With the Lancs Best Practice Club looking to visit the eco show homes at Chorley soon the following links should give a balanced view on the background to these homes.
CarbonLimited – scathing comments on performance
Key findings from Chorley
Worldchanging suggested in a recent post a collaborative institute with classes for every city (US) to
… offer education and examples about urban design fundamentals – what makes a public (space) work, what makes a street pedestrian-friendly, what makes a neighborhood livable – to those who are actually zoning, approving, building, and planning our cities … Not only would it breed better design, but since these classes would be collaborative, it could help to reduce the ‘silo’ mentality that is still pervasive in local governments.
The proposal also suggests that only the members of the ‘institutes’ and the ‘classes’ run are shortlisted to tender for city infrastructure or facilities work.
An excellent idea, but perhaps better approached by addressing hearts and minds so that we work collaboratively anyway by nature (rather than the opposite at the moment) . This needs the principles of integration to be a key part of built environment education.
The notion of making this a prequal issue is again excellent – understanding how a particular city, town or region works is essential in delivering requirements, and would move to a more local supply base for design, construction and fm. A benefit aligned to Community Based FM (CBfM) and the Transition Towns approaches. (raised on isite before)
An approach our (UK) local authorities and councils should consider perhaps. Add in the merton rule to the equation – ie understanding the local specific onsite renewable energy requirements and opportunites – and this could be a powerful way forward.
Good to see Philip Sellwood, Chief Exec at Engery Saving Trust blogging on the Medway coal power station at Old King Coal
Philps blog is one to blogroll, bookmark or RSS or just read !
Interestingly Philip makes the connection with a certain lady who closed down the coal industry some 20 years ago – this fact has apparently been the main contribution to the UK’s reduction in CO2 over the last decade !
Mel over at Elemental posted an interesting and useful round up of BREEAM stuff. BREEAM and LEED (the US version) is certainly in the news at the moment, with both appearing to develop into specific sectors of construction. Rightly or wrongly BREAM and LEED will become central to achieving carbon neutrality and other sustainable targets in the coming years.
I am still not convinced of the benefits of these schemes over the life of a facility and contribution to the users business or organisational costs. (ie a focus on the 1, rather than the 5 or 200 from the 1:5:200 school of thinking)
My comments left in response to Mels article are copied below…would appreciate your thoughts…
…BREEAM and LEED tend to be taking off in all directions – much as the EFQM did 5 or so years ago – can this be a good thing or is it a watering down of a good original concept?
We are seeing more and more targets being set to achieve BREEAM Excellent for this or that sector, yet for the construction and fm sectors this means very little, so is ignored.
Even with the more eco aware construction organisations , their contribution to the whole process is sometimes seen as too limited, (patronising maybe?) ie around waste, transport etc, rather than making real contribution to the environmental life cycle of the facility, so again drops quickly to the bottom of the to do lists.
Work has kept me from blogging for the last week or so … plenty to catch up with though.
First up is the welcome for Phil’s (he blogs at sustainability blog) new Building Sustainability site project that launched this week.
Looks good Phil. One to bookmark, RSS etc
The cost of achieving carbon neutral or zero homes to the Code keeps raising its head, as Phil over at Sustainability Blog points out.
I didnt catch the UCT speakers name on the US Greenbuild365 live webcast testerday, I was listening rather than watching, but a sound bite delivered with typical American style caught my ear…“The building sector is over-estimating the cost and under-estimating the impact of climate change issues”
How true, when we think about the moaning around the cost of the new Code for Sustainable Housing, which will be seen as a smokescreen for reluctance in doing anything at all.
Jonathan Porrit writing in his blog and in BD… makes the point well… why put a price on the importance of carbon free homes?
Government policy is being applied to decarbonising both new and existing housing, with Building Regulations and the Code driving that transformation. An industry that has lived for far too long in a feather-bed world, where nobody gave a tinker’s cuss about energy and resource efficiency, is being incentivised to change, and is marketing to rapidly rising consumer expectations. So why would anybody suppose that the combined genius of architects, designers, engineers, builders, surveyors and planners isn’t going to be able to come up with the zero-carbon goods?
I live in weird world these days. Having spent most of my life described as a prophet of doom, I now find myself having to shake people out of a fatalistic “can’t be done” mind-set! We seem to have moved from denial to despair in one effortless leap. So let’s get our creative act together here. After all, we don’t have a choice about this. Either we rise to this challenge, or the mealy-mouthed, risk-averse mediocrity that dominates this particular industry will take us all down with it.
The costs arising from inefficiencies through waste, poor project management, incorrect procurement, lack of working together, poor design, legal fees to check contract documentation and all the well documented historical ills of our sector etc far far outweighs the cost of achieving the Code… surely?
Acheiving the code needs a different mindset, as Einstein said… we cannot solve todays issues with the same mind set that created them in the first place...
By rearranging the debate towards opportunity we can can move from despair to exciting.
I recently participated in an online petition to 10 Downing St on the governments response to C and C. The response here is well worth a read, covering C and C and personal; carbon trading, the climate bill and other carbon iniatives.
Cant help thinking there is some political greenwashing here.
Incidentally the petition was organised through Facebook and blogs – demonstrating the emerging recognition and influence these new social networks have.
I have added another blog to the blogroll – down there on the right somewhere – capablepeople is a new blog on the block and while it isnt a ‘built environment’ or ‘sustainability’ blog, is an entertaining and readable blog on general business improvement themes.
The first batch of posts covers a wide range from EFQM and ISO 9000 to Leadership via Joy Division and Formula 1.
One to add to your RSS or igoogle.
Further to the last post on carbon neutral and Code for Sustainable Homes, I am reminded from Phil’s blog over at Sustainability Blog that Building are running an on line semiar– a webinar on Code for Sustainable Homes.
(Unfortunately I am running a real life event at UCLAN, otherwise I would be there, or here, in front of wood stove fire with laptop!)
Melanie over at Get Sus is having currently holding a promotion drive to attract more subscribers to her excellent (and free!) Get Sus e-mail newsletter service that offers sustainable construction news for undergraduates, post-grads and professionals with an interest in sustainability and the built environment
It covers good practice case studies, new books and websites, sources of funding, and work experience, placements and permanent vacancies.
Download the pdf flyer here for promotion news – and a chance to win a T Shirt !
Fairsnape 