Is zero carbon too expensive?
Zero carbon buildings are too expensive to build, according to developers, housebuilders and engineers.
Dave Farebrother, environmental director of Land Securities, told a recent CIBSE seminar on zero carbon non-domestic buildings that the additional costs involved in making a building zero carbon could not be recouped by developers so there was no economic incentive.
'Low carbon would be better than zero carbon,' he said. 'The 80/20 rule applies [80 per cent of the cost to deliver the final 20 per cent of carbon saving].'
He said there was some evidence that low energy buildings were being rented out more quickly than poorer quality constructions, but there was little opportunity for landlords to charge higher rents in return for reduced running costs.
The chief executive of Persimmon, Britain's biggest housebuilder, has also called for the Government to rethink its zero carbon strategy saying that it is unfair and urealistic to expect homes to be zero carbon. "You don't ask motor manufacturers to be petrol-free after all," Mike Farley told the Sunday Times recently.
Brian Waddell of Norman Disney and Young told the CIBSE meeting that it was "barking mad to spend huge amounts of money on getting a highly efficient building down to zero carbon, but that is what we are being asked to do.”
The BRE has estimated that zero carbon homes will cost 25 per cent more to build than current constructions - they also reported that meeting the 2006 Part L requirements added 10 per cent to the build costs of houses.
Mr Farebrother suggested greater use of district heating/energy schemes and large scale offsite renewables would improve the economic picture by reducing the cost per building compared with small scale, onsite solutions, but would still not get buildings down to zero carbon.
"District schemes cost more to build, but you get benefits of scale and they can cope with diversity of loads," he said. "It is a single solution for lots of buildings so is easier to upgrade in the future, helps embed local generation and so reinforces the Grid."
He added that Arup's suggestion in a report for the UK Green Building Council that zero carbon only required a 10 per cent cost premium was a "massive under-estimate" and that the Government was being given the wrong information about how much its zero carbon strategy was going to cost.
"In one of our projects, we invested in things like boreholes and low energy glass," said Mr Farebrother. "This delivered a 10-14 per cent carbon benefit for £2m cost premium, but it is still nowhere near being zero carbon."
However, Chris Twinn of Arup explained that increased use of PV paid for by Feed-in Tariffs would reduce the overall cost of reducing carbon.
"Our problem is that the owner spends the capital, but the occupier gains on the running costs," said Mr Farebrother. "In the race for zero carbon there has to be a driver for the developer in the form of an associated reward in increased asset values, and rents etc. This issue still does not come up at leasing stage, people don’t ask how much their building will cost to run.
"The buildings we aim to build in 2020 are already in planning so we need to know what the rules are going to be. How much will this cost, has anyone done the sums? In any case, we only churn our building stock at between 1 and 2 per cent per annum. Zero carbon new-build will mean nothing if we don’t drastically reduce emissions from existing buildings."