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Sustainability in the Built Environment Breakfast
The government has formally launched its promised green economy bill as part of the Queen’s speech, detailing plans for several new regulations and incentive schemes designed to accelerate the development of the low carbon economy.
In North West, the advancement of the low carbon economy is a pressing issue. With Manchester having been designated as the UK’s Low Carbon Economic Area for the Built Environment, the city region is keen to make some big statements and has some big opportunities to do so.
Chief among these is Manchester Metropolitan University’s (MMU) new Birley Fields community campus, which the university intends to be the greenest educational campus yet built. The breakfast’s keynote speaker Mary Heaney, director of services at MMU, outlined the £120m development’s aspirations to be a “three zero campus” – zero water, zero waste and zero carbon.
“The drivers for that sustainability are very clear,” she said. “We have tighter environmental controls embedded in legislation and in higher education, with carbon targets of 48 per cent reduction by 2020, landfill tax escalating and water charging. We need to maximise the real benefits and impact new buildings can have on reducing environmental impact through managing carbon, water and maintaining biodiversity.”
The masterplan’s key design principles include 100 per cent of water sourced from bores, rainwater harvesting, sustainable procurement based on supplier analysis, internal segregation of waste, green roofs and habitat linkages. Heaney added that the building would have a BREEAM rating of Excellent or Outstanding once completed, but the university would have to transform its brand behaviour for it to stay that way.
Also on the panel was Felicity Goodey, chairman of urban regeneration company Central Salford, and Professor Andrew Thomas, chief executive of the Centre for Construction Innovation.
Thomas agreed that cultural change is vital to satisfy the environmental, social and economic interests of the construction industry. He said: “The economic impact is obviously the one that receives the most attention because it’s easy to quantify. There needs to be a cultural shift in how environmental and social impacts are measured.”
Goodey agreed and said that short-term gain is put over long-term sustainability, largely because economic returns from environmental measures are more difficult to quantify. “Local authorities need to look for longer-term savings that will help to save the environment, rather than getting short-term gain because of budgetary pressures,” she said.
Audience member Todd Holden, programme director for Enworks, raised the view that one of the biggest challenges to the low carbon built environment is about retrofitting. Goodey responded by saying that it again comes down to demonstrating the measurable benefits. She also called on the new government to cut the VAT rate on building repair and refurbishment work.
“It’s actually cheaper to knock down a building and start again rather than refit it,” she said. “We had a classic example in central Salford with an Urban Splash scheme – refurbishing the properties would have cost considerably more than razing them to the ground and rebuilding on exactly the same footprint. It’s absolutely barking mad. We’ve got to do something about the VAT regime in this country.”
Alex Solk from Sheppard Robson asked the panel if there should be more legislation to force the sustainability issue. Thomas said: “I buy into the principle of things being driven by statute and constraint, but it restricts the competitive advantage of the innovators and early adopters.”
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