Renewable energy competes with energy efficiency

CIBSE, renewable energy, energy efficiency
Renewables in perspective — David Fitzpatrick

Clients became transfixed by renewables after the Merton Rule, but it’s all about energy efficiency in these more pragmatic times, says CIBSE Patrons chairman David Fitzpatrick.

It is 10 years since the Merton Rule catapulted UK planning into the renewables age. The radical measure, introduced by Nick Smart and Adrian Hewitt at Merton Council, forced developers to find 10% of the energy demand of new commercial buildings over 1000 m2 from renewables or see their project stuck on the launch pad.

This had a galvanising effect on the renewables industry and challenged building-services designers like never before. It was certainly not universally popular and made many subsequently discredited assumptions about what renewable energy could deliver to individual buildings. However, every other local authority rushed to catch up or overtake the London Borough, and five years later the Merton concept became enshrined in law with the passing of the Planning & Energy Act 2008.

How times have changed.

Following the worst recession in living memory, local authorities and the Treasury have had to adopt a much more pragmatic approach. The renewables-at-any-cost mindset is no longer appropriate with the country desperate to get new housing developments underway and kickstart the moribund construction market. The coalition Government is determined to sweep away as many perceived barriers to development as possible and cut construction costs by 20% across the board.

The new Part L of the Building Regulations, having been delayed for six months, requires paltry carbon reduction improvements of just 6% for new residential projects and 9% for commercial builds. The Government’s stated aim of zero-carbon buildings by 2016 and 2019 now looks like a pipedream.

It could be argued that the new Part L will make buildings less suitable for renewables by reducing heat loads through improved insulation. Renewables need heat demand to operate efficiently.

Also, alongside Part L the Government has launched a consultation into ‘allowable solutions’, which should unhitch individual building targets from renewables and allow clients to find more imaginative and cost-effective ways of cutting their carbon emissions across multiple buildings and sites.

This prospect reflects the fact that clients are far more interested in getting their overheads under control than emissions targets. They also have limited budgets. To achieve better-performing buildings cost-effectively they have to focus everything on cutting energy demand — not trying to meet ever-rising demand with expensive renewable solutions.

The country is also facing a critical energy shortage. Our ageing coal-fired power stations are all being shut down, removing 11% of our total power generation capacity over the next three years. Attempts to replace capacity with new nuclear power stations and renewables are a long way behind schedule. Energy is becoming a precious commodity with all the associated costs.

On target — energy efficiency to reduce energy consumption is more effective than simply meeting demand.

The energy marketplace is extremely volatile, with gas and electricity costs racing upwards. However, energy-efficient strategies are poorly understood by most commercial-building operators. There is a tendency to focus on technologies and assume that adding renewables or energy-efficient products to a building will solve the problem. In many cases, it actually makes the problem worse by over-complicating things.

A priority for the building-services supply chain should be to help our clients get back to first principles. This is very much a focus for CIBSE Patrons, whose members are drawn from all parts of the sector —including manufacturers, contractors and consultants.

Patrons member the Building & Engineering Services Association (B&ES) is very concerned about the tendency of project teams to over-complicate projects. ‘The secret is to keep things as simple as possible and to consider the outcome at the very start of the process,’ says the association’s President Bruce Bisset.

‘Unfortunately, just when we need things to be simpler they have a tendency to get more complicated. The new systems being deployed to meet climate change targets can be more difficult for users to understand, and the way these systems work in tandem with a building’s envelope can also be critical.

‘The key element is integration. How do new technologies work with old? How are they operated? What is the overall control strategy for the building? Having a properly thought-through strategy means renewables might not be required at all,’ adds Bruce Bisset.

Although not usually renewable energy but an effective method of reducing carbon emissions is CHP, which is growing in popularity because it can be easily and quickly retrofitted directly into buildings. Mini-CHP [below 50 kW(e) capacity] is particularly popular.

‘CHP is the flavour of the moment — it is the system of choice because it is quick and easy to install to meet planning requirements for carbon reduction,’ says David Shaw, LZC national sales manager for another Patrons member Baxi Commercial Division. ‘It is benefitting from the combination of big stick — local and European legislation calling for low-carbon solutions — and the big carrot — significant energy cost savings.’

However, David Shaw believes consulting engineers are getting confused by the seemingly contradictory demands of Part L and local planning officials still insisting on renewables for individual buildings.

‘This is forcing them to make perverse technology choices that may not be in the long-term interests of the building owner or operator,’ he says. ‘We are seeing terrible mis-matches because designers are getting confused — and, even worse, they don’t know they are getting confused. It is important that designers make sure they are specifying an appropriate solution for the building and not just ticking boxes,’ adds Mr Shaw.

It is very tempting for the whole supply chain to get sucked into designing to meet planning rules and forgetting that the building does actually have to work for many years into the future.

Design teams need to take a deep breath and a step back. The economic realities we are all facing could result in a legacy of better-performing buildings, thanks to more appropriate and more sensible technical choices.

*David Fitzpatrick is chairman of CIBSE Patrons and sales director of Ruskin Air Management.

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