Newsletter #38
Mitsubishi Electric Living Environmental Systems UK
Cooling, Heating, Ventilation and Controls
Welcome to the 38th edition of our Sustainability & Construction newsletter!
This edition delves into the critical themes driving the sustainability movement, with a prominent focus on energy efficiency. The latest CBRE Sustainability Index, reveals compelling financial benefits associated with energy-efficient buildings across various sectors and the Green Property Alliance urges the UK government to implement stricter energy efficiency standards.
Looking beyond immediate trends, Russell Jones analyses the "The Rest Is Politics" podcast, featuring expert discussions on climate change goals, investments, and significant events like COP. Additionally, edie's new 'Destination 2030' report explores the challenges and opportunities for key industries to make targets set for 2030 a reality. Collaboration is highlighted as crucial for reaching Net Zero, with a focus on unifying the construction industry's diverse carbon emission definitions to establish a standardised whole-life carbon benchmark.
In our Construction Voices section this month, Daniel Beadle , Contracts/Commercial Manager at Pexhurst Services Limited , emphasises the value of early collaboration among architects, clients, and subcontractors. He also highlights the comprehensive benefits—environmental, social, and economic—of retrofitting with BREEAM Official standards in focus.
Explore the articles within to discover actionable steps you can take to build a more sustainable future.?
Latest Mitsubishi Electric News
Mitsubishi Electric offers expertise in achieving Net Zero targets through sustainable construction. Sustainable construction practices are essential to combat the construction industry's significant carbon emissions. These practices involve eco-friendly materials, energy efficiency, and waste reduction.
Mitsubishi Electric and UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) are partnering to improve the sustainability of highly polluting retail and logistics buildings. This project will analyse best practices for retrofitting these structures, focusing on achieving net zero emissions.
Dave Archer explains why Net Zero buildings are set to be high on the agenda over the next few years, and how the knowledge and skill of HVAC contractors will be vital in getting the UK across the Net Zero 2050 line.
Russell Jones reviews "The Rest Is Politics" podcast, featuring discussions on climate change with Rory Stewart, Alastair Campbell, and Professor Dieter Helm. They cover the possibility of achieving the targets for 2030, climate investments, and the significance of events like COP.
Latest Industry news
David Partridge has been tasked with bringing together construction’s many and varied definitions of Net Zero. He tells Thomas Lane why setting a recognised and easily understood benchmark for whole-life carbon emissions is so important.
The latest CBRE Sustainability Index, for Q4 2023, reveals the continued relationship between energy efficiency and investment performance. Their analysis of over 1,000 properties showed that efficient assets reported stronger total returns than inefficient assets across all sectors.
It is clear that businesses in 2030 will need to look very different from today and each sector will undergo unique transformations. edie’s new Destination 2030 report offers a timely reminder of the challenges that key sectors currently face. It focused on the drivers and innovation opportunities for the built environment.
The Mission Zero Coalition aims to facilitate collaboration among stakeholders to develop policies for achieving Net Zero in the UK. The UK's upcoming elections are pivotal for climate action. Elected officials will decide if the country achieves its emissions reduction targets and Net Zero by 2050.
In April 2024, a subset of members of the Green Property Alliance co-signed a letter to the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero asking the UK Government to publish a full response to its 2021 consultation on minimum energy efficiency standards (MEES) for the non-domestic private rented sector in England.
领英推荐
Businesses exploring their options for low-carbon heating now have access to a new, free-to-download guide produced by edie and Centrica Business Solutions.
Construction Voices
Here, we invite industry leaders to share their valuable insights and expertise on creating a sustainable built environment. This week, we include an article written by Dan Beadle, BSc (Hons), Contracts/Commercial Manager at Pexhurst.
In recent years, sustainability has become an increasingly important focus for any building development, whether a refurbishment or a new build. The introduction of BREEAM quality standards has only enhanced this even further. Having worked on a myriad of construction sites, Pexhurst’s Contracts/Commercial Manager Daniel Beadle identifies the importance of early collaboration between architects, the client and our supply chain of sub-contractors. Additionally, he reveals the environmental, social, and economic impacts that retrofitting with BREEAM Official in mind can have.
Although incredibly important during retrofitting projects, where new energy efficient systems are fitted in buildings previously built without them, BREEAM sustainability targets are difficult to achieve, but no doubt a worthwhile endeavour.
BREEAM assessments use recognised measures of performance that are set against established benchmarks to evaluate a building’s specification, design, construction and use. These measures represent a comprehensive range of categories and criteria, including ecology and energy.
Each of these categories focus on the most influential factors, including low impact design, ecological value, reduced carbon emissions, biodiversity protection and adaptation to climate change.
Indeed, studies by Holmes and Hudson revealed that the objective of achieving an ‘Excellent’ BREEAM rating can significantly influence the original design of a building and the changes made to the design, including ventilation design, water services, materials and the design of the building itself.
With that in mind, working closely with designers, architects and sub-contractors at a very early stage in the retrofitting project is absolutely crucial. Doing so and integrating sustainability measures at this early stage can help to enable increases in asset value, building user experience, risk mitigation, and reduced lifecycle costs.
Setting objectives and thinking ahead makes a huge difference
With BREEAM relatively new to the retrofitting sector, identifying and researching material that will be specifically helpful in meeting and exceeding sustainability targets is crucial.
Furthermore, as Mark Farmer once explained, “collaboration prevents itself scaling up, sharing risk more appropriately and creating better business plan certainty.” When it comes to building design and sustainability, two heads are definitely better than one.
Indeed, more considerate planning and collaboration is likely to help future building projects deliver holistically sustainable BREEAM buildings. With this in mind, it’s important the industry shifts its mind-set towards incorporating the framework into new projects from the very beginning of the design process.
Additionally, collaborative working at the start can also prevent projects incurring further costs, which can often happen when BREEAM is incorporated much later into the project. Similarly, by not commencing any BREEAM requirements at an early stage of the project, there is an increasing likelihood the project won’t finish on time.
Increasing the longevity of the building
As well as having an improved environmental impact, the successful implementation of BREEAM on a retrofitting project can also enhance the longevity of a building.
Often, implementing BREEAM targets can enhance the project quality by reducing defects and enforcing the need for strict commissioning procedures. Compared to the same refurbishment without a similar scheme in place, this provides a better and more valuable property for the client.
It also highlights the importance of making collaborative decisions during the design and construction phases and how doing so can have far-reaching impacts on the building’s overall lifespan. This can include anything from resultant emissions through to resource consumption.
While studies have revealed that build costs are typically increased by 1% if BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ grades are to be achieved, long-term retrofitting of a building can actually decrease the building’s operating cost. So, while in the short-term it is a more expensive construction process, the longer-term financial benefits typically outweigh this.
Additionally, BREEAM does not currently provide a holistic approach to sustainability, nor a full life-cycle assessment, so consideration must be paid to this when working on the design of any building that has sustainability in mind.
Operating with the environment in mind
The Government’s Carbon Net Zero Guidance Note reveals that around 40% of UK carbon emissions are linked to the built environment. Furthermore, the construction industry generates 32% of all waste sent to landfill. As a result, the environmental assessment of buildings has increasingly become a major focus of the sustainable built environment. ?
BREEAM evaluates environmental performance across a myriad of different categories, including health and well-being, land use and ecology, energy, management, and pollution.
Additionally, BREEAM standards help to provide a meaningful and evolving pathway towards ecological protection, recovery and mitigation. There is also a strong incentivisation to reduce carbon emission, with flexible and achievable benchmarks relating to operational and embodied performance. This is especially important given the fact that embodied carbon, emissions created during the manufacture of building materials and construction practices, accounts for approximately 22% of all emissions in a new development.
With these targets in mind, retrofitting projects can typically incorporate measures and focus on building fabric improvements and upgrading services with modern technologies and materials. For example, insulation can be enhanced, carbon-burning appliances can be replaced with air-source heat pumps and energy efficient features such as rainwater harvesting systems, photovoltaic panels, zonal heating and lighting controls and LED lighting can be integrated. ?
Better occupant health and wellbeing
Buildings with BREEAM certification are designed and constructed to high environmental performance standards, meaning they’re likely to have better air quality, use safer materials for human health, and have other features that can boost occupants’ wellbeing.
This is supported by a BREEAM survey , which revealed that 59% of respondents reported an ‘improved occupant satisfaction’ as a benefit of having completed a BREEAM assessment during their project.?
Additionally, BREEAM certified buildings are designed to use less energy for lighting, heating, and cooling, resulting in lower energy bills for the occupants and significant savings over the long term.
In summary
Overall, with sustainability demands constantly changing and evolving, the need to outline the plans and methods for meeting the desired BREEAM score into retrofitting projects, ideally before works start, is becoming increasingly more important, as is close collaboration with the project team.
As a sustainability-focused company, Pexhurst specialises in working closely with all members of a project to not only retrofit commercial and industrial properties to the highest quality standards but also ensure that ‘Outstanding’ BREEAM standards are achieved wherever possible.
We hope you've found the content of this newsletter useful and relevant. In each edition, we'll focus on bringing you the latest news and topics around sustainability and construction. If there are any news articles you would like us to feature, or if you would like to be a guest contributor for Construction Voices, please get in touch with us .
Find out more about our new Sustainability and Construction team here .