Article from BD, 19 December 2008
So change has come — how many end-of-year reviews will be using that phrase? Those of us starting 2008 with grand hopes and visions for the embedding of sustainable design and construction principles in the UK ran into the stark reality of a full blown downturn by the autumn. The [...]
Posts under ‘Energy Performance Certificates’
Sustainable review of 2008
From EPCs to drug barons
It’s always nice to be surprised during an event. I was chairing the Economics of Sustainability conference last week - worthy and important but, it could be argued, a tad dull. We’re approaching lunch and it’s gone 1pm. It’s a Monday and I’m beginning to flag a little, having had to kick off the day [...]
My EPC
I received a copy of my Home Information Pack yesterday. The results for my EPC are in… and my flat got a C. The current impact is measured as 163 kWh/m2 per year which equals 2.2 tonnes. Potentially I could ease down to 152 or 2 tonnes a year. Not that bad a result. The [...]
Will the privatised banks now need DECs?
Here’s a very interesting question that was raised to me yesterday by Martin Russell-Croucher, with whom I was on a panel with at an EPC event a couple of weeks ago. Russell-Croucher is director of accreditation and certification at the RICS and has unsurprisingly been closely tracking the implementation of the EPBD legislation that oversees [...]
Is visible sustainability a good thing?
I took part in my third energy brunch seminars yesterday morning. The event, organised by Atkins at its Leeds office, was a comprehensive run through of the latest energy performance legislation that is coming out. Part of it included a session on design, which focused on some of the sexy global projects that the engineering [...]
Agents are idiots
Press release received this lunchtime:
PRESS RELEASE
26 September 2008
EPCS BRANDED A WASTE OF TIME
Nine out of ten of tenants aren’t interested in the energy performance certificate content, according to estate agent Marsh & Parsons. 91% of renters rated EPCs lowest on their list of renting criteria. Cost, location, property condition and size were all deemed [...]
Existing stock - in its infancy
To the Design Museum yesterday to chair a conference entitled Retrofitting & Energy Management. I was given a matter of days to prepare for this so was rather relieved that the whole thing went pretty smoothly. The presentations and ensuing discussions on what and how to address energy use in our existing stock could be [...]
