Times are changing

The Business of Change was the title of this year’s CIBSE National Conference, and if there was one message delegates were to take away with them it was that change means opportunity.

London’s deputy mayor, Nicky Gavron, set the scene with a keynote speech that outlined the initiatives the Greater London Authority had already introduced, or were proposing to introduce, in the capital to help tackle climate change. “This conference could not be timelier, climate change is a huge threat, but it is also a major opportunity,” she said, setting the tone for the day.

Gavron said that “cities now consume three-quarters of the world’s energy”, and that as a result it was essential they take practical action to reduce this amount. She then outlined some of the initiatives contained in the Mayor’s climate change action plan that are intended to reduce London’s carbon emissions by 60% by 2025 in order to avoid “runaway climate change”. She said there were no technical barriers to achieving this 60% cut.

Because buildings contribute 72% of the capital’s total carbon emissions, the mayor’s initiatives would focus on making both new and existing buildings more energy efficient. She outlined the three integrated elements that would help bring about this change in new buildings:

• Design buildings to be energy efficient and capable of adaptation throughout their life
• Incorporate decentralised energy into schemes
• Include on-site renewable energy generation.

For existing buildings she said the GLA was working with Toronto’s Better Building Partnership, an initiative promoted by the Canadian city that implements energy efficiency schemes in existing industrial, commercial, institutional and multi-residential buildings. There would also be a new green homes initiative.

After criticising the energy inefficiency of the building stock, Gavron then turned her attention to the energy suppliers, which she described as the “single largest cause of climate change and the biggest barrier to reducing London’s emissions”.

She then went on to promote an energy revolution based on combined heat and power (CHP) systems and tri-generation systems (cooling and combined heat and power). These systems would be the mainstay of a network of decentralised energy production centres dotted throughout the capital. Each local area network could then trade energy with other local networks to balance energy consumption with production.

The concept of decentralised energy generation was continued by the next speaker Allan Jones, chief executive of the London Climate Change Agency, and a colleague of Gavron’s at the GLA. Jones kicked off his presentation with a quick summary of his credentials for heading the Agency including a testimony from Mayor Ken Livingstone which described his work for his previous employer Woking Council as “nothing short of revolutionary”.

Having established his green credentials, Jones then rattled through almost every single LCCA initiative in the following 30 minutes – including many of the themes mentioned in his interview with BSj earlier this year (BSj 3/07). Taking up where Gavron had left off, Jones launched into discourse on the merits of decentralised energy generation. He explained that several major schemes, including the Elephant and Castle regeneration scheme, Kings Cross Central and London 2012, were all in the process of procuring decentralised energy systems and that by 2025 the number of decentralised energy generation systems would be capable of meeting 25% of London’s energy needs.

A key component of the LCCA’s decentralised energy generation strategy is tri-generation because adapting to climate change will mean the need for more cooling. It is a controversial subject, and not everybody agrees with the LCCA in their justification of the use of tri-generation to reduce carbon emissions when compared to centralised generation (see Technical file, p70). The British Council for Offices describe tri-generation as inappropriate for commercial buildings in central London in that “it fails to deliver appreciable carbon savings”. Of course, many of the tri-generation arguments will need to be reassessed if the GLA succeeds in creating an infrastructure to deliver renewable gas generated from the capital’s waste that Jones is promoting. Arguments about the merits of tri-generation aside; what was clear from Allan Jones’ presentation was the huge amount of regulatory change that building designers will have to deal with in the capital.

The change theme continued into day two of the conference and the implementation of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. With the timetable for the implementation of building energy certificates announced, Ted King from the Department of Communities and Local Government and Steve Irving of Faber Maunsell gave a timely update on the likely form the certificates will take.

While there will be some flexibility in the layout of the labels, their content will be mandatory and will have to include the building type, the methodology used in its assessment, typical benchmark for the building type, the building’s rating and a list of improvements that can be made.

Seven ratings from A to G will cover all building stock, with the top rating band A awarded to a building of zero CO2 emissions.

Although the jury is still out, Irving hinted that the favoured approach is that bands will be sub-divided into classes, for example B1, B2, B3 or similar, to help distinguish between types of buildings within the same group. It is also likely that bands will be weighted, meaning that the same amount of effort will be required to improve a building from a G to an F rating as it would be from a C to a B. The certificates will have to be displayed in all public buildings, although what constitutes “public”

is still open for interpretation. To resolve the issue, another consultation is planned for later in the year to come up with an accept-able answer.

Still on the subject of consultation: it emerged the government is also looking to consult this summer on whether it is practicable and cost effective to make the display of certificates mandatory in non-public buildings as well.

Paul DeCort, also from the DCLG and a colleague of Ted King, continued the EPBD theme with an outline of the timetable for testing and inspection of air-conditioning systems under article 9 of the directive. He said the first inspections will commence on 1 January 2008, after that date all new systems will be required to be inspected within five years of being put into service. Inspection of existing systems will commence from 4 January 2009. Initially this will cover larger existing systems (over 250 kW). Finally, existing systems over 12 kW will need to be inspected from 4 January 2011. CIBSE is currently working on a technical memorandum (44) outlining the methodology for carrying out inspection; this due for publication in the summer.

Of course there were many more examples of change and opportunity over the two days of the conference. These ranged from case studies on innovative and ground breaking schemes to discussions on the new code for construction of sustainable homes and even presentations on the likely form for the city of the future. Change is happening. And as outgoing president David Hughes said in his opening remarks: “Our business is to make the possible practical.”