Guest Article from Professor
George Martin, Low Impact Building Centre, Coventry University
With approximately 80% of the properties
that exist today still being in existence in 2050, the key issue for landlords
in the run-up to the 2018 change is that they understand the scale, nature and
cost of the various interventions that will be needed to update properties now
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| Source: www.sustainablecommercialsolutions.co.u |
For the past 10 years or more I have been driven by the mantra - If
you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. This applies to each and
every key performance indicator linked to the built environment sector with
energy arguably being the most important. It is for this reason that I consider
it essential that the Government mandates the use of Display Energy
Certificates (DECs) for all buildings as a vital first step to cutting carbon
emissions.
The Display Energy Certificate (DEC) provides an up to date snapshot of
how well a particular building is performing, based on actual energy
consumption unlike its poor relation the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)
that only provides a theoretical rating based on assumed patterns of use
and occupation and can be up to10 years old!
The DEC also reveals what the rating score was in previous years. Consequently
it is possible to see at a glance the progress in making that building more
energy efficient and less costly to run. There is now considerable
evidence (initially anecdotal, increasingly academic) that requiring energy
usage to be professionally monitored and the results made visible, delivers
enormous improvements in performance.
Landlords need to be aware that the Energy Act 2011 proposes to make it
unlawful to lease residential or commercial buildings with an Energy
Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of F or G from April 2018. In
addition, there is a requirement for all new build domestic to be 'zero carbon'
from 2016 and for new build non-domestic to be ‘zero carbon’ from 2019. However,
the biggest challenge, especially for landlords, relates in particular to the
UK's ageing property stock, not built for a world of high energy prices and
carbon reduction targets, and lacking in investment in low carbon retrofit over
time.
With approximately 80% of the properties that exist today still being in
existence in 2050, the key issue for landlords in the run-up to the 2018 change
is that they understand the scale, nature and cost of the various interventions
that will be needed to update properties now. And that means learning in more
detail about how properties actually perform in use. A one-size-fits-all
approach will not work and landlords will need to develop an evidence based
approach, backed up with a robust whole life cost database for their
properties. Smart landlords will be using sensors to monitor energy use
against temperature and other indicators such as relative humidity in order to
identify more specific issues – so that they can identify whether the source of
any inefficiencies is due to the building fabric, the equipment, the
maintenance regime or indeed the behaviour of occupiers.
Property developers and landlords also need to ensure that their design,
delivery and maintenance teams do not have a blinkered approach to energy
efficiency and carbon reduction - as it is vitally important to ensure that the
health of the fabric and the occupants are also considered. The existing stock
of ‘leaky’ properties, whilst bad for energy efficiency, is good in terms of
ventilation and here there is some distressing news from recent research that
is showing that many - if not most - of the Mechanical Ventilation and Heat
Recovery units installed in recent times are underperforming, which is
seriously bad news for the occupants.
It is most certainly not right to assume that all 'modern' property will
achieve a good performance in use just because it has a good EPC rating or
indeed an ‘high’ BREEAM design rating. Even the highest spec builds
with energy efficiency in mind may not be performing as expected. The limited
performance gap research available has demonstrated that design targets (and we
must remember that EPC is a design tool) are missed by between 20% and an
astronomical 500%. We must stop assuming that sustainability-minded design and
construction methods are the whole story. Buildings need to be monitored and
evaluated for performance once occupied. Only then is it possible to gain
a clear picture of the performance in use and capture the learning for future
designs.
The property sector needs to move from making procurement decisions
based on design tools (e.g. EPCs), capital cost and payback time to making
primary decisions based on the performance in use (DECs) and 'whole life
costs', backed up by an assessment of the return on investment.
In turn, as attitudes and understanding begins to evolve around
performance in use and whole life costs, the construction industry and
here I include clients, designers and constructors, will become more focused on
delivering buildings that perform sustainably i.e., environmentally, socially
and economically.
Professor George Martin, Low Impact Building Centre, Coventry
University
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