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.

Germany-EoE links via Tollé Green Architecture

A flat-lining EU economy, the construction industry in crisis. This is not a good time for an architect's visit to the UK, you might think. So why did Sandra & Leif Tollé come to Cambridge seeking meetings and with plans for a UK architectural practice (Tollé Green Architecture)? Add to this, their underlying ethos of social responsibility.  Surely this was a no-brainer in the free-market UK economy currently led by a right-leaning government!



The answer as to why the visit was successful has four parts:

1. German green retrofitting and new-build expertise

Britain has international obligations regarding global warming. Domestic fuel prices are increasing. And greener building regulations by the present and past governments have been implemented. These factors are slowly seeping into the consciousness of the UK construction sector. Our usual British reaction is to put off any changes until they are unavoidable. It is only in the past few years that green construction ideas and technologies have begun to be taken seriously.

This contrasts with a much stronger and longer green tradition in Germany and Scandinavia. Experts reckon that these countries have a lead in green construction of between 10 and 25 years.

The existing housing stock in the UK also provides significant challenges with regards to retrofitting. A previous article about Ecobuild 2012 mentions hard to treat properties in the UK http://miltoncontact.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/looking-back-on-ecobuild-2012.html.

The Green Deal is expected to accelerate green practices in the UK.

In all our appointments with UK partners, expertise was seen as the key advantage provided by Tollé Green Architecture. This comes from a German parent practice with decades of experience in dealing in major industrial construction. There is also considerable retrofitting expertise, not only in single houses but also in multiapartment blocks (see: Practical examples of retrofitting in Verden, Germany http://miltoncontact.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/practical-examples-of-retrofitting-in.html).

2. Taking an international perspective

Leif & Sandra Tollé see Tollé Green Architecture not just as a local UK company. The intention is to establish practical regional links at several levels, e.g. between North-Rhine Westphalia and the East of England. One level includes the exchange of craftsmen and women, training or retraining in the skills of the green construction sector. Another looks at collaboration in research.

Tollé Green Architecture is looking for UK partners and locations to work with. They came with a clear proposal, including potential German institutions as partners.  Preliminary contacts were made through Milton Contact Ltd, the British Consulate and UKTI.

The East of England is an ideal location for forging such links. This is due to the combination of universities (Cambridge, ARU, UEA) and  green networks (Cleantech, UKCEED, Enterprise Europe East). There is a training centre with existing European connections (Smartlife Low Carbon). Furthermore, in this region, companies like HSA Accountants have a familiarity and competence in assisting companies with EU connections.

3. Social perspectives

Sandra & Leif Tollé of Tollé Green Architecture take the role of the architect within society seriously.  They have made it a core part of their ethos. As Sandra reiterated at each meeting, the architect does not simply raise a building. They also create an environment which impacts on the people who work, rest and play within it for decades.

The social element of the company was the one that received a mixed response. It was irrelevant in some meetings and struck a strong chord in others. With Triodos Bank, it was essential, as they are an ethical and social bank.

A social philosophy is not incompatible with good business in construction, as shown by Scansca's successful Seven Acres development in South Cambridge (Trumpington http://homes.skanska.co.uk/Projects/Seven-Acres/).

The current economic climate is also changing the social fabric within the UK. The private housing market has seen a shift towards staying put and improving existing properties. Prices and circumstances are pushing more people to rent rather than house buying. The rise in fuel prices has exacerbated fuel poverty. The National Housing Federation quotes 4.5 million people in housing need in the UK with 1 million children in overcrowded accommodation. Many housing associations are experiencing increasing financial pressures.
Conversations with Peterborough based UKCEED and Cambridge's Eclipse Research revealed that UK policy makers and cities are therefore looking for solutions. They wish to achieve improvements in the environmental-, social- and economic aspects of an area.

4. Constructive partners 

Above all, the UK visit by Sandra & Leif Tollé of Tollé Green Architecture was successful because of the individuals and organisations we met. They were willing to listen, to provide constructive feedback and to give us insights into their respective areas of expertise. We were also directed to useful future contacts and events.

The world and its economies may seem to be globalised. However each country and region has its cultural, social, economic and construction related customs and regulations. Armed with their expanded knowledge, Sandra & Leif Tollé will find UK partners for their European collaboration in the short term. In the longer term they will establish Tollé Green Architecture as part of the UK's green construction expertise.

2012 Paralympics - Enabling times?

Talking with Pamela Mungroo (Freelance producer, presenter, podcaster) earlier this week, our conversation turned to the Paralympics. Not only were we both looking forward to the events, we thought these games would be a major turning point in public perception and attitudes to …

And there we already hit a problem. Our very use of language reflects the centuries of prevalent attitudes towards “the disabled”. Most of the descriptive terms have a negative, diminishing or even derogatory connotation.

Pamela had in fact written an interesting Master's thesis (“How the historical attitudes, both artistic and cultural, continue to influence today’s visual imagery of the deformed body” )  which I read later that evening. It illustrated how a separation into “them” and “us” had existed through the ages and been reflected and reinterpreted in the current philosophies of the day, using the visual media as an example. It was quite an eye opener to see how imagery was used to portray a certain message, even by organisations looking for funding to improve or prevent the plight of “the disabled”.

Open publication - Free publishing - More disability

It prompted me to see if there was an underlying biological basis to the creation of these attitudes in scientific publications – perhaps in terms of visual appearance and even mate selection. Yes, there seemed to be a trend for the preference for facial symmetry, for example (Rhodes et al 1998, “Facial symmetry and the perception of beauty” http://www.springerlink.com/content/eq4178xr00474432/).

However, when you looked at body perception, there was a clear cultural bias, with people's attitudes shifting to those of the culture they were moving into. More telling was the prevalence of research into perceptions of female beauty in results of searches – cultural bias was even affecting the nature of certain types of research and answers sought.

In Britain, attitudes towards women, race and sexuality have gradually shifted over the past century alone. These elements of our society have been absorbed within the current accepted norm. Pamela and I thought that with the Paralympics in London, we were seeing a broadening of the perception of what the norm of our population actually was – to include “the disabled”, rather than see them as “other”.

You can already see the shift in attitude by the way the media are portraying paralympians and the upcoming Paralympics. Photography and filming alone are done in a much more sympathetic way, looking to convey more about the person themselves or the ideals they stand for. Trawling through Channel 4's website, the official Paralympics TV channel, the articles were also remarkably free of phrases or terms with hidden negative connotations.

For me, the best article reflecting the change in attitudes was the tongue-in-cheek and racy blog “How many condoms will be used in the athlete's village at the Paralympics”  http://www.springerlink.com/content/eq4178xr00474432/. Fun, controversial and talking about people with a unique set of opportunities and physical challenges in the Athletes Village.

But look at the photos of the Channel 4 presenters for the games and you see that the harsh competitive nature of advertising prevails; no obvious “disability” on view here. This will require more time.

I'm looking forward to a great series of sporting events. I am excited about going to see the athletics in the Olympic Stadium in person. Where Beijing had brought paralympics to the wider consciousness, I hope London will bring a lasting change towards inclusion and respect for a previously neglected part of our society.