Investing time and money in a sustainable future

I had a meeting with the TSB in London, about the future for business in sustainable construction. What's more, they not only wanted to hear my opinions on problems to be tackled, they even offered a pot of 50m GBP I could tap into!

By now it should be apparent that I was not talking to a bank. My partner was the Technology Strategy Board, and I was not alone. Experts from a slew of construction interests, from business to research had come.

This was just one of a series of meetings, ably organised on behalf of the TSB throughout the UK by WECREATE.

The objective was to identify those stumbling blocks for businesses over the next five years active in the area of low impact buildings. My personal interest in participation came from work with architects active and expert in sustainable construction e.g. Tollé Green Architecture.

We were split into groups of three or four first, to brainstorm the key issues. This was followed by listing the top five barriers that prevented commercial progress in low impact construction. From these, TAB would identify where to provide support to overcome these barriers.

There were three problem areas and each group was given one to concentrate on:

1. Maximising existing stock
2. Zero carbon new build
3. Resilience to future climate

I found myself in a group tackling future climate (we had no choice).

A consistent theme, when chatting to other participants afterwards, was the need for clear communication and incentives. This should be working from the ground up.

In contrast to some of the northern European countries, sustainability issues are lower on the priority list of the UK population. Construction complies to the letter of regulations against the backdrop of a competitive market and striving to keep costs down, in a recession.

Changing attitudes with the public and in construction will ultimately provide the self motivated shift required for reasonable progress.

We were encouraged to tweet our identified issues and solutions under #lib201318. For the non-twitterati, four of our suggestions are repeated below:

1. App for people to easily calculate benefits of changes to their behaviour or buildings.

2. The need for an industry recognised prestigious prize to promote adoption of climate resilience.

3. Collection of real-time data from existing occupied buildings on performance.

4. Recognised standards for meeting resilience to future climate change.

In addition to having made some interesting new contacts, we left with the anticipation of the Technology Strategies Board future project-funding proposals.

What will the next 50m GBP go towards?

Fuel poverty-identifying solutions in the UK

The SHIFT conference on Fuel Poverty-Identifying Solutions took place on 28th September 2012, in the Church House Conference Centre, just a stone’s throw away from Westminster Abbey. Energy Experts, government departments and representatives from a variety of housing associations provided a wide breadth of speakers on the importance of fuel poverty as an important factor in social housing and tackling our future energy savings plans in the light of the Green Deal.

From Wordle-images

The green deal, and with it the energy company obligation (ECO), is a new initiative that has come live this October with the aim of pushing Britain towards higher energy efficiency. The principle appears simple. Energy companies are obliged to offer householders, i.e. the bill payers for energy, a solution whereby their properties are improved at no upfront cost to them. Instead an agreement is reached where the energy bill repayments will be less over the lifetime of the property than they would have been without the improvements, but with some repayment towards the energy companies. It appears to be a win-win situation as described by the DECC in their presentation. The householder saves on their bills, the country as a whole becomes more energy-efficient, and the energy providers recoup their initial investment in the improvements.

However Prof Brenda Boardman saw the green deal in a slightly different light. She is author of a study "Achieving zero: delivering future friendly buildings" and also of the book "Fixing fuel poverty: challenges and solutions". In her eyes the following would not benefit from the Green Deal:
• the fuel poor
• small households
• tenants in F or G rated properties
• anyone with a mortgage
In fact, in her opinion, the only ones who would benefit would be the elderly and those who wholly owned their properties.

Furthermore the fanfare of the Green Deal hides cuts in government investment for the Warm Front from £350 million to 0 at the end of this year. And the government has given up its objective of eradicating fuel poverty by 2016 and now only stated commitment to tackling it.

The situation is exacerbated, as noted by the speaker from the National Energy Action, by the fact that England is largely lagging behind the other states within the United Kingdom, in terms of its energy policy.

It is therefore all the more laudable that different housing associations have been looking at innovative solutions that would allow their landlords to understand and protect tenants from fuel poverty.

The running thread throughout these latter presentations was the benefit of educating the householders within the housing associations. This could range from having a "Green doctor" who could give advice on energy-efficient behaviour, to targeting improvements to the worst properties and bringing them up to at least the minimum SAP rating of around 80.

Gentoo, which manages about 30,000 properties, has "improving the art of living" as its objective. They asked staff and customers how much they would be willing to pay for energy efficiency improvements. Many were willing to pay an extra five pounds a week. Of the 12,000 properties retrofitted by Gentoo to date, 88% took on solar panels at an extra £1 a week and double glazing at an extra couple of pence per week. Only a few properties were not really interested in having improvements. The novel element was to collect the money for these improvements as part of the rent. The payment collection system was familiar to the householders and news soon spread around the community, creating a positive feedback to implement the changes. Note that this is an alternative system, independent of the Green Deal.

We also heard about the RELISH program from Worthing Homes. This looked at the impact of householder education with and without energy efficiency measures. The most amazing observation was, that householder education achieved the highest impact in terms of energy efficiency. Education alone resulted in an 18% drop in energy usage, amounting to approximately £220 per year savings. Low-cost improvements plus education reduced bills by £368. Low-cost improvements alone (without education) only achieved a £38 saving over the year. The key message was that householders could be removed from fuel poverty by education alone.

Fuel poverty is defined as when the expenditure on energy exceeds 10% of the household budget. With ever increasing fuel costs evermore people (and not just those on the lowest incomes) are falling within this margin.

Therefore, the message that education alone can reduce household energy bills by up to 20% is a significant insight that should be made more widely known.