Green Thing Blog

"This is part of our 10 Big Ideas which we hope will help the transition to a very low-to-no-carbon economy make cities, homes and work places better, movement easier, society stronger and improve quality of life...oh, and save the planet." The Beyond Green Team

Day seven: Eco-renovation - achieving the win-win of a greener building stock.

We've known for years and years that existing housing and building stock has to be refurbished to hit carbon targets. We've also known this can achieve significant medium-term cost savings, affordable warmth, terrific job creation and requires less money for new energy generation capacity. But something's been holding us back - so what will unlock this huge win-win?

The UK delegates responsible for setting carbon targets at Copenhagen have long had existing housing and building stock firmly in their sights. Not only do 45% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions arise from energy used in existing buildings, but according to the IPCC's 2007 report they also represent the most cost-efficient option for reducing carbon. In order to create the maximum room for manoeuvre in other areas, the target set for emissions from UK homes and buildings overall must be "approaching zero" by 2050. Yes, "zero".

Demolishing old buildings to build new shiny highly efficient ones isn't the answer because of the carbon already embodied in existing building stock. 85% of the buildings we currently live, work and play in will still be in use by 2050. The carbon challenge is therefore clear: we need to refurbish or renovate over 500,000 homes per year for the next forty years so they produce at least 80% less carbon than they do now.

What does this mean for most households? Ask the engineers and they'll list a combination of cavity wall and roof insulation, draught-proofing, double glazing and A-rated appliances (which together should cut carbon by about 50%). The next 10% cut will likely require some additional internal or external insulation, together with a renewable source of heat such as solar-thermal panels or a heat-pump. To reach cuts of 80% and beyond, you're likely to need a renewable form of electricity production such as thin-film photo-voltaic windows or community scale waste-to-energy technologies.

Until now, debate has focussed on scoping mechanisms to create the right market conditions for companies and the public sector to deliver a retrofit programme of this scale. Technical, financial, and legal barriers have been identified ... and debated and debated. Despite a (painfully) slow start, it's likely these barriers will be overcome. After all, the potential market value of this programme is estimated to reach £15bn a year by 2020. Perhaps capitalism can deliver given that potential reward? Meanwhile, 1 in 6 families remain in fuel poverty, there's talk of an impending "energy supply and security crisis", peak oil is looming and to add opportunity to injury green refurbishment would create new jobs and stimulate the economy as in Germany, where similar programmes employ 125,000 people. For homeowners, as energy prices continue to rise and become more volatile, an energy-efficient home will cost less to run, and over time lower running costs should have a positive impact on the value of our homes. The critical intervention we need from Government is to view fuel poverty as a separate issue and to allow energy prices to rise through the wider introduction of carbon taxes. Currently the price of electricity produced from coal or other carbon intensive fuels doesn't reflect its true social and environmental cost. Once a level playing field is created, we should see some real innovation.

So, nothing to worry about then? Hmm... This current focus on technical solutions, up-skilling engineers, financing packages and kilowatt hours is vital groundwork but is only one part of the solution. What about the nation of homeowners that we're talking about imposing this on? Is there much appetite? So far literally only a handful of the UK's 24 million houses have been renovated to the standards described above despite record energy prices. Energy Performance Certificates have been largely ignored by purchasers who currently don't seem prepared to pay a premium for a home with low running costs. Public support for campaigns such as 10:10 and Kevin McCloud's Great British Refurb are encouraging, but the supporters still only represent less than 1% of the population. In a recent Government survey over 70% of people accepted that they personally contribute to the production of carbon emissions and climate change, but only 7% felt they could do anything personally to change this situation. Are we really going to be able to go from a standing start to transforming over 500,000 homes a year to 2050 simply through talk of insulation and pence per kilowatt hour? Is this a logical target anyway? Given the urgency of the situation, surely we should be aiming to achieve much more significant numbers sooner, rather than wait 39 years to finish. It feels like a more holistic approach is required.

There are different levels to this:

· Engaging with people on how they use their homes is obviously important. There‘s little point cocooning a house in insulation and fitting solar-water heaters if the occupants leave the central heating on all night with the windows open.

· Our habits outside our homes are equally important. As mentioned in our Total (No) Carbon Economy big idea, people often spend money saved as their homes and appliances become more energy-efficient on something more energy intensive, like a bigger faster car or an extra foreign holiday. The risk is therefore that we're just moving the carbon problem from one place to the next.

Most importantly, we need to frame the entire debate differently. In the UK we're obsessed with our homes. They do more than just provide shelter - they're an extension of who we are and how we express ourselves. Shouldn't this be about loving your home? More sustainable lower carbon homes will be healthier, more comfortable places, as well as being cheaper to run. They'll be powered by energy produced locally with minimal emissions or loss in transit, providing us with an income when we use it sparingly and the excess is sold on. Natural lighting and ventilation will make them bright and airy. Roofs will become prime real estate, hosting a beautiful productive mix of energy generation, food production and habitat areas. Doesn't that sound appealing?

Our homes are also where we make decisions about how we live. It's been shown that empowering people to make sustainable choices in one part of their lives creates a halo-effect which leads to other more sustainable changes. Domestic energy emissions account for less than 20% of an individual's carbon footprint, but once people can see the benefits of reducing their energy emissions at home they're more likely to be open to tackling the significant issues of where their food comes from (23% of our personal carbon footprint), transport choices (18%) and waste (13%).

Over time, genuinely sexy alternatives will become available such as smart grids that enable residents to programme appliances (e.g. dishwashers and electric car batteries) to run at lower levels when electricity demand is high. Thin-film photovoltaic windows will enable people in homes without roofs or gardens to become part of (and receive an income from) the energy supply solution. But right now, we need to capture the imagination of householders to engage with the upside of down. To want to make changes in their homes and lifestyles to live a more sustainable, happier and healthier life.

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A PDF version of our 10 Big Ideas is available to download from the ‘what's new' section of our website. Please follow the link, enter the website and select ‘current' under the ‘what's new' page: www.beyondgreen.co.uk

The Beyond Green group puts sustainability principles into practice through strategic and practical projects that achieve real sustainability outcomes. Beyond Green Consulting delivers policy, strategies, plans, place-making and process for authentic sustainable developments which inspire and enable free, pleasurable, healthy and environmentally sustainable living. Beyond Green Living offers advice on sustainable lifestyles, often through brands and communications; TV projects, personal appearances and publications. Sister company BlueLiving has a portfolio of strategic land and development projects with a view to building, owning and managing seminal sustainable developments across the UK.

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"This is part of our 10 Big Ideas which we hope will help the transition to a very low-to-no-carbon economy make cities, homes and work places better, movement easier, society stronger and improve quality of life...oh, and save the planet." The Beyond Green Team

Day six: Whole life value - places and buildings that learn

"Stop making cr*p". Allan Chochinov, Core77, 13 April 2007

The climate crisis is coinciding with a crisis brought about by decades of throwing up disposable, un-loved and short-lived buildings in what are increasingly becoming non-places and anyplaces. We think that resilient and adaptable places and spaces supported by whole-life financial and broader economic models are the way to go. So what are these places like and what's the economic and business model that will make them not just possible but the norm?

Here's a game for a cold afternoon. Think of your favourite street in your favourite city. Now list the three main reasons you like it. We guess they'll include some of the following: It's always busy, but also restful. There are lots of people there for different reasons regardless of the time of day. Every time you walk along it, something's different - maybe a new shop or cafe - but the same buildings adapt and the street never really changes. It's beautiful, grand even, but also quite ordinary in the context of the neighbourhood. The buildings are mostly old, well-detailed and with different fronts and finishes that make them interesting to look at individually and as a piece. The pavements are wide and nicely finished. Thanks to the mature trees and shop canopies it's great even when wet and windy. People live there; it's someone's home.

You may have in mind the street where you live or work - in which case, lucky you. Chances are, though, you'll be thinking about a city you visited - perhaps Amsterdam, Berlin or Paris (or indeed London, Edinburgh or Newcastle) or any of the other destinations many Britons routinely head for in search of a weekend fix of the cultural authenticity they find lacking in their everyday environments. They (or rather we) don't make them like that anymore.

In Britain in 2009 we've grappled with the end of an extraordinary 15-year boom which literally altered the landscape, generally not for the better. Construction boomed, and buildings became commodities for short-term, quick-win trading. In the rush to make windfall gains from the cycle of cheap credit, high demand, restricted supply and apparently inexorable price rises, the idea that the underlying social function of land and buildings is to provide shelter and accommodate real social and economic activity was forgotten.

But the last few years were the denouement of decades of building for ‘the market' in a roughly similar way. The proliferation of glass-and-steel business parks and red-and-brown housebuilder estates, and in city centre regeneration areas office buildings and blocks of flats that are transparently cheap and nasty compared with the converted warehouses and merchants buildings with which they often share river- or canal-front, is the modern British property market embodied (literally). Buildings are constructed to maximise the margin between development cost and the price for which they can be sold on and forgotten about as quickly as possible and capital recycled into the next project. No value is accorded to beauty, longevity, adaptability or sustainability and there is no pretence of building for posterity. A basic form of spatial literacy - the understanding that sophisticated economies and societies need proximity, interaction and continuity to function effectively and that individual acts of building must therefore be co-ordinated for the good of the whole - has been eroded. Planning has become an exercise regulating the worst excesses of the market rather than the means by which elected local governments exercise their legitimate role and responsibility to describe - and shape market forces to secure - a vision for their city or town.

Indeed, the public sector bears some of the responsibility for the culture of short-termism. Public funding for regeneration and development has often taken the form of what Jane Jacobs called "cataclysmic money": funding for big infrastructure, iconic buildings or comprehensive site regeneration schemes (never for ‘place'), usually with tight spend-by dates and always with value-for-money criteria including a discount rate that renders any lifetime beyond 40 years or so practically worthless.

We urgently need to replace the culture of short-term gain with one of whole-life value, and not just because it's giving rise to environments that are fractured, disposable, dull and unloved and which in turn make for hollowed-out societies and moribund economies. The act of building itself incurs huge carbon emissions, from the extraction and production of building materials to the energy consumed in construction; recent estimates suggest that in a very energy-efficient building this ‘embodied carbon' can account for half of a building's whole-life carbon emissions.

But how? Well, we know that the best old places and buildings keep getting better with age, repaying the investment that went into them many times over, generating higher prices and creating social value in the form of terrific, vibrant, popular neighbourhoods. Many of these places were built out of paternalism, noblesse oblige or a desire for posterity, norms and values largely (and for the most part thankfully) consigned to history. Others came from vested interest: a realisation that building once-and-for-all-time could turn land into a permanent, reliable and generous source of income - the ‘estate' in its original meaning. We need to make land and buildings once again the province of long-term patient money, so that a greater initial outlay on design quality, robustness and adaptability gets its reward and developers have a vested economic interest in the performance of the whole neighbourhood - its schools, local economy and public spaces - rather than seeing them as burdensome accoutrements to whose costs they are forced by planners to contribute.

What, aside from a new Victorianism, might enable this? One answer could come directly from the bust: with average incomes and house prices massively out of kilter and credit harder to come by, it's likely that many more people will need to rent or part-own their home, making room for new estate-type models of ownership and management and new opportunities for pension and other long-term funds to invest in solid, reliable assets as we meet latent demand for hundreds of thousands of new homes across the country. Second, we should look afresh at how property is taxed. Because council tax and business rates tax buildings rather than land values they punish anyone who builds a decent, generously-proportioned building made of durable materials, reward speculators who sit on land or use it wastefully, and thus create upward pressure on land values which drives development out-of-town and makes land in more sustainable locations expensive, in turn squeezing build cost margins. Third, government - especially city government - needs to rediscover its sense of vision and purpose and combine it with a renewed role as an acquirer and assembler of land, but which chooses investment partners on the basis of a shared vision for long-term social outcomes, not design contests or generation of capital receipts. Then it won't need planning policy to do quite so much - and perhaps in time the Dutch and Danes will come to British cities to see how authentic sustainable development is really done.

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A PDF version of our 10 Big Ideas is available to download from the ‘what's new' section of our website. Please follow the link, enter the website and select ‘current' under the ‘what's new' page: www.beyondgreen.co.uk

The Beyond Green group puts sustainability principles into practice through strategic and practical projects that achieve real sustainability outcomes. Beyond Green Consulting delivers policy, strategies, plans, place-making and process for authentic sustainable developments which inspire and enable free, pleasurable, healthy and environmentally sustainable living. Beyond Green Living offers advice on sustainable lifestyles, often through brands and communications; TV projects, personal appearances and publications. Sister company BlueLiving has a portfolio of strategic land and development projects with a view to building, owning and managing seminal sustainable developments across the UK.

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A demonstration with 3000 people at the climate summit in Copenhagen developed this afternoon to uproar when protesters tore a large inflatable globe down at Christiansborg Castle Square.

Read and see more on Demotix.

However, over the weekend up to 30,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of Copenhagen.

The overwhelming majority of which was peaceful.

You can see more photos on Demotix.

Live stream here.

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Advertising is destroying society, according to a new report from thinktank the New Economics Foundation.

The report, which compares the impact on society of groups of people doing six different jobs, concludes that advertising "can create insatiable aspirations, fuelling feelings of dissatisfaction, inadequacy and stress" among the population and "encourages high spending and indebtedness".

And if that wasn't damning enough, the report puts a number on this negative contribution to society and calculates that top ad execs actually "destroy £11 of value for every pound in value they generate". For more on the report see the BBC's article here.

This is one of the reasons why Green Thing created the All Spin No Substance Game - to showcase how advertising fuels unnecessary consumption - as part of a wider campaign to help people Stick With What You Got and buy Nothing(TM).

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"This is part of our 10 Big Ideas which we hope will help the transition to a very low-to-no-carbon economy make cities, homes and work places better, movement easier, society stronger and improve quality of life...oh, and save the planet." The Beyond Green Team

Day five: Sustaining movement - getting around without running aground

"When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race". H. G. Wells

UK transport is in crisis. Getting around is increasingly difficult and unpleasant, we're producing ever more carbon en route and meanwhile becoming fatter and less healthy. Our transport policies seem to be in denial on carbon and other pollution, and planners are still determined to build more road capacity to ease congestion (often seeking to compensate for appalling land-use planning) while the evidence shows this has the opposite effect. ‘Natural' increases in vehicle movements are embedded in government models, and transport policies and practices are rabidly defensive of car parking and at best sceptical and at worst cynical about railways and cycling. So what's to be done to get us out of this tangle? Can electrification alone really solve all these problems? We think not...

As delegates to the Copenhagen climate conference take a break from plenaries and working groups to wander through the city's streets, they might be struck by something. Where are the cars? Pondering, they might pull up a seat at one of the 7,000 outdoor cafe chairs available in this city on a similar latitude to Edinburgh. Watching the thousands of ordinary Copenhageners enjoying just strolling around, they ask themselves, frowning: why isn't my city more like this?

British delegates might frown more than many. We're in a terrible jam, and it's going to get worse, with a 35% increase in delays from a projected 32% growth in traffic over the next 15 years according to the Department for Transport's model. Not to worry, some say: there might be more cars on the road, taking longer to get from A to B, but improved engine efficiency and alternative fuels - including, perhaps, electric vehicles - mean we'll be emitting less CO2. But only 3% less, and overall emissions from domestic transport have risen 12% since 1990, and now represent 21% of total UK domestic emissions - of which road transport makes up c.92%.

Clearly allowing DfT's model to transpire simply isn't going to achieve meaningful cuts in carbon emissions, sustain efficient movement or enhance quality of life. But try suggesting an alternative vision, where the majority of journeys are by foot, cycle or public transport (as in many of the Northern European cities we like visiting) and you'll hear that the problem isn't cars, it's the internal combustion engine; people aren't prepared to give up their cars; people won't cycle when it rains so much and it's so hilly; and anyway we're not Danish or Dutch and this isn't Amsterdam or Copenhagen (or Berlin, or Freiburg, or Basel, or Malmo, or Groningen, or...).

But cars are damaging more than the biosphere. In its 2006 report on the urban environment, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution identified 24 environmental, economic and social problems arising from increased car ownership and use of which only three - CO2 emissions, air pollution and noise - relate directly to the internal combustion engine. The rest - including loss of local shops and amenity, decline in physical exercise, rising accidents and congestion - will remain even in a world of low-carbon vehicles. The internal combustion engine is only one part of the bigger and more complex problem of society's dependence on the private car as our primary means of transport.

Copenhagen shows it doesn't have to be this way. In the early 1960s Copenhagen was on a similar trajectory of car-oriented growth to many other European cities, yet between 1995 and 2005 the number of bike journeys doubled. 55% of commuter journeys in central Copenhagen are now made by bike (37% for Greater Copenhagen). This modal shift was achieved through a series of complementary actions, including major investment in cycle lanes (and reducing lanes available to cars), reducing city centre car parking, developing shared surface streets with pedestrian and cycle priority on secondary routes and investing in public transport. The result is one of the world's best cycling cities that consistently tops liveability surveys and has a street life and cafe culture you wouldn't expect to find outside the Mediterranean.

In the UK the benefits of encouraging a shift away from the private car and towards cycling are now widely accepted, but a responsive and consistent policy framework eludes us. We have plenty of rhetoric on and initiatives to encourage cycling, but we seem willing to try just about anything other than the one thing proven to actually work: building a comprehensive network of safe and convenient cycle routes, taking space and priority away from cars not pedestrians. The mantra remains ‘no restrictions on cars in the absence of good alternatives' yet it is obvious that you cannot improve the attraction and viability of alternatives without making car use less attractive.

New development ought to act as a catalyst for enabling cycling culture, but this requires spending as much time on assessing improvements to/provision of cycle infrastructure as modelling the need for increased road capacity. We need to ask not how we accommodate the additional traffic generated by a development, but how the developer, local authority and highways authority can work together to ensure no net increase in traffic by making it easy and attractive to no longer own or regularly use a car.

Freeing people from car dependency will of course require more than just a few cycle lanes. New developments need to be designed and existing places retrofitted to reduce the need to travel, creating walkable neighbourhoods where daily needs can be met without recourse to the car. Car clubs offering a variety of vehicles need to be provided for journeys that are impossible or impractical without a car, and parking ratios need to be set at a level that will make the car club viable. The frequency, quality, coverage and integration of public transport, particularly buses, needs to be improved to reverse the trend of declining use everywhere outside Greater Manchester and London. The role of streets as primarily places of human movement, interaction and exchange needs to be rediscovered, taking precedence over - not "traded off" against - the need to keep traffic flowing.

Peak oil and carbon taxes may eventually spell the end of mass private car ownership and use, but the urgent need to cut carbon emissions, reduce the £11 billion economic cost of congestion and the £10 billion cost of obesity means we can't afford to wait. Electric and plug-in hybrid technologies, eco-driving and lower speed limits will all play a role in reducing carbon emissions, but if we're to transform our towns and cities for the better they must be accompanied by meaningful efforts to reduce car traffic.

Copenhageners don't choose to cycle because they're physically different to us. The difference is political. The city has spent 40 years challenging the dominance of the car. When the process began in the 1960s the cry went up that "Danes aren't Italians", but civic leadership and social progressiveness overcame the kind of cultural relativism that helps maintain the UK status quo. Let's hope our delegates in Copenhagen have time to take a break from the conference and see for themselves how enabling a culture of cycling, and all that comes with it, is a crucial element of creating vibrant and sustainable places that are well placed to prosper in a carbon constrained post-oil world.

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A PDF version of our 10 Big Ideas is available to download from the ‘what's new' section of our website. Please follow the link, enter the website and select ‘current' under the ‘what's new' page: www.beyondgreen.co.uk

The Beyond Green group puts sustainability principles into practice through strategic and practical projects that achieve real sustainability outcomes. Beyond Green Consulting delivers policy, strategies, plans, place-making and process for authentic sustainable developments which inspire and enable free, pleasurable, healthy and environmentally sustainable living. Beyond Green Living offers advice on sustainable lifestyles, often through brands and communications; TV projects, personal appearances and publications. Sister company BlueLiving has a portfolio of strategic land and development projects with a view to building, owning and managing seminal sustainable developments across the UK.

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