The increases will go toward the Government’s Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) scheme and the new Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP).
CERT and CESP will see extra investment by energy companies to promote energy efficiency. The aim is to help the UK meet its carbon targets under the Climate Change Act, as well as help the nation meet its fuel poverty targets.
The changes to CERT include:
A 20-per cent increase in the carbon emissions reduction target, leading to a revised target of 185 million lifetime tonnes of carbon; the average annual savings of the programme are equivalent to the annual emissions of about 1 million homes;
The inclusion of Home Energy Advice as a measure that can be offered, where experts will visit householders and audit current energy efficiency to help households take simple, easy steps to reduce energy consumption and cut fuel bills;
An estimated 60-per cent of the total funding available under the enhanced scheme will go to low-income and elderly householders, who will receive free or substantially discounted energy saving improvements such as insulation;
An increase in the amount energy that suppliers will be able to devote to innovative energy efficiency methods, such as microgeneration and solid wall insulation — from 6 per cent to up to 10 per cent of their total target; and
Removal of direct mail-outs of low-energy light bulbs from1 January 2010; these bulbs will still be available at discounted prices at retail outlets.
The Government today also announced the details of the new Community Energy Saving Programme, to begin this autumn, helping householders in low-income areas receive “whole-house” energy makeovers.
The introduction of CESP will see:
Up to 100 community schemes set up benefiting around 90,000 homes and delivering a savings of nearly 2.9 million tonnes of CO2 by December 2012;
The promotion of partnership working between the energy companies and local authorities and community groups;
Savings of about £330 per year on the energy bills of householders who receive help; and
Energy generators will be obliged to take part for the first time.
“Home energy efficiency has never been so important in achieving our long-term goals on climate change and to making a real difference to householder’s energy bills,” said Joan Ruddock, Minister of State in the Department of Energy and Climate Change. “Today’s announcement delivers a major part of the Prime Minister’s Home Energy Savings Programme that ensures people can save money and save energy, as well as reducing emissions.”
Ruddock added, “Community-level solutions are the key to fighting climate change and the roll-out of CESP later this year will teach us valuable lessons in how to provide help to every home in every street. By providing the tools for change, we are empowering the British people to play their role in tackling climate change.”
Deutsche Bank has been awarded a preliminary certificate in gold from the German Sustainable Building Council for the renovation of its towers in Frankfurt. The preliminary certifications is presented for exemplary sustainable buildings that are still in the planning or construction phases.
“With the certification of our ‘greentowers’ in Frankfurt, we want to demonstrate in an exemplary way the potential for optimisation and sustainable energy efficiency for existing buildings, toom” said Holger Hagge, global head of Building and Workplace Development, Corporate Real Estate & Services, Deutsche Bank.
The greentowers project is one of Deutsche Bank’s first pilot projects.
In addition to the certification by DGNB, Deutsche Bank is also aiming for an LEED Platinum certificate issued by the US Green Building Council.
The modernisation of Deutsche Bank’s prominent Taunusanlage building complex in Frankfurt is aimed at reducing the buildings’ energy consumption and CO2 emissions by at least 50 per cent. The renovation of the greentowers was launched in December 2007, and the move back into the building should be completed before the end of 2010.
As designed by Milanese architect Mario Bellini, the building will feature a newly designed foyer, larger conference rooms and flexible office space. Through the planned public accessibility of the Art Café in the base of the towers facing Alter Oper and a more attractive open space in front of the building, the bank will be opened up to the public and have an improved integration in the public space.
The renovation is part of a series of measures Deutsche Bank is taking in an effort to neutralise the CO2 emissions of worldwide operations by 2013.
Buyers of Scotland’s first New Energy Homes will receive a different sort of gift set from the welcome wagon: a fruit bush, laundry pulley, composting bin, raised growing bed, water butt, bird/bee/bat box and potato barrel.
Backed by Scottish Government funding of £300,000, the development of 17 factory-assembled, energy-efficient homes in the Highlands were erected in a fraction of the traditional build time.
Each home complies with stringent building standards and features renewable heat pump technology, under-floor heating, roof insulation and low energy windows.
Information about energy use in the houses will be collected and analysed over the next two years.
Housing Minister Alex Neil says the Scottish Government has agreed to provide funding of £1.9 million for 22 of the 55 units to be built as part of the Scottish Housing Expo, which will be held in August 2010 in Inverness.
“At a time when families across Scotland are feeling the pinch because of the economic downturn, this type of development points the way forward for more energy-efficient, cost-saving homes,” Neil said. “I hope that once the energy savings have been analysed, the houses will have helped customers cut bills and ultimately reduce carbon emissions.”
The New Energy Home concept was developed by the Highland Housing Alliance, a not-for-profit development company set up to build more new affordable and private houses for people in the Highlands. Five of the development’s homes are to be for low-cost home ownership and the remaining 12 are up for outright sale.
New measures aimed to support the industry in the current recession will also give developers more time to start building and further flexibility to adapt plans. These include a simpler and cheaper way of extending the life of planning consent, which has been introduced to deal with the sharp drop-off in the number of permissions that are being taken up.
Currently, permissions that are not used expire automatically, usually after three years. If developments can’t be built because of economic conditions it could delay economic recovery, as those schemes would have to be reapplied for when conditions pick up.
The consultation on changes to the Building Regulations aims to deliver the first step towards zero-carbon buildings and carbon savings of over 3 million tonnes a year from 2020. An important plank of the government’s commitment to tackling climate change, the proposals would require a 25 per cent improvement in energy-efficiency standards for new homes and other buildings from October 2010. This will require better insulation and draught-proofing, better low-energy lighting and more efficient boilers. The higher energy-efficiency standards will also mean lower fuel bills lower – by up to £100 a year for an average home.
“While it is right that we have taken action now to help people and businesses struggling with the economic downturn, we need to also stay focussed on the long term and step up action to tackle climate change,” Healey said. “In the UK we know that nearly half of our carbon emissions come from our buildings, 27 per cent come from our homes and a further 17 per cent from other non-domestic buildings. So we must build our homes to a better, greener standard. We are leading the way globally, with our ambitions for zero-carbon homes and buildings.”
The architectural design contest, which is open to any architectural practice, is seeking high-quality designs for a two-bedroom starter home and a three-bedroom family home.
Launched by the Welsh Assembly Government and Blaenau Gwent Council in association with the Building Research Establishment (BRE), the winning designs will be built at The Works:Ebbw Vale by United Welsh Housing Association. The Works is a sustainable regeneration project that’s transforming a 200-acre steelworks site into a £350 million mixed-use development.
Funding for the construction of the two houses will be provided by the Assembly Government’s Heads of the Valleys strategic regeneration programme. Once built, the sustainable homes will serve as a showcase for energy-saving building techniques and technologies and a model of how highly energy-efficient homes can be built at no additional cost.
The design competition is aimed at creating the Welsh Passive House — combining the principles of the highly efficient PassivHaus low-carbon building standards, pioneered in Germany with the higher levels of the Code for Sustainable Homes in Wales.
PassivHaus homes rely on extremely high standards of insulation and require minimal energy for space heating and hot water.
The winning designs must satisfy the CSH level 5 standard — aspiring towards level 6 — use local sustainable materials, find innovative solutions for electricity reductions. In addition, construction costs — excluding land costs — should be comparable with more traditional methods of building.
“The design competition is an exciting challenge for architectural practices to come up with some innovative highly sustainable designs that will be examples of best practice that can be replicated elsewhere in Wales,” said Leighton Andrews, Deputy Minister for Regeneration. “A particularly important aspect of the competition will be to demonstrate to the construction industry that highly energy-efficient homes need cost no more than standard homes to build.”
The European Commission today launched its new BUILD UP Web portal as a tool for sharing information on reducing energy use of buildings.
The site’s content will be regularly updated and enhanced by users themselves to cover a wide range of good practices in energy reduction, as well as to inform visitors of new energy and construction legislation.
“The BUILD UP Web portal will enable anyone from homeowners to builders to look up and share best practice and information,” said Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs. “At the same time, it will inform and update the market about the legislative framework. BUILD UP can be an extremely useful tool to improve building performance.”
Buildings are responsible for about 40 per cent of total energy consumption in Europe. As a result, improvements in building performance are crucial to achieving EU energy-savings targets and combating climate change, whilst also contributing to energy security.
The EU in 2002 adopted the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), which provided member states with an integrated approach towards efficient energy use in the buildings sector. Recognising there is still a considerable potential for cost-efficient energy savings that is not being exploited., the EU last November proposed a recast of the EPBD that could generate additional energy savings of the equivalent of 60 to 80 million tonnes of oil per year by 2020 — equivalent to a further reduction by 5 to 6 per cent of total EU energy consumption over that achievable by full implementation of the current Directive.
Based on these proposals, the European Parliament adopted in April 2009 a legislative resolution calling for even more ambitious and demanding legislation. The position of the Council of the European Union is now awaited.
AmetsLab will explore, among other subjects, buildings that minimise to zero three fundamental aspects: energy, water and waste.
The idea of a “Zero Energy” structure is that the building should generate only the energy it needs for its functioning. For its conception, construction and functioning, the building should require and receive the minimum amount of energy and this should be obtained from renewable energy sources. To achieve this, it will be necessary to harness the experience and knowledge of bioclimatic architecture, renewable energy sources, electric energy micro-grids and materials optimisation.
The target of “Zero Water” is to minimise water consumption by, for example, reusing water (”greywater”) and collecting rainwater.
The “Zero Waste” objective is based on the optimisation of waste management during the stages of construction, useful life and deconstruction of buildings and on the capacity to reuse or recycle used materials when dismantling and deconstructing.
In the early stages, AmetsLab (”amets” means “dream” in Basque) will focus its research and design efforts on buildings and offices for small and medium-sized companies, professional studios and offices, business centres and nurseries and other tertiary uses of, on average, three- to four-floor-high buildings.
The building technique, known as rammed earth, is growing in popularity today as a sustainable building method. Experts at Durham’s School of Engineering have been studying the technique and have found the strength of rammed earth is heavily dependent on its water content.
Rammed earth is a manufactured material made up of sand, gravel and clay which is moistened and then compacted between forms to build walls. Sometimes stabilisers such as cement are added but the Durham research focussed on unstabilised materials.
The researchers tested small cylindrical samples of rammed earth using “triaxial testing,” in which external pressures are applied to model behaviour of the material in a wall. They found the suction created between soil particles at very low water contents was a source of strength in unstabilised rammed earth.
Theie research showed that rammed earth walls left to dry after construction, in a suitable climate, could be expected to dry but not lose all their water. The small amount of water remaining provided considerable strength over time.
As the link between strength and water content becomes clearer, that discovery could have implications for the future design of buildings using rammed earth.
The growing interest in the rammed earth technique lies in the fact it might help reduce reliance on cement in building materials. Cement production is considered a significant contributor to climate change, as its production is responsible for about five per cent of manmade carbon dioxide emissions. Rammed earth materials can also usually be sourced locally, which reduces transport needs.
“We know that rammed earth can stand the test of time but the source of its strength has not been understood properly to date,” said research project leader Charles Augarde. “By understanding more about this we can begin to look at the implications for using rammed earth as a green material in the design of new buildings and in the conservation of ancient buildings that were constructed using the technique.”
The rammed earth technique was developed in ancient China some 4,000 years ago, when people used the method to build walls around their settlements. Parts of both the Great Wall of China and the Alhambra at Granada in Spain were built using rammed earth.
In the UK, the technique was used to build experimental low-cost housing, in Amesbury, Wiltshire, following the end of the First World War. It is also a recognised building method in parts of Australia and the USA.
Augarde is a co-director of Earth Building UK (EBUK), a new association established this year to foster the conservation, understanding and development of building with earth in Britain. EBUK brings together builders, academics, researchers, architects, engineers, manufacturers and many more to work in areas of common interest at a national and local level.
“This kind of research is very valuable as the construction industry analyses environmentally sound, traditional ways of building and adapts them for sustainable construction in the 21st century,” said Tom Morton, secretary of Earth Building UK. “Such low-carbon technologies are most likely to succeed by marrying the expertise of our research universities, such as Durham, with the commercial understanding of the wider industry and we are seeing a number of very exciting developments in this area.”
Sustainability consultancy Inbuilt has scheduled a 3 June workshop for care home managers, owners and developers who want to learn about the financial, environmental and business benefits of sustainable and energy-efficient design (PDF).
The programme will focus on how new care homes can be designed to save up to 90 per cent on heating costs, while also attracting faster investment and planning permission because of their environmental credentials and delivering highly marketable, healthy and comfortable accommodation for the elderly and infirm.
“The care homes sector is starting to become very interested in the benefits of sustainability,” said Susan Schnadhorst, care homes consultant at Inbuilt. “Our workshop will show managers how they can deliver care homes with the highest levels of inclusive, adaptable design with the lowest running costs. It is also about giving them a competitive and marketing edge that will ensure future care homes exceed the industry average.”
Speaking at the workshop will be Justin Bere of bere:architects who is building the UK’s first ultra-low-energy care home, designed to Passivhaus standards, at Lound Hall, Suffolk. Andrew Eagles, managing director of Sustainable Homes, will also explain to delegates about the legislative and policy issues on the horizon which will require all new care homes and similar accommodation to be “zero carbon” by 2019.
Inbuilt associate director Sam Kimmins will talk about the practical issues of achieving genuine sustainability in the design, construction and management of care homes.
The European Court of Justice, officially known as the Court of Justice of the European Communities, has installed a photovoltaic (PV) solar energy system composed of Kyocera solar modules on its new building in Luxembourg.
The roof of the new building is lined with 2,262 modules with a total peak capacity of 400 kilowatts, and the system is expected to generate about 900 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. Installation of the system was completed in December.
Kyocera first began developing solar cells in 1975. The company recently started building a new production facility for solar cells in Shiga Prefecture, Japan, which is expected to increase cell production output from the current 300 megawatts per year to 650 megawatts per year by 2012.
Two Government programmes will see extra investments that bring funding for energy efficiency and “whole-house” green makeovers to British homes up to £3.5 billion by 2012.
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