Trial / Demo
On 8th October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a special report that warned of the catastrophic dangers of allowing global temperatures to reach 1.5 degrees and that urgent action was needed to keep below this. Shortly after in spring 2019, a number of countries declared a Climate Emergency and set ambitious targets to reach zero-carbon by 2050.
We are now two years on from the publication of the IPCC report, and in terms of the built environment, it’s clear that there is still not enough being done by governments to place us on track to meet these goals. Zero Carbon is being very much driven at industry level, but is not supported enough at government level through mandatory compliance with zero carbon building regulations.
Take current building regulations for instance. It is widely acknowledged that they are not doing enough to address the challenges that are pivotal to decarbonisation by 2050. In fact, it can be said they are hindering efforts. They do not foster a performance-based modelling approach and inadvertently encourage modelling only for compliance. Particularly in the UK, there is not enough emphasis on operational performance, and embodied carbon is not accounted for which often leads to what’s known as the ‘performance gap’.
In the US, there are individual state building regulations; California is leading the way with Title 24 and the Zero Net Energy (ZNE) standard. However, with the US’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement due to happen on the 4th of next month, this will undoubtedly effect state powers to further move towards zero carbon communities.
What we are seeing though, is industry bodies from all over the world stepping up in this area. Voluntary rating systems such as LEED and BREEAM have long incorporated performance-based modelling. And industry orgnisations such as the World Green Building Council (WGBC) and GBC’s of individual countries are really taking the lead in the quest for decarbonisation. The introduction of the WGBC’s Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment paves the way to drastically reduce operational carbon from buildings. The Commitment provides a framework to develop globally ambitious yet locally relevant, flexible and universally viable solutions for buildings within their portfolio, city, state or regional boundary.
In the US the USBGC has introduced a LEED Zero certification to its renowned LEED rating system. This has been developed as a complement to LEED and verifies the achievement of net-zero goals. The LEED Zero Carbon rating recognizes buildings or spaces operating with net zero carbon emissions from energy consumption and occupant transportation to carbon emissions avoided or offset over a period of 12 months. LEED Zero Resources rating focusses on reaching net-zero Energy, Water and Waste.
The UK based Better Buildings Partnership’s (BBP) Design for Performance (DfP) initiative is also an example of the push for a performance led approach at industry level. This initiative is an industry backed project established to tackle the performance gap and provide an approach, based on measurable performance outcomes, to ensure new office developments deliver on their design intent.
As mentioned before, the UK has a design-for-compliance culture which has led to the well-known ‘performance gap’. In contrast, Australia has had a system to measure and rate the operational efficiency of its commercial offices since 1999 - NABERS. The scheme now covers 86% of offices in Australia and the energy intensity of landlord services has improved by 36% since the scheme began.
The DfP initiative has been working for over 10 years now to bring the knowledge and success of NABERS to the UK by applying the same principles that have been so effective in Australia to a certification scheme for new UK office developments. NABERS UK has now been developed and is due to launch next month. You can sign up for the online launch event on 26th November via the zoom webinar registration form.
CIBSE’s TM standards are also addressing the operational performance of buildings. TM54: Evaluating Operational Energy Performance of Buildings at the Design Stage, provides building designers and owners with clear guidance on how to evaluate operational energy use more fully, and accurately, at the design stage. Whilst TM63: Operational performance: Modelling for evaluation of energy in-use aims to provide a methodological framework to undertake measurement and verification of building energy performance in-use.
It is abundantly clear that there is an absolute understanding across the industry that in order to meet zero-carbon targets, a performance-based modelling approach at design stage is a must. Government led regulations, where compliance is mandatory, are very much lagging behind Industry standards, certifications, and commitments, which all put emphasis on proper performance-based modelling at design and into operation. At the moment Australia is the only country that is incorporating the need to model operational performance in their building regulations. There is a massive opportunity for other countries to follow suit, which would be a pivotal moment in the quest to decarbonise the built environment and play an important role in keeping global warming below the necessary 1.5 degrees.
