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Little did we know when campaigning for the Fingal energy standard in 2005-06 that Construct Ireland would have a direct impact on Ikea’s first Irish store. Driven by a combination of Fingal’s requirements and their own renewable energy policy, the Swedish retail giant has invested in the largest ground source heat pump installation in Ireland and the UK, along with a well-thought biomass system fed by an onsite waste stream and a host of other green measures, as John Hearne reports
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With the goal of achieving zero carbon standards for new homes by as soon as 2013, environment minister John Gormley has committed to
introducing 60 per cent energy and carbon reductions under changes to
part L of the building regulations next year. John Hearne spoke to leading industry figures to find out how the revised regulation could raise standards for both new and existing homes
Policy makers sit down to draft the latest draft of part L against a very different backdrop to that of the last conclave in 2007. House completions have dropped through the floor and the broader construction industry is on its knees. Yet statements from the government indicate a continued focus on transformational change in building standards.
“We’re in an extraordinary time,” says leading green architect Joseph Little. “To drive forward global action on climate change the EU has committed to a 20 per cent increase in efficiency, a 20 per cent increase in renewables and 20 per cent reduction in carbon emissions. If other non-EU countries join with us this target could even be increased to 30 per cent. The National Energy Efficiency Action Plan for 2007 to 2020 sets out how the Irish government plans to meet this 20-20-20 target across all sectors. Government officials have told me that it’s very flexible; as situations change they will change its emphasis and revise targets. Given how much oil and gas we import this is not just about climate change but about security and the economy too. The action plan is intended to tie policy together across all sectors of society to achieve these crucial over-arching targets.” Little goes on to say that currently 53 per cent of the energy reduction target needs to be met by the residential sector. It is in working back from this position, he believes, that should drive our approach to what changes we make in the 2010 regs.
Little believes that our approach to the 2010 regs should be informed by working backwards from these targets. Recently appointed chair of the building regulations advisory body (BRAB), Jay Stuart of sustainability consultants DW EcoCo agrees. “What we need is a roadmap to get us from here to 2013 part L, and the stated target of carbon neutral building…It’s all good and useful to have these incremental changes, but I think now we’ve run out of time for that sort of stuff. Given the targets that the EU has set, that the UK has set and that the government here has set, we need to jump to the end game and the end game is that all new buildings from now on should be built so that they don’t have heating systems if they’re residential, and that they generate as much renewable energy as possible and provide as much of the domestic hot water as can be provided.”
REFURBISHMENT
AIB expects housing completions to fall from 51,000 in 2008 to around 25,000 this year, a figure which is now beginning to look optimistic, and remains in stark contrast to the 93,400 completed in 2006. Given the glut of empty and unsold residential units in the country, it seems highly unlikely that any recovery, when it comes, will return us to anything like these activity levels. Against this backdrop, more exacting energy standards for new build houses will have a limited impact on national energy targets. Many in the industry now believe we need to switch emphasis to refurbishment. “The Home Energy Saving scheme and Warmer Homes scheme are the prime tools being used by the government to meet the residential targets in the National Energy Efficiency Action Plan,” says Little. “As housing completions have plummeted most of the 53 per cent reduction will have to be met by energy-focused refurbishment. It may be argued that refurbishing your home has become the key national response to climate change. That link has now been made clear: seemingly modest, localised actions like lagging your cylinder, improving heating controls and insulating attics, when carried out on a large scale, have a national impact and will help slow climate change.”
Jay Stuart of sustainability consultants DW EcoCo, Durkan Ecofix and recently appointed chair of the building regulations advisory body
Part L as it pertains to refurbishment and renovation has not changed significantly since 1997. Joseph Little points to a massive gulf that has emerged between energy standards for new build houses and those that apply to renovations. The maximum permissible U-value for a new build wall currently stands at 0.27 W/m2K, up from 0.45 W/m2K in the 1997 regs. By contrast, you can still refurbish an existing wall to a U-value of 0.6 W/m2/K – the same as twelve years ago. Moreover, confusion in the industry about how the current regulations work has hidden the true extent of the levels of energy efficiency required to comply. The technical guidance documents for 2008 part L takes the reference house specification details from the 2005 regs, with essentially the same U-values, a standard efficiency boiler and a weak air-tightness target. The designer then must take those details along with the form, lay out and orientation of the proposed dwelling and input it into the DEAP software. This leads to a BER figure, typically somewhere around 150 kWh/m2/a. Crucially, they must then multiply that BER figure by 0.6 to get the 40 per cent lower figure of circa 90kWh/m2/a that they’ll have to hit to comply. Most smart designers have realised that some of the most cost-effective and sensible ways to claw towards that target include improving the building envelope, which means better air-tightness, better U-values, and therefore a greater disparity between standards for new build and renovation standards than the prescribed U-values would initially suggest.
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