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Answering Questions about Sustainable Building How Green is Your Building: A Look at Green Rating Programs |
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New Information on Sustainable Building Concepts Becomes Available in the UK
Nick Clarke, publisher with IHS BRE Press, discusses the book and the importance of providing information about sustainable building to the construction industry. Q: What is Earthships about? Two earthships have been built in the UK and this book focuses on one completed earlier this year in Brighton. The buildings use recycled and local materials in their construction, and are designed to maximize the use of solar energy and thermal mass. They use renewable energy sources and rainwater harvesting to they are independent of power and water supplies. The book was written by two people, the project manager for the building and an architectural writer and journalist. It actually takes its inspiration from a number of earthships built in America. As you can see, the concept is transferring from America to the UK. Also, there’s one that’s being in France. So the idea is spreading. Q: So IHS BRE Press is focusing on sustainable building? Yes. Everybody knows that they need to do things differently and they’re looking for guidance on the most efficient, most effective way for doing that. So we’re publishing a range of guidance from quite technical and specialized information on energy use, for example, through to very practical guidance on how to build more sustainably using better materials that are more sustainable or by increasing the levels of insulation, for example. There is a range of things you can do that cut your carbon emissions. BRE itself has been very active for a number of years in energy efficiency and sustainability. It developed and operates a scheme in the UK called BREEAM—the BRE Environmental Assessment Method. It’s similar in approach to LEED green building rating system in America. BRE develops a range of approaches for different building types. We have a long tradition of publishing materials about this. In the last three to four years, we’ve been trying to develop our list not just to deal with the scientific and engineering aspects but to produce books to show people how to build and case studies and examples of how people have successfully applied these ideas. We’re trying to produce books that appeal to a wider readership, not just to the professional engineer or architect, but also perhaps to the individual self-builder or as inspiration for house building and construction generally. The best known part of the BREEAM system is called Ecohomes, which is a way of scoring your building design so you can demonstrate that you’re building houses sustainably. The UK government issued a code for sustainable homes in April this year and house builders have to aim for higher standards of sustainability. By 2016 all new homes must be ‘zero carbon’, and this concept will be rolled out to all building types in the coming years. That’s great for new buildings, but in the UK we have over 20 million existing homes. Just building new homes to be sustainable is actually not enough. You also have to upgrade a lot of existing homes. Q: Do you offer publications that talk about upgrading existing homes? Last year we published a report on the sustainable refurbishment of Victorian housing. That’s not looking at the practical aspects of doing it, but how a housing association or local authority or developer can try to quantify the benefits of refurbishing. Is it worthwhile in sustainability terms to refurbish an existing house rather than knocking it down and starting again? We have a significant report coming out that follows along in this vein to demonstrate the advantages of keeping existing buildings rather than automatically assuming that the correct course is to knock them down and replace them. Q: Do you have any reports that show how to refurbish existing homes? I think the fact that there happens to be this new earthship in the UK demonstrates a movement toward sustainable building across the world. Different countries are pushing at different opportunities. Some countries like in Scandinavia, where the climate is colder, are further ahead of us in terms of having better insulated, more airtight buildings. In the UK, the BREEAM method is a scheme that has been running for over 10 years. The principles are well understood and embedded in our building practices but the criteria that need to be met are rapidly being made tougher and more demanding. |
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Inverness Way East • Englewood, CO 80112-5776 • USA |
While earthships may not fit the mainstream homebuilding mold, they offer important lessons about sustainable building. This October, IHS BRE Press, an IHS company that publishes papers, reports and guides for the Building Research Establishment (BRE), published its first book about earthships. The book examines the construction of the first earthships in the UK. 