Build with CaRe, a European project with ambition to mainstream low-carbon construction, has brokered contact and learning between continental partners and housing associations and businesses in the East of England. As a result, new initiatives are now a reality on the ground with architects, housing associations and construction companies working together to deliver passivhaus and similar very low energy construction.

 
The National Housing Federation has this week warned of a housing market crisis. As the NHF notes, at the heart of the problem remains a chronic under-supply of homes with hundreds of thousands of people locked out of the housing market.

 
Homes built today will be occupied for over fifty years. It is essential that any response to this housing crisis stimulates innovation and takes a path that will enable new homes to be models of energy efficiency in the decades to come and to provide environments that enable health and wellbeing for their occupants.

 
By requiring that housing associations work with industry partners to build low-energy passive homes, the route out of this crisis can become an opportunity to fast-track UK construction to innovate, to develop the skills needed to build to very high quality standards, and to develop the supply chains that will anyway be necessary in years to come.

 
The cost need not be great and value will in fact be created. The Government can now borrow longterm at very low interest rates as a result of the wider global economic slow-down to create a fund to kick-start such a process. Investment today to stimulate innovation will yield great benefit to the economy as a whole.

 
Passive houses built today will retain value above any built to today’s standards with the result that investment today may be recouped with interest in the years to come. Not only will such an approach make new houses that are appropriate for a low-carbon economy, but it will also accelerate innovation and progress in the far greater task of refurbishing existing homes to be highly energy efficient.

 
The construction industry must do the heavy lifting to help combat climate change because buildings are responsible for almost half of carbon dioxide emissions. I have been hugely impressed by the speed with which housing associations and their construction industry partners have learned from innovation in Sweden, Germany and elsewhere so that design, costs and quality of new low-energy projects have been transformed in just a few months. This speed of change on the ground shows very clearly how housing associations could lead the transformation to very-low-energy, high-quality but affordable housing that today’s crisis should stimulate.

Bruce Tofield, Build with Care Project Manager, LCIC

From this there has become resounding call for us all to ‘grow our own’. To pick up spade, find a space and live a life of plenty from the toil of our very own hands. There have arisen a plethora of TV programmes explaining how to get the most from your marrows, the squish from your squash, the choicest cuts of curly kale,  but how many of us actually do it,  and do we have any idea what is required?  Basically what a thirty minute TV programme cannot show you is the labour that is requisite. As I can testify the reality is somewhat different from: plant seed, leave to grow, pick plant, eat.

A few years back I was granted an allotment from our local council. Having been on the waiting list for four years I was delighted to get stuck in and so one cold November day myself, missus and toddling daughter went to view our land. The first thing that astonished us was the scale.  A full allotment is a big area, bigger than any garden I have ever had in any house I have ever lived in. It was a truly daunting prospect. However we duly set to work trying to get it ready, not planting anything yet, just getting it ready. Three years later our allotment is still not fully ready.

Then the thing is what do you grow? There are plenty of books that can offer advice, but there is a big difference between reading a book and actually planting a seed. What is your soil type? What is the drainage? Are you on a slope? North or south facing? For something so inanimate, seeds can seem surprisingly picky of their preferred surroundings.

Then there is the time. The thing is, food, particularly some vegetables, can take an awfully long time to grow.  I mean ages. Take broad beans for example. You plant them in November and they do nothing, nitch, for the best part of four months. Around the end of February small stumpy plants start to appear and suddenly the race is on so that by mid of May pluming bushes hang with plump bean pods ready for the pot. By the end of May, you’ve eaten them all and you’re looking for your next emerging crop. Let me be clear, with the time required for weeding, vegetable rotation, planting , weeding, watering and weeding (again!) an allotment is hard work. If we had solely relied on our plot to feed us this winter we would have starved and hard though it is to admit it, the actuality is that, as long as you are careful with what you buy, supermarkets are quite good at providing your food (without you digging, hoeing etc).

So, do I wish to discourage anyone from growing their own? Absolutely not for the rewards should you persevere are glorious. Last year from our allotment courgettes, runner beans, butternut  squash, rhubarb, raspberries, potatoes, strawberries and herbs were quite happy to thrive in near abject neglect and were picked and biked home on hot summer evenings as swallows banked and dived around us.  Which certainly beats going to Tescos.

So if you haven’t done it before, find yourself a pot for your tomatoes or potatoes, or dig yourself a ditch for your pulses and pumpkins. Go out there and find your green fingers.

Matt Taylor, CRed System Co-ordinator

Dr Simon Gerrard, Chief Technical Officer

In its eco-development work LCIC adopts a whole life approach to low energy and low carbon buildings. Taking a whole life approach involves considering energy and carbon emissions at each stage of the building’s life – design, construction, operation, refurbishment and, ultimately, demolition. In taking this approach some interesting trade-offs emerge between the carbon embodied in construction materials and the emissions arising from operation, in particular from heating. For example, buildings with greater thermal mass tend to have higher embodied carbon but, if operated properly, can save much more energy and carbon throughout the bulk of their operating life. However, if a building is powered by renewable energy, then the carbon equation shifts. The building may use more energy than a low energy one but it emits less carbon. The trade off between energy and carbon is illuminating and tied into other factors such as cost and risk. One area that deserves greater attention is post-occupancy analysis. In our experience it usually takes several months to drive down the energy and carbon emissions from low energy buildings. Not only do monitoring systems require careful tweaking but so too do the occupants. Tackling the human factors is rarely straightforward but without this many projects that are intended to be low energy and low carbon fail to deliver.

Given the scale of development in China if LCIC can help UPADI to reduce energy and carbon in the projects that they are undertaking then it will be worthwhile. There is palpable excitement on both sides about this partnership. Our initial activities have highlighted not only the scale of the challenge but also the commitment of our Chinese colleagues to develop quickly the understanding and practice of low energy and low carbon design, construction and operation. As work progresses we will add updates to the website.

Simon Gerrard

Chief Technical Officer and Acting Director

I have to confess to loving shopping and there are some amazing things to buy for people. I’m a bit of a marketeers’ dream to be honest and would happily spend a King’s ransom on all my nearest and dearest if only means allowed! However, I can’t help thinking (as rightly I should) about how wasteful this, now, over-commercialised festival has become. Such thinking, in turn, will always lead me to think of unnecessary carbon emissions. Unwanted gifts now mean not only wasted hard earned cash but unnecessary carbon emission in production of said gifts and distribution etc. Not to mention the implications of landfill, should your gift be way off the mark! I’ve considered Oxfam gift of a goat type options in the past, I think they’re an ingenious and extremely worthwhile idea but I’m not sure how many of my friends and family would really prefer me to buy a goat for a village in Africa over something superfluous but attractive/intoxicating/delicious/fun etc. for them!  With these thoughts fresh in my mind I googled ‘low carbon xmas gifts’ this lunchtime and was pleased when a few choices popped up. For example, www.carbonzerostore.com have excellent CO2 offsetting and reduction gifts ranging from buying 3 low energy light bulbs for installation in Africa at £15 up to £100 to go towards an African biogas digester – ideas with excellent ethical credentials on so many levels.

I’m not going to be disingenuous enough to here and now pledge to buy such gifts but I do think it’s reassuring to have the options available. The more widespread and mainstream these options become the more likely one of my friends and family would be happy with a goat for Africa as a gift. As I begin wrapping my present mountain, a carbon suspect practice in itself given the materials required etc., I’ll no doubt be ruing the day I decided against the more ethical options available! Please comment with your suggestions for my dilemma ….

Angela Larke, Office Manager

The potential for the industry to act as a catalyst for change is enormous, but to be credible it’s particularly important that the industry practises what it preaches and reports its progress faithfully. The event involved a series of presentations, a panel debate and a trade fair so participants were able to get a sense of the current thinking from experts as well as practical hands-on advice about how to get started.

Carbon emissions are driven by many factors throughout the life of the product. At the very start of a concept, though many screen writers may operate from their own homes and thus contribute relatively modest emissions, their choice of locations can have a huge impact on subsequent travel emissions during filming. The travelling circus associated with being on-location is well known for the scale of its impacts so it was good to see many initiatives at the trade fair dedicated to helping to reduce these (e.g. http://www.greenshoot.com/). Likewise there are efforts to reduce emissions within the cinema industry and in games consoles. The comparative carbon performance of film vs. digital production methods is something that LCIC is currently investigating.

Though the film and TV industry has many issues similar to other UK industries, from a carbon management perspective it presents a particularly interesting challenge. Typically the production system brings together a wide range of companies into a special purpose vehicle (SPV) company. That company exists for the lifetime of the production and is then disbanded. Consequently, whereas many UK public and private organisations develop a carbon management system over many years, the SPV is relatively ephemeral.

The British Standards Institute has developed a modification of its voluntary sustainability standard designed for the events industry. It is based around the same methodologies as typical environmental and quality management standards. Focussing on sustainability, BS 8909 covers more than just carbon. Current thinking is that a film, TV production or game would be given a sustainability label if sufficient numbers of the companies comprising the SPV had achieved the BS8909 standard.

It is hoped that the standard will be finalised early in 2011. If you would like to find out more and/or add your own comments you can find the draft at  http://drafts.bsigroup.com/Home/Details/607

Dr Simon Gerrard, Chief Technical Officer and Acting Director, LCIC

UEA recently hosted a European conference on passive housing [ http://www.buildwithcare.net/ ]. Some of the discussion was about driving CO2 emissions down within new housing developments, but much of the focus was fixed firmly on refurbishment.

Encouragingly, levels of optimism about meeting technical challenges were high; many of the technologies we need are available and well-understood. There was less optimism about meeting the financial demands of retrofitting, but some evidence from Sweden and Germany that as the retrofitting industry scales-up so costs will fall. However, this was all over-shadowed by the cheek-sucking and head scratching whenever the scale of the task was mentioned. Some estimates arrived at the conclusion that the UK needs to be retrofitting at a rate of several houses per minute for the next decade or more. Can this be done? – most people I spoke to couldn’t see how.

There is talk of how the proposed Green Deal – to be launched as part of the forthcoming Energy Bill – will help catalyse the UK’s retrofitting programme. It seems that the Green Deal will link carbon reduction measures to the house rather than the owner. It will be based on long-term loans. However, preliminary analysis presented at the conference indicated that it is unlikely that a loan-based approach would reduce sufficient carbon to meet the targets of the retrofitting programme. Under this scheme some form of subsidy will be required, particularly for improving solid walls where the economic pay-back is measured in decades.

This challenge is a prime candidate for some disruptive innovation. For example, thinking the unthinkable about the inalienable rights of the home owner or finding radical ways to increase the demolition rate. Though the focus has tended to be on the individual home owner or landlord, whole community approaches may be the only way to achieve the scale of the retrofitting in the time available. Can communities be mobilised effectively on the scale required?

What if we can’t achieve retrofitting in the time available? We would be in a higher risk position, relying on forms of adaptation and hoping that the effects of climate change are not as severe as some of the predictions. Ironically, adapting our buildings is also likely to require lots of insulation or buildings may become uninhabitable in the hotter summer months. Screening sunshine out is possible, but unless the UK’s grid electricity was seriously decarbonised then adding air conditioning would simply be fanning the flames.

It’s hard not to conclude that our present efforts will lead to increased numbers of uninhabitable buildings. However, as it was pointed out at the conference, energy price rises may do this job before climate change anyway!

Dr Simon Gerrard, Chief Technical Officer, LCIC

I act as the Project Manager for the UEA’s involvement with the eco-development. Our work is currently focused on the development of 12 homes at Green Lane West in Rackheath and the roll-out of a retrofitting project in the existing Rackheath community. Work has just begun at Green Lane West and the homes will all be built to Level 6 of the Code for Sustainable homes – the highest standard of sustainability for new homes in the UK. The retrofit project aims to improve the energy efficiency of properties in the Rackheath area (see http://www.broadland.gov.uk/retrofit/) and residents interested in measuring their energy consumption before and after installation of improvements will be given the opportunity to have a digital energy display installed.

Over the coming months and years I hope to build on the work we are undertaking with Broadland in order to support the successful implementation of the Carbon Management Programme for Rackheath and build strong links between the University and the Council to ensure that expertise from LCIC, and across UEA will support Broadland’s work for many years to come.

Chris Blincoe, Project Manager

Carl Hedger, Project Coordinator

About five years ago, LCIC bought a brand new printer. It is a large colour printer, a clever thing that happily tells you when it needs a new cartridge and happily exercises its right to deny you to print anything once you have forgotten to get one.  This printer was bought because the old printer was starting to make some rather unwholesome noises. This old printer belonged to a generation of printers whose personal foibles, characteristics and personalities would, should they have been human, either provide a wonderful case study for any psychiatrist, or gain them access into a retirement home, it was therefore decided that it was time to be replaced.

After much consideration we splashed out a not small sum on a printer from a reputable brand who’s initials precede ‘I’ and ‘Q’ and since then it has sat in much the same place, switched on in the morning and off in the evening.

Now LCIC, is not a particularly big organisation and when taking into consideration our dedication to try to reduce our impact we have not been overtly profligate with our printing. However, as an organisation we do sometimes need to print off materials for presentational purposes and when we do it is always nice to hand over a nice clean crisp piece of literature. It was therefore annoying when small marks began to appear on the printed paper. Like a messy toddler the machine was rightfully scolded and given the stern instruction to ‘self clean’. For a while this sufficed but the marks would eventually return only now darker, more perceptible and numerous. Our friendly IT support  were called in to take a look. They checked it over and concluded that the machine was functioning perfectly except for one small part which was the cause of the problem. But never mind because in their role of IT support they would get a new part to replace the old one, it would be sorted and we would be feel fully supported. It was here that the plan fell down.

There are no new parts. They stopped making them.

Now I don’t want to sound like an old Granddad, but in the olden days things seemed to be built to last. You bought something and maybe ten or fifteen years later you still had it. Yes, it may have required some repair in the interim, but that didn’t matter because you knew  someone  who could fix it; the hoover repair man (or woman), the TV repair man (or woman),  the typewriter repair man (or woman), the toaster repair man (or woman), and they had ‘the bit’ that made it go.

Therefore, what we have now, while we wait for the delivery of our new printer, is a not-so-clever big bit of plastic, taking up perfectly good desk space. After just five years we need a whole new one because we they no longer make ‘the bit’.  Hardly sustainable.  Hardly sensible.  It’s not progress, it’s ridiculous.

Matt Taylor, CRed System Coordinator, LCIC