The question about how best to embed green principles into construction - the carrot or the stick - has been an ongoing theme of this blog. It reared its head this week again at two Building magazine events - the first a conference, the second while I was interviewing winners of the Building Sustainability awards on Tuesday night. The case for the stick was put forward by Paul Morrell, ex-senior partner at QS firm Davis Langdon during his opening address at the Economics of Sustainability conference on Monday. He issued what I penned in my notebook as a “rallying call” for the industry to volunteer for regulation and not to shy away from regulation.
Morrell stressed that now was not the time for rowing back from ambitious targets, such as zero carbon housing or non-domestic properties. However he did admit that the business case for sustainability was at present “weak”. And he took a bit of a swipe at some in his profession that were predicting huge costs for building zero carbon. As the market gets its head around achieving the target prices will drop he said.
In the corner for the carrot was Pooran Desai, the joint founder of BioRegional Quintain who won the sustainable leadership award on Tuesday night. He called for the government to slash sustainable legislation by 80% - a neat reference to carbon reduction. From his perspective the sector is mired in bureaucracy, and while it needs standards to meet it needs some degree of freedom to go ahead an delivery the buildings that are so depsarately needed.
I’m sure this debate will never go away. Personally I tend to flip-flop over this, being convinced of one side of the argument one day and then swapping to the opposing side the next. Does that make me a Liberal Democrat? The line that usually pushed me to the carrot side is one from Che Wall, founder of the Australian Green Building Council. His mantra is “legislate the floor, not the ceiling”, ie. set basic standards by which the industry has to comply with and then create an environment of competition and incentives for them to reach the top of the spectrum.
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on Nov 20th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
I think Che Wall’s approach is correct, and more or less what Pooran Desai stands for as well.
We definitely need to achieve significant reductions in the impact of construction itself (i.e. embodied energy), and in the direct impacts of building use such as energy use, water use and flooding.
We can also have a siginificant impact on “lifestyle” areas like transport, waste and food. Our well-received report - what makes an eco town? - which we wrote with CABE details how any community, whether eco-town, smaller new build or retrofit, could achieve an overall 80% cut in carbon emissions by taking the holistic approach we have pioneered at BioRegional.
The key is to keep regulation focused on achieving that outcome, backed by literacy in both the industry and planning authorities, rather than trying to over-define the means that will achieve it. Compare recent French standards, which simply require evidenced plans to achieve a particular kwh/m2 performance, to the Code for Sustainable Homes’ section on energy use!
The trouble now is that the collection of policies and standards is both confusing, burdensome without always getting the right results, and doesn’t even adequately cover major areas like embodied energy, transport and food.
on Nov 21st, 2008 at 8:45 am
Its important to legislate the foundations as well as the floor, and probably at least some of the walls need decorating too.
on Nov 22nd, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Tom, I think you’re spot on. The risk of concentrating on one particular issue - the energy use of a building - is that there are unintended consequences of all the crucial other areas you have mentioned. You’ve made me flip flop to the less regulation side.
on Nov 24th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Two notes of caution on the “less regulation” angle…
First, it’s not carrot vs. stick. There’s no doubt that you need sticks to force companies to build better quality homes and communities. The question is whether you trust them to build to a specirfied quality, or whether you need to force them to take a particular approach. We’ve got a long way to go still, given that even the eco-towns PPS isn’t brave enough to match the Climate Change Bill’s aim for 80% cuts across the board!
Second, if you put trust in builders and local authorities to make the right decisions to achieve zero carbon buildings and low carbon communities, you’ve got to train and support them. Pooran Desai asking for less regulation is one thing — BioRegional Quintain Ltd. was set-up by the two partners specifically to achieve genuinely sustainable standards across building and lifestyle/community design. What about everybody else?
on Nov 26th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Good points Tom. I think the nub of Pooran’s point is as much about purging pointless regulation as the principle of it in the first place. I think too many agencies, departments and authorities are having a say in sustainability. Codes, EPCs, DECs, the CRC, the Merton Rule, BREEAM etc etc ad infinitum. We need an uber standard.
on Nov 28th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I find myself agreeing with both sides, perhaps I’ll join the Liberal Democrats? It is becoming increasingly obvious that each Government Department is striving to introduce their own regulatory mechanisms resulting in a tsunami of acronyms.
However, my rather too many years in the industry than I care to admit has taught me that change never happens unless it is mandatory.
Any successful strategy is a blend of compulsion and conviction.