Built Environment Solutions That Meet Goals For Sustainability Outcomes

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Built Environment Solutions That Meet Goals For
Sustainability Outcomes

• Mike OConnell and Chris Kane
• BRANZ Ltd
• Presentation to
• International Conference on Sustainability
  Engineering and Science
• 8th July 2004

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Overview

• Climate change and buildings
• Sustainable design and construction
• Strategies for climate change
• Barriers and challenges
• Opportunities and benefits
• NOW Home

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Building for survival or disaster?

• to make no demands on nature that nature cannot
  continue to answer, and to refrain from
  squandering the limited resources whether of
  material (or) biological capital, on which all
  future generations, as well as ourselves, depend
  for survival
• 1972 - Alex Gordon, RIBA Annual Conference, UK

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Climate change impacts
Flooding - Lower N Island 2004
Hailstorm (Sydney)
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Business as usual?
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Orsustainable construction?

• Sustainable construction is the set of processes
  by which the building and construction industry
  operates and delivers built assets to meet the
  aims of sustainable development
• 2004 Rachel Hargreaves, Green Payback
• Whats required to reduce carbon?
• Technology exists for 80-90 less CO2
• but constraints!

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Strategies/approaches to reducing urban carbon

• Preferred Policy Package
• NEECS
• Adaptation (NZ Climate Change Office, BRANZ
  guidance)
• Kyoto Protocol dependent policies
• Built environment policy (Construction Industry
  Council)
• Urban Design Protocol (MfE)
• Building Bill, NZ building code
• Sustainability inclusions
• Education - e.g. The Green Payback (BRANZ)
• Voluntary initiatives e.g. NOW Home, BEACON
  Pathway

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Challenges

• Unsustainable status of existing building stock
• Key constraints
• Consumer attitude
• Lifestyle choice - avg. home 195 m2!
• Business As Usual, silo thinking
• Decreasing industry skill base
• Lack of awareness, information dissemination
• Slow uptake of renewables
• Energy demand vs. supply

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Constraint e.g. silo thinking

• required collaboration with the client, his
  professional and technical advisors, and the
  building team undertaking to integrate design
  factors for which they are normally separately
  responsible. Decision thus becomes a concurrent
  and not a sequential process
• (Shepard 1971, cited in Cole 2004)

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Opportunities

• Sustainable buildings in practice
• New/retrofitted 3-10 fold less energy use
• Proven financial benefits for low-carbon
  buildings (Kats et al 2003)
• 2 investment in green features
• ?life cycle savings of 20 of construction costs
• but can this translate to NZ?!
• What action can we take in NZ?
• Warm Home Energy Rating Schemes
• EBEX21/CarboNZero

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Ancient sustainability!
Barat, Yemen
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Sustainable buildings - international
Passiv Haus, Austria
Condé-Nast, 4 Times Square, NY
BedZED, UK
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Sustainable buildings - NZ
ZALEH, Wanaka
Paraparaumu library (image courtesy Warren
Mahoney)
Strawbale house, Canterbury
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Benefits and co-benefits

• Benefits
• Reduced resource consumption, waste, etc
• Lower business/household operational costs
• Environment Canterbury EOC energy savings
• Improved employee productivity, personal
  well-being
• ING Bank, Amsterdam 15 less absenteeism
• Co-benefits
• Synergies with adaptation (natural
  cooling/warming)
• Improved local air quality warmer houses vs.
  cleaner emissions, ? reduced PM10, etc
• Health improved building envelope

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Typical Kiwi Home
Built for the view, not for the sun!

• Our home aspirations
• privacy, security, etc
• warm/cosy in winter, cool/open in summer
• the dreamaffordability!

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The NOW Home
Built for the sun, not the property lines!

• Prototype NOW Home - Waitakere City
• Construction consortium (includes BRANZ)
• Design principles incorporated from start
• Practice to make a difference
• First stage of more involved project (BEACON
  Pathway)
• Exemplary voluntary initiative in absence of
  tougher NZBC

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