Sustainable and affordable should be synonymous

Author: Raymond Johnston

Source: praguepost.com, 4 August 2014

Everyone needs to start talking a common language when it comes to buildings

While making sustainable and green buildings has been catching on, there is still a long way to go before it becomes the norm. Office construction has been a leader so far, but sectors like residential housing are lagging.

To make it more attractive to both builders and buyers, the cost benefits need to be spelled out as they are not particularly transparent, according to James Drinkwater, senior policy adviser at the World Green Building Council.

The council provides a platform for collaboration among architects, investors, researchers, governments, product manufacturers and anyone else involved in buildings.

In the past, a lot of the messaging about environmental issues stressed the negative and emphasized guilt. The movement now is to emphasize cost benefits, and there is real need to get data that is standardized.

In terms of the EU, Drinkwater says there needs to be a single policy and a single set of standards rather than 28 different ones. The European Commission adopted a communication on sustainable buildings on July 1.

“Buildings don’t travel across borders but there is actually a need for us to have a common dialogue about what constitutes a sustainable building,” he said. Data is often not collected in the same way in different countries, and that needs to be standardized so that cost benefits of green buildings can be calculated.

While the European Commission has been looking at creating its own eco label for the top performing office buildings, Drinkwater says that other certification systems like LEED and BREEAM already fill those roles. More action does need to be taken in the residential area, though. But before that can be done reliable data is needed.

“There is a need to ask what some common performance areas are and can we start to measure them in the same way. There are different approaches in different countries and that means we can’t scale data, we can’t compare data,” Drinkwater said. “And that is a problem.”

Benchmarks of what constitutes good building performance need to be the same across the region. “It is crucial to get this data for the finance sector,” he said.

The World Green Building Council is working with the European Commission on a common framework for building assessment. It will look at energy efficiency and other key performance areas where everyone can look at these performance areas and standardize the ways they are measured.

“Then can we scale that data and can we make it useful for the financial community to show the risks of investing in non-sustainable building and the benefits of investing in more sustainable buildings.”

The data is also needed to be able to determine the best ways to offer incentives for sustainability. Some countries, for example are looking at penalties for non-sustainable building projects, and these funds would go toward incentives for greener projects.

“In terms of balance in the system it is definitely an idea which is catching on,” Drinkwater says, but he sees pros and cons to that approach.

“When people are penalized by regulators for not doing something it can often push them the wrong direction. … So instead pushing people to do the good thing they say, ‘Why the hell are people regulating me and trying to tell me what to do?’” he said, adding that it makes them even less inclined to listen.

Some research has already the examined economic benefits of green buildings. Office workers are more productive and have fewer sick days when there is good air quality and natural light. Residential communities can be safer and more efficient.

These macroeconomic benefits need to be measured. “If ultimately you are creating a more productive economy and you are creating better communities, happier communities, safer communities then those benefits can be monetized. We can justify using some of that positive revenue to offset the incentives,” he said.

A common stumbling block, especially in the residential area, is the notion that sustainability means higher costs, but that is changing. “We are trying to find ways of providing sustainable buildings that are affordable buildings,” Drinkwater says. “Ultimately sustainability should be affordability. They should be pretty much synonymous. So that is what we are going towards.”

He gave the example of solar panels, which have dropped dramatically in cost as demand went up and they were no longer a specialty item. “We are absolutely seeing costs in delivering these types of buildings go down.”

Another important concept is to look at the entire lifecycle of a building. “We know people demolish buildings and they send stuff to landfills. How can we link those guys who are demolishing buildings to product manufacturers at the start of the building process and use that content and put it back into the manufacturing cycle?” he said.

“In Europe we are working with the European Commission at the moment … to work on supported public policy to move sustainable building forward and for greater use of recycled content as well as buildings and products which are designed for deconstruction so their components can be taken apart and recycled easily,” he said. “We are working to break down the current incentives structure to allow more of that to happen, to incentivize the market.”

While sustainability is an easy concept to apply to office new buildings and residential homes in the suburbs, it poses a challenge for historical buildings. “It is definitely difficult,” he said. But he gave an example in the UK. When the people interested in historical preservation and those interested in sustainability came together they were able to create a common language on how to retrofit responsibly. “Part of sustainability is aesthetic and cultural of course,” he said.

A lot of research still needs to be done in this area, and so far Italy, which has many historical buildings, has taken the lead.

“Responsible retrofit that is sensitive to the historic qualities of buildings but is also looking at changing some of the environmental performance characteristics of those buildings is possible,” he said.

“We are only just starting to analyze how older materials really perform over time. A lot still to be done on that but we are really starting to make progress,” he said. “A lot of progress already out there.”

But the key to progress on the issue of sustainability is educating everyone who uses buildings about the benefits. So far a lot of real estate industry leaders have become interested in the benefits of sustainability, and more are likely to follow. But the end users need to be the ones who are satisfied.

“If the goal is really a better built environment on the planet for everyone to enjoy, then really we need to have a lot more voices than just leaders in the industry,” he said.

Drinkwateer was in Prague at the end of June for two days to present proposed EU legislation to the Czech market.

The Czech Republic has its own group that is a part of the WGBC. The Czech Green Building Council (CZGBC), established in 2009, is a non-profit making organization with the main objective to support sustainable buildings. It integrates companies from the whole value chain related to real estate and construction sector. It encourages the market to change the design, construction, renovation and management of the buildings to achieve healthy, prosperous, environmentally and socially friendly buildings that help to increase the quality of life.

http://www.praguepost.com/realty/40644-sustainable-and-affordable-should-be-synonymous