How will you and your business be recognising Earth Day today? Founder Partner Edward Nash looks back at our journey towards becoming a more sustainable business, and highlights the big carbon challenges now facing homeowners .
Built environment professionals work on the basis that clients pay for knowledge and experience. So, squaring up to sustainability should be about understanding the skills the Zero Carbon world will need.
Twenty years ago, we were only architects. There was emerging knowledge on designing for sustainability in buildings but in the commercial property sphere, appetite for going beyond the legislative framework controlling what gets built was not a market driver, however much we wished it could be. Up to 2010, however, the Sustainable Communities Programme and Code for Sustainable Homes influenced standards on many large public land sales. Come the 2008 recession and a new government, this rapidly fell away.
Private clients were often keen to commit to much higher sustainability standards than prevailing planning policy and Building Regulations standards then demanded. This gave our team the opportunity to gain experience and user feedback of new technologies.
We realised, though, when viewed across the larger built environment, there were many aspects architects have little influence on. The lifestyle and consumption patterns the circa 29 million households in the UK adopt are in part locationally determined. The economy, megatrends and planning policy determine where households live and work. The capitalist economy and its advertising handmaid determine what households consume; in food, drink, clothing, the aspirations for their homes, for leisure and travel.
To have more influence on environmental impacts we needed a broader skillset; one of relevance early in the chain that becomes buildings in particular places and purposes. So, we wove planners, regeneration expertise, spatio-economic consultancy and urban designers into our mix. This drew us more closely to local authorities, housing providers and institutions, each of whom can influence programmes of lifestyle change over many years.
Now, the project start point can be much further back. In probing patterns of demographic change, how neighbourhoods respond to evolving megatrends, shaping policy on brownfield sites to achieve positive ends. Or, with recent work in Nigeria, strategic master planning for a solar powered new city.
Years of engaging with neighbourhood communities, local authorities and stakeholders made consultation a big part of our team’s experience. This has equipped our multi-disciplinary team well for the massive Zero Carbon 2050 journey.
In commercial development, willingness to seek high sustainability standards has quickened, driven by the coming Future Homes Standard. For developers already building bespoke designs, specifying for high sustainability is part of the brand mix. Our Frome town centre project for Acorn Property Group (Mendip District Council are landowner) was permitted early in 2021. It will have triple glazing, and external walls 30% up even on the Future Homes Standard, which is not yet adopted. It is designed for optimum solar orientation and conceived entirely around low commute lifestyles.
Housing associations with thousands of houses in their care can justify enhanced standards. They see the link between energy performance standards and costs for tenants and have the project delivery power to make it happen.
The bigger challenge is how the Zero Carbon goal can be reached for the 18 million homes in private ownership.
Research suggests that of the housing our population will be living in in 2050, 80% of it already exists (UK Green Building Council).
Getting to net Zero Carbon for this stock needs ‘deep retrofitting’ almost all of it. Currently only 1% of homes have an A standard EPC rating. Of one million homes with low carbon heating, almost all use biomass.
In the UK, the case for major investment in changing our homes is only triggered by major life stages – coupling, growing family size or downsizing. The population is temperamentally unprepared for this need for deep retrofitting, and it sits way behind a new kitchen or conservatory.
With the recent growth of renewables, it’s hard for individual householders to be sure what they should do; perhaps some believe just connecting up to a 100% renewable supplier is all that’s needed?
Will change happen only through the churn of houses from one generation to another, for which green mortgages or a discount on stamp duty might be part of the plan? Things are more difficult now 28% of households are of single occupancy. There will be householders where age, funding capacity, prospects of relocation or just not knowing where to start are big factors.
Some of the most interesting research we have seen is on the psychology and sociology of neighbourhood change dynamics. How households can be supported to embark on retrofitting journeys over many years by programmes rolled out on a neighbourhood scale led by their local authorities, as educator, encourager and honest broker. How effective so many local authorities have been in setting up and raising the bar in neighbourhood waste recycling brings optimism here.
For Nash Partnership, being a more sustainable business is all about understanding the tools and the skills society needs to make this enormous step change in how we all take responsibility for energy use and the resources the built environment draws from the planet’s stock.