When it comes to going green or fulfilling net zero carbon targets, throwing up a new building – planning and financing aside – is a relatively easy route. But what about the 80% of our built environment that already exists? If the nation is really to achieve its target of net zero by 2050 – or before if it is really serious about tackling climate change – what are we going to do with our existing building stock?
As part of EG’s series of specialist podcasts looking into numerous issues around sustainability and climate change, we gathered a selection of industry specialists to discuss just that: Sarah Ratcliffe, chief executive of the Better Buildings Partnership, Chris Bennett, managing director of Evora Global, Brian Bickell, chief executive of Shaftesbury, Karen Jamison, head of sustainability at Workspace Group and James Ford, partner at engineer Hoare Lea.
“Our existing buildings weren’t built with zero carbon in mind so there are lots of challenges that we need to look at,” says the BBP’s Ratcliffe.
When we talk about retrofitting, we often talk about refurbishment. Taking an empty building back and making it better. Rip out the bad and refit with the better. That’s great and a lot of buildings need it, but as both Hoare Lea’s Ford and Evora’s Bennett say, the quest to make an old building more efficient can sometimes bring with it a carbon cost.
“A real focus for net zero is usually energy efficiency,” says Bennett. “Often we think about the heating ventilation systems, but actually the fabrication of the building is fundamental. But when you think of changing out the fabric of the building that has a massive impact on embodied carbon so you could actually work yourself against achieving net zero by trying to become more energy efficient in the building.”
Sweating the small stuff
So, if a full-scale refurbishment can sometimes be more carbon intensive than any of us want, what else can we do for our existing buildings that will enable us to achieve the country’s goal of being net zero by 2050.
“I think we can get carried away by thinking about large refurbishments and all the things we can do,” says Ratcliffe. “Quite a lot of the things that we can do to improve our existing buildings can be relatively small interventions. Upgrades in lighting, actually getting the building management systems to work, commissioning it correctly, getting people to manage the building well and making sure they understand how the building works. These don’t necessarily have to be huge interventions.”
We get more and more questions from lenders and equity investors because, if you don’t confront this, you’re going to be faced with loss or the value of destruction completely
– Brian Bickell, Shaftesbury
But there does need to be a driver for change. And enforcement to see it through. Minimum energy efficiency standards and energy performance certificates have gone some way, but our experts agreed that EPCs were a “blunt tool” for the job.
“We’ve been conscious of this challenge ever since the prospect of minimum energy performance standards,” says Shaftesbury’s Bickell. “That’s when the penny dropped with us that not doing anything was not an option.”
The majority of Shaftesbury’s portfolio, spread across 15 acres of London’s West End, is old. Its portfolio of some 600 buildings has an average age of 150 years, with some buildings as old as 250 years. Everything it owns is in a conservation area and some 20% of the estate is listed.
“These buildings would not be lettable now if we hadn’t addressed them, so we’ve had a rolling programme in place,” says Bickell. “Whenever we get space back our aim is to improve the EPC rating by at least two grades and well above the current minimum standards as the minimum standards will change.”
Enforcement and incentivisation
But while making sure minimum standards are met across the Shaftesbury portfolio, Bickell says there is no real enforcement to make sure that all landlords comply.
“Responsible owners will think about them, but there is an awful lot of people out there who don’t. There needs to be more enforcement. There’s no point having more regulation without that,” he says.
That enforcement could come from government, like a new local law introduced across the Atlantic in New York City, which mandates the reduction of carbon emissions in Manhattan’s largest buildings by 40% by 2030 and by 80% by 2050 and comes with substantial financial penalties, up to $1m a year in some cases.
For Hoare Lea’s Ford, that kind of mandate, which is based more on a building’s actual performance rather than a certification, could be just the “incentivisation” the UK sector needs.
For Bickell, the enforcement nudge is coming from both tenants, who just won’t occupy poorly performing buildings and, increasingly, investors.
He admits: “We get more and more questions from lenders and equity investors because, if you don’t confront this, you’re going to be faced with loss or the value of destruction completely.”
Improving the UK’s existing stock is not an option, it is an imperative. And it won’t be an easy task – heritage buildings are currently outside the MEES regulations and many of the regulations are based on a ‘one-size-fits-all approach’ on efficiency, which clearly does not fit all buildings.
A focus on performance of individual assets and improving that might be a more manageable way to bring existing buildings up to standard.
And to do that, says Evora’s Bennett, we should borrow from the British Cycling team and Sir Dave Brailsford.
“It is marginal gains here,” he says. “We don’t have to try and do everything overnight, which can scare people. It’s trying to find those marginal gains, whether that’s engaging with an occupier or just making sure the building management system is regularly looked at so it works well for the occupiers and drives efficiency.”
Little, simple, efficient things to solve to a big problem.
To find out more about real estate’s role in protecting the planet visit EG sustainability hub
To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@egi.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette
