Working Towards Zero Carbon Buildings

By Chris Witte at Benchmark.

In a bid to tackle climate change, the Government has set challenging targets to reduce UK carbon emissions by 80 per cent, against 1990 levels, by 2050. With 17 per cent of emissions generated by the running of non-domestic buildings, it is clear that we need to rethink the way we heat, cool and power buildings.

There are two key angles. We can improve the energy efficiency of a building by design, reducing the energy required to run it, and we can use more efficient energy generation, so the energy we do use has low or zero emissions.

Technology to improve the latter is developing all the time, but it can be expensive and cost prohibitive for many projects. However, it is possible to make a real difference to the energy consumption required to operate a building through efficient design.

In particular, the facade or envelope of a building will dictate how energy efficient, or otherwise, it is. A high quality system can pay dividends in relation to reducing energy bills and whole life costs.

The latest developments in complete envelope solutions provide reliable technical information and concrete warranties, and will go a long way to help ensure a building is working towards being zero carbon.

They are easy to install and combine all the different elements of the building envelope to improve performance, build quality and on-site efficiency. As well meeting current legislation, they have also been designed to confirm to future standards such as BREEAM and revised 2010 Part L legislation ensuring that buildings are future-proofed.

Also, because these systems are now available as a single unit from a single supplier, the risk of theoretical performance diminishing in practice is avoided. By specifying individual system elements, even from the same supplier, combined system performance can often fall short, particularly in terms of air-tightness and U-values. Different elements of the building envelope are not always compatible and don't always integrate well as a single unit. Therefore, it is essential that only complete envelope systems that are tested as integrated units and offer robust guarantees are used to ensure desired performance and finish levels are achieved.

So by giving careful consideration to the envelope of a building at the design and build stage, and by installing complete and warranted systems made up of high quality products, it is possible to work towards a zero carbon property and meet building performance requirements, while also controlling operational costs.