Decarbonising the built environment
CIBSE’s new president is very clear on the need to decarbonise the built environment — and how to go about it.
Andy Ford, CIBSE’s president for 2011/12 is quite clear what his priority for the future is. He says, ‘The challenge is to decarbonise our built environment — fast. We are not simply talking about building services; we are talking about influencing energy supply, architecture, design and materials.’
He highlights three principal reasons for the need to decarbonise the built environment.
• The threat of devastating climate change.
• The rapidly increasing price of energy.
• The issue of energy security.
The reasons why are becoming increasingly appreciated, or even understood and accepted.
On the threat of climate change due to significant rises in carbon-dioxide levels, he says, ‘By and large, governments around the world have got the message. To one degree or another, they are now calling for changes in the way we live.’
Looking at energy supply, Andy Ford observes that oil is becoming scarcer and that the UK is competing against rapidly expanding economies for its share. He referred to the latest annual report of BP that oil is no longer being discovered at a rate to meet world demand. ‘The supply, as they say, has maxed out.’
Perhaps more immediate and more alarming is energy security.
Much of Britain’s natural gas is delivered via pipelines that can be turned off by any number of what Andy Ford dubs ‘diplomatic incidents’.
The supply of oil is similarly made vulnerable by the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ — ‘an amazing and completely unpredicted phenomenon, where whole populations are calling for an end to despotic rule’.
Andy Ford expresses the view, ‘Anyone who lives in a free society will applaud this. On the other hand, the resultant conflicts reveal the fragility of our fuel supplies.’
And for what happens when fuel such as electricity suddenly becomes in short supply, he refers to the post-tsunami situation in Japan.
‘One unexpected result is that the world is fast running out of certain digital components. An earthquake on the other side of the world is threatening production schedules at the BBC. How strange and how delicate is our dependence on each other.’
And it is in decarbonising our built environment that Andy Ford believes that CIBSE and building-services engineers have a key role to play in the future — in addition to delivering ‘the greater comfort of mankind’.
Indeed he suggests that CIBSE has already contributed significantly to the debate over the last 10 years, especially since former president Terry Wyatt argued that the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide had already reach dangerous levels.
The importance of buildings in contributing to carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere has been repeatedly stressed by CIBSE, so it is only fitting that the institution should be leading the working group on changes to the non-domestic Part L (conservation of fuel and power in buildings) of the Building Regulations planned for 2013.
‘We understand how to design and construct buildings to minimise energy use,’ says Andy Ford. ‘Our Government listened, understood and has told us building engineers [notice the introduction of the term building engineer] to fix it.
‘And that’s what we are working to do.’
The challenge in decarbonising the built environment is not just about building services. ‘We are talking about influencing energy supply, architecture, design and materials.’
And the timescale of 2050 is within the working life of a young engineer who is just embarking on his career.
The scale of the task is that even if all new buildings from 2010 are ‘zero carbon’, existing buildings must be refurbished to a standard that will deliver improved comfort and an 80% reduction in carbon over their lifetime — at the rate of one every minute for the next 40 years.
To meet that challenge, Andy Ford believes the industry needs more engineers, engineers of all ages must have a mutual respect for one another, a continuous cycle of action must be created to deliver low-carbon buildings and CIBSE must widen its membership to embrace more skills.
His message to young people is that being a building engineer is a wonderful opportunity to really make a difference. ‘Let’s reverse the brain drain from engineering into finance. We need your brains here to create this new industry.’
Once you have the young engineers in the industry, there is a knowledge gap between younger and older engineers. Whereas young people traditionally learned from older people, sustainability was not a subject available to study 10 years ago. That means that young people with degrees in sustainability crash into the existing structure for getting things done. Andy Ford’s advice is, ‘We must respect the wisdom and knowledge accumulated by years in the industry, but we must also respect the new knowledge and research acquired by our graduates. Put the two together and we have a powerful team.’
Important work in delivering low-carbon buildings has already been done. Thinking about where CO2 comes from in creating buildings has been shared with architects, designers, civil servants, legislators and politicians. CIBSE has supported the Royal Academy of Engineering’s campaign to introduce professors of building engineering physics into all built-environment courses. And we have built some low-carbon buildings.
He stresses that the cycle must continue by examining how low carbon these buildings actually are and using that knowledge for continuous improvement in a cycle of think, share and do involving everyone involved in the design, construction and operation of buildings.
Achieving the feat of decarbonising the built environment requires the collaboration of people with a wide range of skills with mutual respect for one another. They include architects, facilities managers, energy and building managers — and many other engineers and groups.
Andy Ford believes that CIBSE should widen its membership to embrace such skills. ‘My vision is simply this: for CIBSE to facilitate an industry revolution that will impact upon the wellbeing of generations to come. And my conviction is that there is no reason why we cannot do so.’
