Environmental Building Standards
Various environmental standards, directives and guidelines exist for the built environment, and many have been around for years, yet there is still a call for more by experts.
Is it that the current standards don’t go far enough? Or maybe they don’t cover every aspect of a building? Why don’t we have one government-approved standard that every building has to comply with to make things simple? Are we overcomplicating the process and therefore being counter-intuitive?
Below is an overview of some of the current standards available.
LEED
LEED is a well-known standard developed by the Green Building Council (GBC), and it claims to be the most widely used green building rating system. The framework delivers healthy, efficient, carbon and cost-saving green buildings.
To achieve LEED certification, a project earns points by adhering to prerequisites and credits that address carbon, energy, water, waste, transportation, materials, health and indoor environmental quality. Projects go through a verification and review process by GBCI and are awarded points that correspond to a level of LEED certification: Certified (40-49 points), Silver (50-59 points), Gold (60-79 points) and Platinum (80+ points).
LEED assign credits based on the following percentages:
35% of the credits in LEED are related to climate change
20% of the credits directly impact human health
15% of the credits impact water resources
10% of the credits affect biodiversity
10% of the credits relate to the green economy
5% of the credits impact community
5% of the credits impact natural resources
You can find out more here.
BREEAM
BREEAM is a well-known standard within the industry that claims to be the world’s leading sustainability assessment method for master planning projects, infrastructure, and buildings. It covers various stages of the built environment from design and construction through to operation and refurbishment.
BREEAM measures sustainable value in a series of categories, ranging from energy to ecology. Each one of these categories address the most influential factors, including low impact design and carbon emissions reduction; design durability and resilience; adaption to climate change; and ecological value and biodiversity protection.
Each category is sub-divided into a range of assessment issues, each with its own aim, target, and benchmarks.
BREEAM aims to address the following:
· Energy
· Health and Wellbeing
· Innovation
· Land Use
· Materials
· Management
· Pollution
· Transport
· Waste
· Water
You can find out more here.
BS 40101
This British Standard is currently in draft form, but it provides a reference for implementing energy efficiency measures in both new and retrofitted buildings. It covers Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) of Occupied and Operational Buildings. The final standard will be released in 2022. Click here to read a full summary of the standard.
The evaluation covers Early Occupancy, Post Construction Review, In-Use, In-Use Test and Monitoring and Investigative BPE. Each of these categories contain assessments and benchmarks that need to be achieved including a range of performance parameters (e.g., carbon intensity, energy use per m2, thermal comfort, humidity, light levels, air quality, acoustics).
BSI state that the new standard “enables key stakeholders to achieve better-performing building stock (including the indoor environments that influence occupant wellbeing). It accelerates the trajectory to net-zero carbon buildings, supporting and informing the energy system transition, which, in turn, reduces waste and running costs”.
You can find out more here.
EPBD
The European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), along with the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) was set up by the European Union, as a key component in their strategy to decarbonise Europe’s building stock. Its goal is to reduce the energy usage of existing and new buildings.
The mandate covers energy needs for independent building control systems, thermal insulation, space and hot water heating, cooling, ventilation, and lighting.
This is the main directive in the European Union for improving energy performance and can be applied to both residential and commercial buildings.
The aim is to localise the directive, embed it into local laws and apply it to individual countries building stock requirements.
You can find out more here.
Passive House
Passive House was one of the many representatives at the recent COP26 summit. They featured on a panel discussion titled ‘How buildings will play a role in fighting climate change’.
Their standard aims to create highly energy-efficient buildings, whether that’s a new build or a retrofit. It’s the only internationally recognised, performance-based energy standard in construction.
Passive House cover 5 key principles :
1 – Thermal Insulation
2 – Passive House Windows
3 – Adequate Ventilation Strategy
4 – Airtightness
5 – Thermal Bridge Reduced Design
You can find out more here.
NABERS
NABERS (National Australian Built Environment Rating System) provides simple, reliable, and comparable sustainability measurements across building sectors like hotels, shopping centres, apartments, offices, data centres, and more.
NABERS is Australia’s leading building performance rating. However, BRE has recently partnered and launched NABERS UK, which they state is a reliable system for rating the energy efficiency of office buildings across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
Like the efficiency star ratings that you get on your fridge or washing machine, NABERS provides a rating from one to six stars for buildings efficiency across:
· Energy
· Water
· Waste and
· Indoor environment
This helps building owners to understand their building’s performance versus other similar buildings, providing a benchmark for progress, and a rating to aim towards.
Having a building that has a lower environmental impact, lower running costs, and communicating that simply and with confidence gives building owners a competitive advantage. This is something that the Australian real estate industry has fully understood; and as such has been able to charge higher premiums for building stock that meets these needs, making good business, and environmental sense.
You can find out more here.
It is clear that there is a lot of choice and effort being put into creating more energy-efficient buildings to help meet our 2050 commitment, but uptake seems to be slow, and in general, there is a lack of urgency in the industry to react and adapt. Some of the key buzz words mentioned at the COP26 summit were reuse, renovate, refurbish, and repurpose. There were endless discussions about standards, legislation and guidance that have made a positive change, just not on the scale required, yet.
The cost involved in making current buildings more energy efficient is often seen as a deterrent, but JLL posted a study that reviewed costs incurred to refurbish buildings to meet the energy and carbon efficiency standards required by 2025. The study found that the cost is likely to be offset by enhanced value (e.g., higher rents, reduced running costs, higher sale price, reduced offsetting costs etc) in due course.
For the office building, the design changes for this scenario included replacing concrete with timber in the superstructure, removing some fitout finishes such as suspended ceilings, and introducing active chilled beams. The cost analysis found that it was a 6.2% increase to achieve 2025 goals.
However, when adapting buildings to meet 2030 standards the capital cost was higher. The office building application would likely see an uplift between 8% and 17%.
Therefore, JLL state that “we need a long-term consistent regulatory trajectory that tightens standards over time so as to provide the certainty and level playing field required for the supply chain to innovate and costs to come tumbling down” (JLL 2020).
We have a lot of opportunities, but we are not going to achieve this alone. We need collaboration and integration across the supply chain. We need to act today. Together.