurate information for over a year so many projects are already underway in the capital with the new direction towards heat pumps.

Some implications of this are worth noting: photovoltaic panels may generate the same power as before, but the carbon reductions they provide are halved. They still save money, but they save much less CO2. Heat Pumps need different plant space to CHP systems and have different maintenance and access needs. Heat Pumps will have a big impact on the design of low-rise homes in particular, as they need an external fan unit to operate, and we aren’t used to seeing them on our homes or in our gardens and it will take some time for them to be accepted.

Gas-fired CHP no longer makes CO2 sense, as the Grid is now so clean that the benefits of generating energy on-site have diminished so much. What is painful to see is that CHP systems designed with the old Grid carbon figures are still being installed into projects even though this no longer really makes sense. There is a time lag built into the construction of schemes which means that years after schemes were designed, they are only now being constructed. Our Planning system needs to be more outcome-focused rather than being so specific about methodologies that it leads to this kind of unwanted outcome.

In the longer term, this will have other impacts. For example, policymakers will look at this and think, if the Grid is getting greener, do we really need to save energy? Does it make sense to invest in efficiency if the Grid can become so close to zero carbon that we can offset the remainder of our impacts? As some of the environmental legislation put in place a decade ago starts to have real impacts, and the trajectory becomes clearer, we may find ourselves in a position where lazy politicians think that the problem of decarbonisation is not all that difficult and turn their thoughts to other things, not that some of them were ever really focussed on this, but a cleaner Grid may make decarbonisatoin in some areas more difficult, not easier.

 

The Ethics of Development (part II)

In the last article ‘The ethics of Development Part I’, I set out the framework within which I think the profession can begin to consider the ethical impact of projects that they are involved in.  This has come about because last year I was asked to speak about ethics and architecture at the APRES 2016 conference. I accepted the invitation because I thought that it would force me to confront the question: What does ethics mean in a professional context?. These articles are the result.

Since ethics are primarily about how we deal with each other, architects might be forgiven for wondering what it has to do with buildings built with, hopefully, inert materials. But since the purpose of building is to serve the needs of people, clients, users, occupants, and society, there are ethical implications to every act related to design and construction, some of which are covered in part by legislation, and many which aren’t.

The central question of ethics, as I see it, is ‘are we being fair to everyone involved in the process of design and construction?’

A further question we need to ask ourselves is: Does our professional ability and knowledge mean that we should take an extra level of care for everyone and everything affected by our work, even when legislation and guidance are absent?  A check through the two codes of conduct that architects should follow is revealing insofar as it reveals an inadequate response to today’s environmental crisis.

The RIBA Professional Code of Conducts states:

Members shall respect the relevant rights and interests of others.

The ARB Architects Code states:

12.1 You should treat everyone fairly. You must act in compliance with your legal obligations. You must not discriminate ……

The RIBA Professional Code of Conduct states:

3.2 Members should be aware of the environmental impact of their work.

Note: Aware! But not asked to do anything.

The ARB Architects Code states:

5.1 Where appropriate, you should advise your client how best to conserve and enhance the quality of the environment and its natural resources.

The ‘where appropriate’ has me baffled. Where would it not be appropriate? Given that every project an architect could be involved in must have an impact, how could such advice ever not be appropriate?

In my previous article I set out the four areas within which to consider the ethical implications of any project, here I expand on those with examples of issues to consider, this is not meant to be exhaustive, only indicative.

1. The stages of the building over time, its design, construction, operation, and demolition. What are the impacts of the building on people over time? How does it change over time? Are we aiming for the greatest good for the greatest number of people?

For example, a question we might ask in regeneration projects, or in any design project where an existing use is being closed or moved to facilitate the new project, ‘Are people being treated fairly to enable the design and construction process to happen?’

This question is particularly relevant to regeneration projects where the lives of people who live within the regeneration zone are going to be disrupted to enable the regeneration project to happen. Care must be taken to ensure that they are treated fairly and end up being beneficiaries of the project. If they are to suffer the disruption of moving and being rehoused, possibly more than once, then surely they should enjoy a share of the benefits of the project that they are enabling to happen.

Historically, many slum clearances happened without the agreement of residents, work was done to them, and not with them, and happily, we no longer behave this way in the UK. Other countries do behave this way, there is plenty of evidence of such clearances happening in China over the last decade. But whenever I hear the word ‘decanting’ (a shorthand term for moving people out of their buildings into other accommodation) I feel that while we may have moved on in terms of how we work, but not all of us have moved on it terms of the way we think. Decanting is something you do to wine. Perhaps we should use the word ‘disrupting’ instead?

At the same time, we must ask ourselves whether people who are on the housing waiting list are being treated fairly.

Across England, there were 1,183,779 households on the social housing waiting lists in 2016. If we take an average household size of 2.3 from the last census, that gives us a figure of 2,722,691 people.

The needs of such people, often housed in substandard accommodation, at high costs to the country, and often overcrowded, should be given sufficient weight when deciding what to do in any situation.  There may be a temptation to give more weight to people who are already living locally in any planning decision, but surely the need of those not present have equal weight, and if their need is dire, greater weight than the incumbents?

2. The context for the physical building, the immediate location, the wider context and the global context. Do we aim for the greatest good or the least damage to the planet?

In recent years we have seen a huge rise in the amount of legislation, guidance, and advice related to greening the construction sector. Building Regulations, green building standards, and policy have all pushed the sector to make massive improvements in the performance of buildings. But two issues remain, the policy has become patchy as first the Coalition and then the Tory Government pulled back on the scope and level of intent of such policies, and the analysis of completed buildings demonstrates that many are not achieving the environmental targets that were originally set.  

Should the architectural profession have a set of core standards that give guidance and support to professionals working on projects where clients or local policies don’t support or actively work against environmental targets or where national policy vacillates due to political expediency? If we are to have a Government propped up by the DUP who claim that climate change isn’t real, we need protection against potential further backsliding. Particularly at a point in time where we are leaving the EU and will no longer have its substantial support for environmental protection.

Should the profession refuse to work on projects where there is an unwillingness on the part of clients to meet their environmental obligations? Would this strengthen our position as expert and impartial advisors, or weaken it?

3. Those affected by the purpose and use of the building, the client, the funders, owners, operators, those nearby, the neighbouring region and the rest of the planet. Do we aim for the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people? If so, how do we account for this and what do we mean by benefit? Is it financial gain, safety, better services? How do we compare these against each other in terms of the benefits they bring as well as the difficulties they cause…

Some of these effects are covered by the law, Building Regulations or a duty of care, but much of it isn’t.  As we build at higher densities, issues occur which are new in the UK and poorly considered by our regulations, other countries with more tall buildings are further advanced than us in some respects. When more people move into an area, the balance of the community is changed. While some argue that an influx of new people into an area is beneficial as it brings more economic activity, those living in the area previously often feel threatened by new neighbours, rightly or wrongly. Increased levels of traffic is often a bone of contention but is probably used as a stalking horse for the real objection, which is to any new development, regardless of its impact on traffic.

It is important that we are clear about the benefits that new development brings to an area as well as acknowledging the impacts that it causes.

4.The needs of the users, ranging from the most basic ones of shelter to the most sophisticated level of personal development. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs provides us with a ready-made structure to use here so we may only need to assess how this structure relates to our work as designers and whether we are giving due attention to the different needs of building users. A fundamental issue is whether we know how well or badly we are currently doing before we even start to think about improving matters.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is well worn, but relevant to the built environment. It proposes that our human needs are hierarchical and dependant on each other. Only by fulfilling basic needs of shelter and nourishment can we begin to achieve well-being, good mental health, and fulfillment. An ethical view of this would support a designers ambition to create buildings that help their occupants in achieving as much of the hierarchy as possible. From shelter on the one hand to enabling self-actualisation on the other. This makes the basic point that buildings are for people, not for architects, and it is only by fulfilling the needs of the people living in our buildings are we fulfilling our own needs as professionals.

Do we know how well we are doing? Mostly not. Post-occupancy study happens in a tiny fraction of the built environment, even of the part of it designed by architects. Without a better evidence base, we risk becoming irrelevant as others who lack our design drive are enabled by technology to sample the needs and desires of people and to provide it to them through technology that bypasses us. A connection to our audience is essential for the profession to thrive, and our audience is the user of our buildings, not each other.

The Ethics of Development (Part I)

The more eagle-eyed among you will have noted a gap in my posts.  For various reasons, I have been occupied with other things and I haven’t felt that blogs were what was needed. Among the ‘other things’ is Brexit, which I think is an utter disaster, an unbelievable backward step for us all in the UK, one which we will regret for a generation.

Other ‘other things’ such as the US administrations unconscionable behaviour in relation to climate change makes me put my head in my hands on a regular basis, but the optimist in me thinks(hopes fervently) that it is a short-term problem and that the next administration will reverse the direction of US policy to be more sensible and ethical.

This brings me neatly to where I wanted to get to, as one of the things I have been thinking about, reading about and writing about over the last year is the question of ethics and how we relate ethics to climate change in the world of the built environment. I firmly believe that one of the reasons why the US has back-tracked on the Paris Agreement is that there is no widely agreed ethical position on climate change outside the environmental movement. It is being discussed as a matter of science, and facts, both of which are open to misinterpretation or denial by those who have much to gain by delaying action. If there was a strong ethical position that was commonly agreed in the West, then the discussion about science could continue but against a backdrop of general agreement about what is the ‘right thing to do’ or ‘the right direction’ to take. As Brexit and the US elections have shown, there is a large group in both populations unwilling to listen to reasoned arguments, and unconvinced that action on climate change is the ‘right thing to do’.  Perhaps we can use ethics to look at the problem from another direction?

My aim is to look into the idea of sustainable development in the built environment from an ethical standpoint and help to demonstrate why this is the ‘right thing to do’.

My thoughts on this were partially prompted last year when I was asked to speak about ethics and architecture at the APRES 2016 conference. I accepted the invitation because I thought that it would force me to confront the question: what does ethics mean in a professional context?   I also thought that I could develop an understanding of the relevance of ethics to the architectural profession in particular. I was half-right, insofar as I am far from achieving a full understanding of the topic, but closer to a view of what the relevance of ethics is to the profession.

Since ethics are primarily about how we deal with each other, architects might be forgiven for wondering what it has to do with buildings built with, hopefully, inert materials. But since the purpose of building is to serve the needs of people, clients, users, occupants and society, there are ethical implications to every act related to design and construction, some of which are covered in part by legislation, and many which aren’t.

In order to discuss the issue of ethics, I think that we need a framework to describe how it relates to development, even if its only temporary, a scaffold within which to erect our ideas, and then we can remove it if we are satisfied with the result.

There are a number of dimensions to the problem and each has its ethical implications. In the following paragraphs, I try and set out such a framework and to highlight just a few of the ethical issues that arise in each area. In a second blog, I will try and flesh out these four areas of ethical consideration.

1.The stages of the building over time, its design, construction, operation and demolition.

Much of the early stages of the building’s life is covered by the stages of the Plan of Work and therefore the RIBA code of conduct. But even early-stage design raises ethical issues. If people need to be moved and rehoused to enable a regeneration project, are their needs being balanced by the needs of those who will be housed in the new development? What measure can we use to balance such needs? Do we aim for the greatest good for the greatest number of people? Or do those living on a site deserve special treatment? Are their needs more deserving than people who haven’t arrived yet? If so, why?

Are we designing buildings that will minimise the harm to those who are going to build them? CDM legislation has helped enormously to raise awareness of safety in construction and in the use of buildings, but our traditional construction methods and procurement behaviour impose risks which look less reasonable with every accident.

2.The context for the physical building, the immediate location, the wider context and the global context.

Some of the context is covered by planning law and national legislation, other parts, particularly the impact on the global context of material extraction, is not. For example, there has been some recent discussion on the impact of tall buildings on their neighbours, near and far away. How much weight should designers give to such considerations where there is no legislation and little guidance relating to this impact? In the wider context we are faced with the danger of climate change, and while we have some legislation to deal with it in both Building Regulations and planning law, the implementation of it is patchy and the final building would often fail a detailed post-occupancy test of performance. The RIBA Code of Professional Conduct is weak on the subject, do we need a strong Code of Ethics to support us to do the right thing? If local or national Government is going to be weak, can the profession be strong?

3.Those affected by the purpose and use of the building, the client, the funders, owners, operators, those nearby, the neighbouring region and the rest of the planet. Some of these are covered by Building Regulations or the legal duty of care but many of them are not.   The impact of building low-rise homes on agricultural land is a case in point. Building low-density homes in suburbs that are far removed from services and amenities is already an obviously poor strategy in social and environmental terms, but the majority of new homes in the UK fit into this category. What can the profession do to represent the people who are only being offered a car-dominated environment to live in?

4.The needs of the users, ranging from the most basic ones of shelter to the most sophisticated level of personal development. Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs provides us with a ready-made structure to use here so we may only need to assess how this structure relates to our work as designers and whether we are giving due attention to the different needs of building users. A fundamental issue is whether we know how well or badly we are currently doing before we even start to think about improving matters.

Currently, in practice, the clear priority is to satisfy the needs of the client and provided that this is done within the boundaries of all available legislation, most architects, if questioned, would feel that this would be an adequate result. But is it? Do we have a stronger responsibility to society than this would suggest, given that unlike most other professions our work continues to exist and have an impact long after our expertise has been applied?

Satisfying the needs of the client whilst acting within the boundaries of available legislation is a level of effort expected by everyone, from hairdressers to CEOs. There isn’t anything special about fulfilling that requirement. The question we need to ask ourselves is this: does our professional ability and knowledge mean that we should take an extra level of care for everyone and everything affected by our work, even when legislation and guidance are absent?

My feeling is that we do need this. building a building is not like making spoons or shoes, we help to bring a building or a project to fruition that lasts for generations and often has an impact after we are retired or dead. Our thinking has to be rooted in the long term, even if the thinking of the client and funders is rooted in the short-term. By taking a long-term view particularly an ethical view we ought to be able to determine the ‘right thing to do’ and even if we don’t do it, we will have educated ourselves, our colleagues and our clients in the process.

Some of this article was first published in Architects Datafile Magazine.

Implementing Zero Carbon in London

Now that we are almost upon the deadline for the introduction of zero-carbon (GLA) in London I thought that it was timely to comment on it. 

Firstly. Brilliant! In a time when politicians appear to have taken leave of their senses permanently, it is reassuring that here (surrounded by the metropolitan elite) some things stay the same. We have a group of politicians willing to lead on principles rather than on the basis of prompting by tabloids or by their lesser selves. Well done London!

Secondly: Brilliant! We have a piece of zero-carbon legislation that has learned from the recent past, from multiple consultations by DCLG and the Zero Carbon Hub and run with it rather than reinventing this particular wheel. More importantly, it sets a precedent for other devolved authorities to follow. London can afford to lead on this one, to get the idea moving, to introduce developers and their design teams to the idea and to pioneer mechanisms for using the funds in a transparent and timely way so that developers can see the benefits to them. 

Thirdly: There is work still to do, as there is little clear understanding about many of the aspects of the new legislation. Can we claim a credit for making improvements above regulation? For example if the team introduce dimming into the building, can they claim some CO2 reductions below the line of the regulatory calculations. If the designers use a timber structure, can they claim some embodied energy reductions? When are the payments to be made? When the building is designed, or when it is built? There are likely to be differences between the two.

I think that it would be useful if the GLA held some workshops about this new legislation and had an open discussion about these questions, to help to introduce the legislation and to hear from design teams and clients how it can work best for them and for the GLA. It is very important that this new effort succeeds, it is practically the only star left in the low-carbon buildings firmament, so let’s make sure that it burns brightly and it isn’t extinguished at the first sign of difficulty.

‘Heart in the Right Street’ a report by Create Streets

I attended the launch of this report last week, at the invitation of its author, Nicholas Boys-Smith, I felt compelled to do so, as he claimed that I had in some small way inspired him to write it. Two years ago he made a presentation at HTA and at one point I challenged him to back up some of his claims for how certain building types were ‘better’ than others, with evidence. He felt then that his answer was unsatisfactory, and when the opportunity arose to produce this report, he used it to provide a better answer. I may not agree with everything in the report, but I wish everyone took my questions as seriously!

Attendees to the event were given a sort of ‘cheat sheet’ with ten guidelines for how to create good cities, and the report presents the evidence culled from numerous studies to back up the ten points. I paraphrase them as follows

1. Provide Greenery

2. Build more houses than apartments and build at higher density than the suburbs, but lower than necessitates high rises.

3. Build at human scale and never house children in high-rises.

4. Created connected walkable environments

5. Mix up land use with many uses

6. Block sizes should be ‘not too big’ and made up of individual buildings, not super sized buildings occupying a single block

7. Minimise internal communal space and corridors

8. Beauty matters, 

9. Create mixed facades at street level, shops, entrances, etc.

10. Make neighbourhoods dense enough to be walkable, 150-220 homes per hectare.

Most housing designers wouldn’t be too frightened by this, in fact most would support most of them, if not all of them, most of the time. But probably wouldn’t support all of them all of the time. The report is well researched and documented and could be recommended for no other reason than its bibliography which provides any interested party with a serious amount of good reading material. He references Charles Montgomeries Happy Cities book a lot, which is a good thing, as well as academic research from around the world on city living in Singapore, Vancouver, Newcastle, Copenhagen, Hong Kong and, of course, London.

About the only area where I find myself violently disagreeing with Nicholas is on the subject of ‘Beauty’. He maintains that beauty is not really in the eye of the beholder and he points to a lot of research to suggest that people do know what they like, and what they like is not liked by architects. He goes on to suggest that if more new development followed his rules and was also liked by people (because it conformed to a more general sense of beauty), then more high density life would  be allowed to happen and we would all be better off. 

I find it optimistic that changing the appearance of some modern development would make its neighbours welcome it any more than they do, motivated as they often are, by concerns over traffic, schools, and a general incoherent fear of change.

The simple reality, as I see it, is that architects don’t exist to provide what people ‘like’ any more than any artist exists to provide what people like. You might say that architecture is not ‘Art’ but you would be wrong. The purpose of Art is not to comfort and reassure, but often to challenge, sometimes startle. I do agree that housing architecture should never terrify or induce fear, that would be going much too far, but trying to create an environment like the Disney Main Street is something housing architects are not supposed to do. That is the job of set designers, a different species entirely. Our job is to create good neighbourhoods where people will want to live, but we must also always deliver good value for our clients. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

This is a good and well-researched project. It’s aims are positive, and well-meant, but sometimes overstepping the bounds of academic research into populist polemic. All housing architects who take their work seriously should read it and be as knowledgeable about the research as the author is. Housing architecture is a serious responsibility and not to be taken lightly, and this work echoes that seriousness by providing pointers to a lot of recent valuable research, as well as pointing to many areas where further research would be useful and welcome.

A point that doesn’t really come across from the work, although it is one of the ten guidelines, is that suburban density is not high enough to create successful living environments. Much much more of modern housing is built at suburban density than any other density, and in terms of numbers, the towers that he dislikes so much will only ever provide a fraction of the new housing in cities, whether they are liked or not. Suburban density causes so many other problems in the form of long commutes, high CO2 emissions, use of agricultural land, than high-rises do, but the idea of suburbia is not disliked by the general population nearly as much as they dislike high-rise living. 

If this book has any impact on policy, I would like it to prompt a review of the density of new suburbs. We are fooling ourselves by thinking that low-rise low-density suburbs are the answer to any of our housing problems.

On the one had Nicholas would have it that the people are right, to seek their idea of beauty and to decry high-rise living, but on the other hand they are wrong to hanker for the suburbs and the inevitable burden on the planet and personal isolation it brings. I think he wants to have his cake and eat it. But, don’t we all?

Building your Sustainable Library

You wait a while for a good book and then two come along at once. 

I attended the UK launch of two different books relevant to you this week, the first was ‘Sustainable Cities – Assessing the Performance and Practice of Urban Envrionments’ edited by Pierre Laconte and Chris Glossop and published by I.B.Tauris ISBN 978-1-78453-232-1.

This is a portmanteau publication, containing a number of chapters written by other authors, some of which will have been published elsewhere in some form, but not all together as in this case, and not carefully considered for their relevant to this important topic. 

The question of sustainable cities, what defines them, what standards allies to them, how do we choose indicators to assess the, and when we build them how do we know we have succeeded, are all questions tackled by authors in this publication. Given that we have now passed the point at which 50% of the worlds population lives in cities, there is hardly a bigger question for sustainability specialists to work on. If we can crack this, we can avoid runaway climate change.

Authors include Dr. Kerry Mashford, the late Sir Peter Hall, Chris Glossop and Dr Ian Douglas.

I also attended a lecture given by architect Stefano Boeri on his recent project in Milan, Bosco Verticale. The event was hosted by the Engineering Club at the Congress Centre. (A few architects turned up)

Bosco Verticale translates to Vertical Forest, and his two buildings in Milan, evenly constructed for Hines, and then sold on to Qatari Diar, demonstrate what he means by this. Each apartment has a tree on the balcony, several metres tall, together wth a quantity of shrubs and smaller plants. The publication ‘un Bosco Verticale, a vertical Forest- instructions booklet for the prototype forest city’ published by Corraini,  ISBN 9-788875-705411 was available on the night and furnishes a lot of background information to the project including the following numbers. 

The project provides two hectares of forest and 8900 Sqm of balcony area.

This includes 711 trees, 5,000 shrubs, 15,000 perennials, absorbing 19,825kg of CO2 per annum.

There are approximately 1600 birds and insects (although how they could know this is not explained!) This includes a box of ladybirds imported from Germany to eat aphids and other pests. (I don’t know why they needed Germany ladybirds)

The design uses 94 species of plants, giving it a very high level of biodiversity.

The trees are planted in steel-lined planters to prevent the roots cracking the structure, and they are loosely tied back to the structure in case they could be blown off iin hurricane level winds. The steel-linings will also constrain the growth of the trees so that they cannot get too big for the space available or too heavy for the structure. They are a bit like enormous  bonsai trees. They are maintained partially from the balconies, but the outer sides are pruned by gardeners that abseil down the outside of the buildings twice a year. While this might sound outlandish, consider that many glass buildings are routinely maintained by abseilers. 

The result is extraordinary, a pair of buildings that look like no others, and a second project is underway in France. Stefano was quite straightforward in admitting that it took some time and a lot of effort to convince his clients that this could work. There are elements of what was built that he will change the second time, and he has plans to continue to develop  the idea on a larger scale.

He was asked many times by the audience about squirrels, which he was not in favour of, but which he expected to arrive anyway, and also about fruit trees, as none of the species used are fruiting trees. He cited concerns about the dangers of falling fruit as the reasons why they weren’t used. This sounds to me like a problem that could be solved, and would add a further beneficial dimension to what is already a beautiful and convincing idea. 

This is an inspiring idea and one that merits your attention.

Image https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bosco_Verticale_from_UniCredit_Tower,_Milan_(17591709258).jpg

A new entrant to the UK Housing Sector

You would need to have been living under a rock to have missed the arrival of Legal & General on the UK Housing scene. From a position of no involvement in housing, L & G are now set to become one of its biggest players. How has this come about? Because of the housing crisis.

L & G (and others) see the current UK housing market as an opportunity. With a backdrop of strong demand, rising prices and an existing set of housebuilders which are unwilling or unable to ramp up production to meet the demand, this looks like a market that is ripe for disruption.

Instead of going down the normal route for a new entrant to the market, and playing the same game as the uincumbents, L & G are going for broke. They have invested in the largest factory in the UK, bought a Cross-Laminated Timber production line, and just in case you missed the point, are setting up a plant to manufacture CLT to guarantee their source of supply. They are doing nothing by halves.

The plan is to produce and supply 5,000 homes per year, or more from the factory, and to supply all of it using CLT. Thereby adding the same output to the industry as ten additional Barratt divisions, or a Redrow to the housing industry.

They don’t intend to compete directly with the housebuilders, because they are not going to be selling a comparable product at a comparable price. Mostly they will be developing to own and rent their own housing stock.

The interesting elements of this is because much it will remain in their ownership, it is open to investment. The U.K. Housing industry has not been open to investment since we decided that we had to own our own properties. Now that we have accepted that this is both unwise at some stages of our lives, and impossible for many people, there is a clear and undeniable need for long term home rental. A pension fund looks at long term home rental and sees something that it can invest in.

The housebuilders have shareholders too, but their focus is on paying out dividends each year rather than owning assets thta appreciate. Although housebuilders do won assets in the form of land, and it does appreciate, it doesn’t have nearly as much value when traded as it does when it has homes built on it. This makes the housebuilders a poor investment risk compared to rental property. Rental property accrues value and brings in an income every year, so there are two opportunities to make a profit, both in the short term and in the long term.

In Germany, a large proportion of housing supply has pension fund backing. In the UK it is almost non-existent due to our historical distaste for renting. This is all going to change and there is a lot of headroom to grow into for investors.

Another impact from the pension fund is that they care about the long term, their business model means that they have to. If you are paying out pensions to thousands of people every year, you have to be confident that the money will be there for them. This means that they care about what homes are built from, how well it will last, and how sustainable they are, because it matters a great deal to them and to the people who are paying into their pension funds. Who would invest in an oil company now? Or a coal mine? But housing in the UK, with strong demand set to continue into the foreseeable future? That looks like a safe bet.

Zero Carbon London

At a time when ambition in environmental legislation is sadly lacking, this week saw two announcements that are going in the right direction. Both of them were about ‘zero carbon’.

Firstly the Govt announced through energy minister Andrea Leadsom that the UK would commit to net zero carbon emissions as there is consensus that an 80% reduction doesn not go far enough. Time will tell what that means, but the signalling of the ambition is positive.

This week also saw an important milestone on the path towards a low carbon housting sector with the release of the London Plan update requiring new homes in London to be ‘zero carbon’ from October 2016. This definition of ‘zero carbon’ is different from all of the others that have gone before, so it’s important to be clear about what it means.

From October 1st all new major applications put before the GLA are required to demonstrate that they meet the London Plan targets as they are currently identified. The main target being a 35% improvement on Building Regulations Part L 2013 predicted regulated CO2 emissions.

The new element is a requirement that the remaining CO2 emissions arising from the development are to be offset in an ‘Allowable Solutions’ style payment of £60 per tonne. This payment is then multiplied by a 30 year period, which is considered a reasonable lifetime for energy producing systems such as boilers or CHP, and the total is paid as part of a s106 agreement.

When I was involved in a pilot project for the original proposed 2016 legislation, the result was a payment of around £1500 per dwelling, but because that was testing the Zero Carbon Hub’s (ZCH) definition (confused?) there are subtle differences and I expect the London Plan payment to be slightly higher. The reason is that the ZCH definition included a high rate of Fabric Energy Efficiency (FEES) which was set as a minimum target for dwellings. This target was reached after analysis carried out by the Hub concluded that a level of 39-46kwh/Sqm/year was a good level of energy efficiency that didn’t necessarily require the use of very expensive fabric. Since then the Building Regulations has introduced a similar Design Fabric Energy Efficiency (DFEE) target, which aimed to be a bridging target between the 2010 regulations and the 2016 regulations, a stepping stone between the two. This current DFEE target aims for a 15% improvement in the base building fabric performance above the previous 2010 Part L Regulations target.

Now that the Government has halted the progress of transition to zero carbon buildings, the 2013 Part L Regulations that are in place are likely to stay in place for some time. Instead of using the ZCH definition of FEES the GLA are using the current Building Regulations instead. This is why this definition of ‘zero carbon’ is different from all other definitions that have gone before.

With that out of the way, what does it mean for construction in the capital?

It will become more expensive to develop new buildings, but by a predictable amount that I estimate to be between £1500-£2000 per dwelling. The GLA are confident that any viability test will demonstrate that this imposition has little or no impact on viability.

In many ways this is exactly what should be happening, using our most valuable market to test new approaches where we can afford to do so, then rolling those approaches out to the wider market as these new approaches become cost effective or even cost neutral.

This is effectively a carbon tax, and it will help to encourage development to produce less of it. Something that is needed in all industries if we are going to avoid extensive climate change. I expect to see some innovation in new buildings to improve the efficiency of services, fabric and ventilation.

There are a couple of caveats, however. Much of the planned development in London is in taller buildings or more dense development, and it is likely that the solutions to help those types of development to meet this new target are going to be quite different to the solutions for the rest of the UK where development is normally less dense. However I expect some benefits to be relevant in the field of building fabric detailing, air tightness techniques and prefabrication.

The second caveat is around district heating. The current SAP assessment of this technology is so poor that it is likely that we are overestimating the efficiency of them by some margin. In turn this affects the amount of CO2 remaining emissions and thus the amount of tonnes paid for by the new regulation. Work needs to be done to assess the performance of recently installed systems to check that their performance is in line with SAP to confirm that the amounts of CO2 being emitted are close to the predicted amount. We can’t afford to fool ourselves that we are achieving greater CO2 savings than we are in reality.

I welcome this development, given the paucity of environmental legislation being introduced compared to the huge amount of it being scrapped in this Parliament, we should cheer the determination of the GLA to maintain environmental leadership at a time when this commodity is sadly lacking from our governing politicians.

Why we need to stay in the EU

The prospect of the UK Leaving the EU fills me with dismay. I listen to the rhetoric from politicians and wonder about their motivations in proposing an exit. Do any of those proposing to leave have any real understanding of what it would mean? What would a future for the UK be like outside of the EU. Sitting like an unwelcome houseguest at the fringes of the party, furtively stealing beers from the fridge?

When I survey the landscape I am most familiar with, particularly around sustainable buildings, I reflect that much of the impetus for environmental legislation in the UK has come about through pressure from the EU through the Energy Performance in Buildings Directive (EPBD). I suspect that, left to its own devices, due to the UK Housing sector being dominated by a small number of housebuilders, the industry would have fought off all attempts to implement energy efficiency improvements.  Without the gentle but firm push in the small of the back from the EU, our homes would probably be much less efficient. We wouldn’t have an EPC, and whatever it’s faults, at least it is a step in the right direction.

Now that the Govt has scrapped the planned 2016 zero carbon legislation, the next push for improving our buildings will come from Europe, the EPBD requires that all EU states enact legislation leading to Nearly Zero Energy Buildings from 2020. Again, that gentle but firm push. This is something that will be good for consumers who buy homes, good for the businesses that build them and help to push down our CO2 emissions.

I imagine that the same goes for the car industry, and even though the image of the EU industry has been seriously damaged by the recent emissions scandals, at least the intention to reduce emissions is there in legislation. Given that the UK’s default position on improving emissions regulations has been to vote against them, and given that London in particular has been failing to meet EU emission standards for some time, and will continue to do so for some time to come, our record of standing alone on this issue is not a particularly proud one.

On renewable energy we are again struggling to meet EU targets, and thanks to recent Govt cuts, are not even sure how we plan to meet them. There has been no suggestion that these targets are unwelcome, or that we are unable to meet them, in fact the minister stated that the Govt has every intention of meeting its obligations. While the arrival of wind turbines have been unwelcome in some areas, they  enable us to reduce our imports of coal and oil and help us to reduce pollution levels and CO2 emissions. Again, without a push from the EU, would we have adopted these targets? On the evidence of the current Government, probably not. Or if we had, they would be voted out again with every change in the political landscape.

While our politicians vacillate every five years or so, whether they like wind farms or don’t, whether they like nuclear or don’t, and whether they think fracking is a good idea or they don’t, in the background there sits the EU,with a long term plan to reform the energy markets, to reduce emissions, to introduce more renewable energy and to make our buildings more efficient. Politicians come and go, but the EU remains as a stable influence on our policies and standards. This stability helps business to invest, and gives purpose and direction to research and development, as EU strategies tend to remain in place longer than national or local government cycles.

The exitmongers complain that this is interference in our democratically elected system of government, I say it’s a good thing. Without it we would be worse off. The EU acts as a brake on occasional foolishness, a calm voice in times of crisis and a firm guide on environmental matters. It’s a bit like a parent, the interference is unwelcome at times, but it’s reassuring that someone is there for guidance when you need it.