Category Archives: green buildings

When our Green Deal and BIM worlds collide

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Rushing from a Green Deal event in Lancashire to the ThinkBIM BIM event in Yorkshire has me thinking of when and how these two seemingly separate worlds and agenda will collide.

Green Deal, if successful will drive mass refurbishment of domestic, non domestic and commercial existing properties with an objective of reducing energy costs / use and carbon.

Not dissimilar to Building Information Modelling (BIM) objectives of reducing waste, energy, costs and carbons in a truly collaborative manner.

Within Green Deal there will be the need to model energy efficiency options and solutions, to really collaborate across green deal players, and importantly capture all building improvements within CoBie style BIM’s for future improved approaches and solutions.

Perhaps if we were to adopt the Americanism of ‘Re-Modelling’ rather than ‘Refurbishment’ the synergies may be more transparent.

Please share your thoughts and examples of GreenDeal meeting BIM

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Green Deal Opportunities for Industry

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At last a good, readable and comprehensive guide to Green Deal from the Energy Efficiency Partnership for Buildings (EEPB) and the Construction Products Association

The Guide is aimed at manufacturers, distributors, main contractors and installers, from individuals to SMEs to large organisations, wanting to work within the Green Deal. It provides an introduction to the Green Deal and ECO programme, highlights opportunities arising from it, sets out the requirements, including a checklist, and gives examples of area-based approaches and combinations of measures. It includes 10 case studies, with many more available at eepb.org.uk/resources

Although not unsurprisingly the pdf guide does focus on the housing sector (because thats where the green deal debate is at the moment) there are also useful guidelines, references and case studies for commercial green deal applications and opportunities. 

I guess its in light of the forthcoming debate around green deal in the commercial section that the EEPB have renamed from the Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes.

The guide should be available from the EEPB website or newsletter following simple subscription or membership process.

#GreenSkills a serious barrier

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The RAE (Royal Academy of Engineering) have today published their report:

Heat: Degrees of Comfort, Options for heating home in a low carbon economy. 

There is no possibility that the UK can meet its 2050 target for CO2 emissions without a fundamental change to the way our homes are heated, according to a report published today (12 January) by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Even with the most modern gas boilers and state-of-the art insulation, we cannot continue to heat so many homes by natural gas and still achieve an 80% cut in emissions as laid down in the Climate Change Act 2008.

Plumbers unprepared for move to energy-efficient homes, report warns (from the Guardian 12/01/12)

In addition to the technical options and considerations, throughout the report there are a number of important and timely comments around the skills issue for installation, AND, for behavioural operation, as the following extracts show:

… skills shortages will be a serious barrier to decarbonising heating unless addressed effectively

… behavioural aspects are very important. Studies in the UK and overseas tend
to reveal a variation of typically 3:1 between the upper and lower tails of the
energy use (between the 5% and 95% cases in the distribution) in technically
similar dwellings occupied by people from demographically similar
backgrounds. To make radical changes, it will therefore be essential to engage the occupiers.

… the lack of inter-discplinary work:

(A Cautionary Tale Case study): The initial problem they faced was finding a single contractor who would take responsibility for the whole installation including the GSHP, ground coils, underloor heating and the integration of the new system with their existing heating and DHW installations. Eventually, despite having contacted the Low Carbon Partnership and the Energy Savings Trust, they had to place separate contracts with a heat pump installer, a groundwork contractor, a plumber and an electrician for different parts of the work.

The work went ahead and a 16kW heat pump, 150m of slinkies, a thermostore tank, solar collectors, two underfloor heating coils and room thermostats were installed.

When the system was operational the householder was shocked to find the electricity bill increased from £30 per month to £250. After 18 months of high electricity consumption and many visits by the different companies involved, it emerged that the heat pump had been wrongly connected so it was providing heat to the underfloor heating at the temperature required by the storage cylinder for DHW and, although the room thermostats were controlling the pumps on the underfloor heating manifold, they had not been interlocked with the heat pump which, in consequence, was running continuously at its maximum return temperature.

… often there was no single contractor responsible for the installation, which might involve a ground works contractor, a plumber, a heat pump installer and an electrician. As a result of there being no ‘design authority’ for the whole system, there was no single point of responsibility or any liability for the eventual performance of the installation

… there is clearly a need for many more engineers and technicians who understand the systems engineering that has to go into a heat pump installation and who can integrate the various energy systems in a customer’s house. The present provision in higher education and further education is well below what will be required. This could be a significant brake on the deployment of low-energy systems

“Our building performance studies show unmanageable complication is the enemy of good performance. So why are we making things more complicated in the name of sustainability?” – Bill Bordass,  The Usable Buildings Trust

and in conclusion:

17.4  Skills
The levels of applications engineering required to integrate a heat pump in a property along with local energy sources and other intelligent loads, such as chargers for electric cars, is much higher than is generally available in the trades that traditionally provide heating and related services to domestic consumers. A new type of energy use professional will be needed. Recruiting these will compete with the demands of new nuclear power, offshore wind and other energy industries that are already flagging-up staff shortages.

Skills shortage will potentially be a serious barrier to decarbonising heating unless addressed effectively.

Green Deal November

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*Updated 11/11/11*

Seems Green Deal is high on my agenda for November! Here is a round up on ‘happenings’ and events:

On the 2nd I attended an interesting Green Skills in construction event hosted by teh Guardian. I blogged here on the Great Green Re-Skilling but the Guardian report will be out on the 16th Nov.

On the same day I attended the GovToday Sustainable Communities event where the reduction on solar FITs seemed to feature in every presentation and discussion, especially in the community solar programmes.

On the 10th I am talking to SELCA with an overview and awareness session on Green Deal. And of course the 9/10 November is Sustainability Now with plenty of Green Deal essentials, and fringe chats.

On the evening of the 10th I will be across in Leeds for the Green Vision event ‘The Landlord/Tennant Divide: Understanding User/Occupier motivations and engaging people’ A great line up of speakers. Details here

The 17th November is our be2camp Retro-fiting and the Green Deal event In London, taking a look at how the role of the web and social media amongst other aspects, all in the familar be2camp styled un-conference, with some great presenters.

I am sure Green Deal will pop up in the TBIMChat tweetchat on the 22nd November, exploring how BIM and Sustainability will work together.

I will be talking at the Lancashire Best Practice Club  Preparing for Green Deal event on the 23rd in Blackburn, Lancs with Brian Berry from the FMB and many others. (only a couple of spaces left for this one!)

The UKGBC have an interesting Green Deal Consultation event on the 30th November

And then finally to round off the month we have the Green Vision half day web enabled conference, Retrofit Reality, in Leeds. This will again be with a twist, keynote speeches from industry leaders and a range of expert led round table discussion groups to really get to grips with the issues.

And in between all this supporting some great contractors such as Emanuel Whittakers and others prepare for Green Deal  an exciting trial of PAS 2030 requirements on a live retro-fit project with Salix Homes.


Green Deal Update Sources

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Slowly green deal details are emerging.  A number of people and organisations have asked me for good reliable Green Deal update sources.  Across the web the situation still seems very patchy and I guess will remain so until we have further news from the government on the Energy Bill and release of PAS 2030 for consultation for example.

UPDATE: PAS 2030 Issued for Consultation

However, here is my list of sources as a starter for 10.  If you have any to add (that are informative rather than outright service/product/training ‘sell’) please add to comments and I will incorporate.

DECC Green Deal 

DECC Green Deal Advisory Forums

Energy Savings Trust Green Deal 

Green Deal Guide Green Deal Guide

Microgeneration MCS Certificate Scheme

Asset Skills – Green Skills

The Guardian Sustainable Business Built Environment Hub

Social Media (Blogs, Forums and Twitter):

Green Deal Linkedin Forum

Fairsnape (this blog)  eg: CSR – the hard, the soft and the CSR

Great Green Deal (PB Energy Solutions Blog)

Green Deal Twitter List (curated by me @fairsnape)

Green Deal News Weekly (Twitter  based Paper.li) (curated by me @fairsnape)

Green Deal Providers (Blog)

Future Fit Blog 

Passive House Whistler (and bears!)

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I was delighted to be able to visit the Austrian Passive House in the Lost Lake area of Whistler during our recent RV travels through British Columbia.

The house was recently gifted to Whistler from the Austrian Olympic Team and provides club room for mountain biking and nordic skiing clubs.

It was designed as a family house for 5 and used as the HQ for the Austrian olympic committees, teams and press during the 2010 winter games.

Claimed to be the greenest building at Whistler, the Austrian Passive House was designed in Austria but built by local contractors using imported materials (incl timbers?) from Austria. ‘Legacy’ crops up on all the web search, that the building outlive the Olympics and provide demonstration of passiv haus concepts, using less than a tenth of energy an equivalent local Canadian house would use. It was the first (and only?) Passiv Haus accredited building in Canada

The Austrian House dominates a key entry point to the Lost Lakes area that provides stunningly smooth singletrack biking (and I guess XC skiing in winter). I couldnt shake the apprehension however of cycling around a singletrack bend into a bear. We had seen plenty of bears on our travels, including at Whistler, and the fresh bear scat, along with the ripening berries, a favourite bear treat in a food-stressed area, added to the apprehension.

Links:

Austrian passive house   The Greenest House at the Games 

Whistler Bears : Bear death toll continues to rise

Construction Video

Great Green Deal Re-Skilling?

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Following on from the depressing news that Construction lacks green, key business and foresight skills, in particular 43% of employers dont feel they understand the implications of green issues, or ability to identify the training needs, are we facing a green deal barrier?

Need for New Skills

We read in the Low Carbon Plan from the Government, (“much re-skilling of the construction industry to deliver the planned targets of greenhouse gas reduction by at least 34% by 2020 and 80% by 2050″),  from the IGT Report of the need for green skills, we read that PAS 2030 and Green Deal codes of conduct will access sustainability skills, training and development. The FMB Cut the Carbon programme focuses on the need for new skills.

Will it turn out OK?

Rob Hopkins in his Transition Handbook, (see my blog back in 2008 time for built environment transition?) in a futures scenario talked about the Great Construction Reskilling, the NEF paper, How it all turned out ok celebrates how we recovered our lack of traditional skills, succeeded in addressing the localism issue and turned energy ineffective buildings into models of zero carbon. (again my blog: How it all turned out OK in 2050)

Who is defining …

But do we have an understanding of what green skills mean? Is it just an understanding of good sustainability awareness (eliminating waste, reducing carbon, buying local etc), Is it technical, natural materials (see the Transition Culture archive for reskilling) or is it something more deeper, profound.

Green Re-skilling starts at the board level…

Do we imply the reskilling is just for operatives, or wider to include supervisors, managers and (in my view essential) board directors and senior managers? Maybe this isn’t a training issue to be lodged with the HR team but one of crucial CSR strategy for organisation? (see A Low Carbon Diet For Construction Boards)

A question then …

What are construction boards, contractors, installers, training organisations, industry bodies doing, plan to do, or indeed have done to understand and address sustainability skills.

What is Green Deal: the hard, the soft, the CSR and the terminology.

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Just what is Green Deal? Associated with my support for organisations developing strategies and implementation plans for ‘transition’ to eco refit or green deal work, the following documents are proving very useful indeed.

Getting Ready for Green Deal (Fairsnape and PBEnergy)  Is your organisation ready and equipped to work in green deals? Check against our top tips.  Time to green your board. It is absolutely essential that your Green Deal approaches are fully supported and sponsored by a board level director or equivalent. Green Deal has to be a key element of your CSR and Business strategy, not a bolt-on or suck and see approach.

What is the Green Deal and how will it work? (greenenergynet.com) Gives a general overview of what will be involved in Green Deal, who it is aimed at and useful terminology

Behaviour Change and Energy Use (Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team). Its not all hard technology and finance as this recent publication demonstrates. Energy reduction alongside Green Deal is one of behaviour change, nudge approaches and good CSR understandings.

This paper draws on evidence from behavioural economics and psychology to outline a new approach to enabling people, at home and at work, to reduce their energy consumption and reduce their bills in the process.

Behaviourally based changes that reduce emissions have major advantages. First, the benefits can be very fast, unlike major infrastructure changes that can take years, or even decades – a 1% gain today is worth more than a 1% gain tomorrow. Second, they can be highly cost-effective. Third, they can provide savings and other benefits directly to citizens

Green skills ‘essential’ to carbon-conscious building industry. Recent Guardian Sustainable Business article.

Green Deal Terminology

Improver – The household, business or community that carries out energy saving measures through the Green Deal.

Green Deal Provider – This is the organisation funding the Green Deal. They could be your utility supplier or commercial companies, charities or social landlords.

Accredited Advisor – This is the person who recommends energy saving measures that could be carried out on an improver’s property. The advisor would document the energy saving measures on an Energy Performance Certificate which he would pass on to the Green Deal Provider and Improver.

Accredited Installer – Approved contractor who carries out measures recommended by the accredited advisor. The Green Deal provider could be the Accredited Installer but could also contract this work out. Whoever the Accredited Installer is the contractual agreement is always between the Improver and the Green Deal Provider.

The Green Deal Plan – The Green Deal Provider offers the Improver a Green Deal Plan. This includes arranging an accredited advisor and installer. It also includes the financial and contractual agreement between the Green Deal Provider and Improver.

The Golden Rule – The financial savings derived from the Green Deal energy saving measures recommended by the accredited advisor must be equal to or more than the cost of implementing the energy saving measures and the repayments must not be longer than the expected life span of the measure.

For more on Green Deal awareness of support 

#tweetchats … observations + how to

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What is a tweetchat? In my view: a global online brainstorm: a fast paced collection of expert opinion, links, references, questioning, learning but above all sharing around the theme of the chat.

“A tweet chat is a pre-arranged chat that happens on Twitter through tweets that include a predefined hashtag to link those tweets together in a virtual conversation” Formal Twitter tweet chats are arranged in advance and occur at set times. They may include a formal agenda with a specific leader or “speaker”, or they might involve a free flowing discussion between all participants.

Dont attempt to make too much sense of it at the time, dive in, chat and share. Make sense of it later (which makes the output and transcripts very important). A brilliant use of twitter!

Having participated in a number of tweetchats over tha last few months #futrchat, #CSRchat and the more frivolous #sugarfreetweets for example, I recently took on the task of oragnising and facilitaing #GVisChat ‘Future of Energy in Buildings’ for Green Vision.

For an inaugural chat it worked well, with thought leaders and seasoned tweeters conversing and sharing with those who made their first tweet during the chat, which has to be a result.

Here then are my thoughts and observations:

Preparation:

  • Choose a hashtag and check it hasnt been used for another chat.
  • Most hashtags end ‘chat’ which has become a notation for tweetchat.Make the hashtag simple and memorable
  • Get the word out there – through twitter but also through related groups, forums both online and real.
  • Get the time and date agreed: Check there are no other big, subject related chats scheduled around the same time: Balance between working day time (9-5) and a global enthusiast though leader chat: It does seem the popular time is 7, 8 or 9 pm UK time for a global input. (and looking at a recent spreadsheet of existing scheduled chats, USA tweeters would appear to be more comfortable with the tweetchat format.)
  • Have instructions you can point to in order to help participants, for eg: How to take part in a tweet chat and How to join up to twitter (you don’t want to exclude those not on twitter who may see the whole twitter thing a bit of a dark mystery)
  • Agree roles – I think there are three, a facilitator, a subject driver and an amplifer See below  (I did all three so it can be done but … wow – it gets busy)
  • Agree Questions in advance, say 5 or 6 but be prepared to change and flex with the direction the chat may take.

Setting up to capture: 

Register the hashtag with  tweetchat.. Tweetchat provides a nice simple format that puts you in the ‘tweetchat room’ for the chosen hashtag and automatically adds the hashtag. Overall though I find tweetdeck easier to use during the chat.

‘Facilitating’ the chat:

  • Introduce topic, and the first question.  The start of the chat was probably the most ‘awkward’: unlike real meetings there are not many signals to pick up on that people are there and ready to go so you have to dive in. I had a sense of I was waiting for tweeters and they for me to kick off.
  • Welcome – be sure to welcome people as they enter the chat, that is make their first hashtaged contribution
  • Let twitter know the chat is running
  • Feed in the questions – the skill would appear to be in introducing next question at the right time, not too soon or too late – keep the fast pace going…
  • Amplify good points (ie RT and add to)
  • Praise good points being made, thank people for links (as you would in a real world brainstorm)
  • Challenge, question, throw in off the wall out there concepts to widen the discussion (eg future of energy chat led to possibility of building on the moon)
  • Give time checks, especially towards the close  – the 60mins flies past rather swiftly!
  • Watch for contributions from people forgetting or not using the hashtag and RT them so they get into the mix. (and remind people to use the # and Q and A numbering)

During the chat I used tweetdeck so I could have a DM channel open for closed communication with other hosts and a timeline to watch for related tweets from friends who forgot the hashtag!

Post Chat

Use a service such as the brilliant Tweetbinder to capture the tweets as well as statistics on the tweetchat.

Drop the tweets into Storify to create a transcript

Use the tweets and links to craft an interview sytle article for publication on blogs or elsewhere

Thanks:  These are my observations and lessons learnt from organising a tweetchat for the first time. I do hope they help and encourage you to get involved in a chat and to facilitate, they are great fun, generate a real buzz and to me prove the potential business and learning power of twitter is yet to be fully realised

I am indebted to Cindy @Urbanverse, a great friend and seasoned tweetchat expert for help and guidance

 

Ten tips: building green for contractors on a budget

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Ever-changing regulations surrounding environmental policy require contractors to re-examine business practices on a regular basis. Unfortunately, contractors are left to interpret a great deal of industry regulations on their own. Among these confounding regulations are those concerning environmental protection.

Guest blogger, Kirsten Bradley, working to educate professionals and their lawyers about construction industry regulations in the USA has the following advice … and although USA focused, these tips make good sense elsewhere … 

Once contractors have worked their way through the legal jargon found in many environmental policies, they might feel overwhelmed about what exactly their responsibilities are. Fortunately, however, a number of services and products have been created to help eco-friendly contractors.

The National Association of Home Builders plans to roll out the first and only national ratings standard for remodeled homes this year. Contact them for more information on how green products will affect ratings. (In the UK we wait for the Green Deal installers’ Code of Practice and a Publicly Available Specification (PAS) for the retrofitting of energy efficiency measures in domestic and non-domestic buildings)

  • Taking advantage of tax credits and other applicable programs, contractors can offset some of the additional costs they might incur by using eco-efficient approaches to building.
  • Enroll in green building event, training seminars and/or certification programs. (For example, the U.S. Green Building Council backs the LEEDHomes Raters program Home Raters are qualified to assess the degree to which a home has been constructed according to accepted standards of environmental sustainability)
  • Educate yourselves. Sign up for REGREEN, a program that distributes information about how to build green on a smaller scale. The U.S. Green Building Council partnered with The American Society of Interior Designers Foundation to create REGREEN, the first countrywide green residential remodeling manual for existing homes
  • If you think your customers don’t know or care about green building initiatives, think again. A February 2011 poll of Angie’s List members found that 50% of respondents plan to include green building elements in their home this year, but first they want to learn more. Educate yourself so that you will be able to educate your customer and market your services better.
  • According to some estimates, existing homes account for 94% of buildings in the U.S. The average age of these homes is 30 years, which means they often have drafty doors and windows as well as poorly insulated walls, attics and crawl spaces. Additionally, these properties are responsible for 21% of the nation’s carbon emissions. Herein lies a huge profit opportunity for contractors who educate themselves on green remodeling and market themselves to the right crowd.
  • Look at purchasing a green performance bond for your projects in addition to required contractor license bonds . Clients prefer working with professional contractors who are licensed and bonded because they appreciate the extra layer of financial protection
  • For smaller projects, check out the Habitat for Humanity ReStore as a resource. ReStore resale outlets sell reusable and surplus building materials to the public at low costs. Merchandise at the restore is especially good for home remodeling projects
  • Draw up window plans that take full advantage of passive solar energy and help maintain proper indoor temperature. Contractors should always verify that all windows are strategically placed in beneficial locations. This is a great example of implementing inexpensive, eco-conscious design that has a real impact on sustainability.
  • The cost of renewable products like solar platforms decreases as the technology gains traction with the buying public. Installing new products in today’s construction projects will play a large role in increasing eco-friendly building and, in turn, drive down costs.
  • Consider that building a completely new structure using eco-friendly processes might be easier and cheaper than retro-fitting an existing structure that has inherent design flaws.

Contractors who take advantage of green building will not only save money over the long haul, but also promote health benefits from building structures without toxic, energy-wasting materials.

What do you do – do you have any tips for improving green build?

 Kirsten Bradley is working to educate professionals and their lawyers about construction industry regulations through SuretyBonds with a special interest in helping contractors access more green building resources. Follow Kirsten on twitter @suretybond