Sustainability in the fast lane

Today's post is a blatant plug for a book by my friend Hattie Hartman, who is sustainability editor of The Architects' Journal and has written a book called London 2012 Sustainable Design. It has been out for a while, but I have only just received my review copy. Even for somebody who hates sport and is still not entirely convinced that bringing the Olympics to London was a good idea, the book looks fascinating. It looks at each of the venues and facilities, at the competition process, at design and delivery, and offers facts and figures. The joy of this is that there is so much real data, in contrast to the sea of greenwash in which we risk drowning.

How relevant is this to other projects? It is true that we are not likely to build many more Olympic scale stadia, although the lessons on flexibility are important. But temporary facilities? Energy centres? Schools? Housing? Parks? Most certainly. The ODA may be horribly controlling, but this tendency does at least mean it can gather data properly. How encouraging to read a paragraph such as 'Park-wide savings on embodied carbon associated with the Olympic Park's concrete strategy are approximately 24 per cent compared to the industry average. The two key factors determining these savings were cement substitution and the use of sustainable transport.' The industry should read, and learn.

Ruth Slavid on Daylight

February can be a depressing month. We can no longer remember summer, and although spring is quite near it rarely feels that way. Often we get some of the worst weather of the year, and there are few treats unless you are young and giddy enough to be excited by Valentine’s Day. But there is one compensation – by February there is no doubt that the days are getting longer. On the latitude of London, there are nine hours of daylight on 1 February but 10.7 hours on 28 February. Go further north and these figures reduce, but the trend is still the same.

Most of us will still be at work or travelling to and from work for most of the daylight hours. If we are to appreciate this herald of better times it will have to be from our desks. And that, of course, requires us to have daylight in our offices. There is widespread acceptance that we feel better if we have access to natural light, and this will only increase as pressures force people to spend more time at their desks rather than taking a long lunch break outside. Some countries, such as Germany, legislate for the maximum distance that workers can be from daylight. In the UK this is not the case, but it makes good psychological sense, as well as economic sense, to rely as far as possible on daylight rather than artificial light.

Buildings do however need to have relatively deep plans sometimes, so any possible means of bringing light into the deeper spaces is to be welcomed. Good design of windows, which may include light shelves, is part of the solution, and so is the use of atria and rooflights to effectively reduce the maximum distance from natural light.

It is also important to design in a way that brings light into buildings but cuts down glare. Although solar gain is likely to be an advantage not a disadvantage at this time of year in terms of the temperature in the building, the low winter sun, particularly towards the end of the afternoon, can dazzle. How often do you see buildings where this has not been allowed for? Internal blinds are fitted to solve the problem. In ill-considered and ill-managed schemes, once they are closed they often remain permanently that way. There may be more daylight available in February, but without intelligent design many of us will fail to benefit from it.

Ruth Slavid.

Ruth Slavid on Renewables - Feed In Tariffs

The government has got itself into a real mess with the Feed in Tariff, cutting the payments so rapidly that it has been challenged in the courts, as some companies threaten to pull out of PV supply altogether.  But we should not allow this to mask the underlying problem – that the money offered was too generous in the first place and as a result was not only distorting the market but, far more importantly, distorting the way that we think about sustainable design.

Berated for years for not offering any decent incentives for the installation of photovoltaics, in the manner that the Germans for example, had done for years, the last government tried to make up for it  with the Energy Act of 2008. This introduced a series of tariffs that came into effect in April 2010. One of the problems was that they coincided with economic downturn and poor rates of investment to such an extent that there were few better ways to invest money than putting some solar panels on the roof – it was even worth borrowing to do so.

All targets and subsidies create distortions – just look at the health service – but the real problem here was that there was no accompanying requirement to make buildings efficient. This also will change in April, with the introduction of some minimum standards in order to qualify for Feed In Tariffs.  Energy efficiency is at the heart of intelligent environmental thinking and PV panels, like other renewables, are completely wasted when they pump energy into buildings that consume it recklessly and allow it to escape through the fabric.

The answer then is first to insulate and seal a building to a high standard. Next is to further reduce the demand for energy by making everything in it as efficient as possible. So boilers should be sized correctly and be as efficient as possible, taps should be the aerating kind that reduces water demand, and daylight should be brought as far into the building as possible to cut the need for artificial lighting. Once this has been done, then installing renewables becomes a sensible option.

The current mess with the Feed in Tariffs is the result of reactive politics. We need to get to a point where our attitude to renewables is part of a rational approach to reducing the carbon footprint of our buildings, and not just a political football. We must not forget that insulation needs to come before microgeneration.

Ruth Slavid.