5 minute read
Retrofit renaissance
ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
Required: a renaissance for retrofi tting
By Herpreet Kaur Grewal
Retrofitting rather than demolishing buildings and constructing new ones in their place is almost always more cost-effective and less carbonintensive from a sustainability perspective. And now, a growing realisation of the retrofit’s lighter impact on the environment is dawning with a wider audience of built environment stakeholders.
At the end of 2021, Marks & Spencer came under criticism for its plans to demolish its 90-year-old flagship store on Oxford Street in London. The key concern was the amount of CO2 would be involved – with thoughts turning back to retrofitting the existing building.
Similarly, a decision to take down the Assembly Rooms in Derby was criticised when it was shown that demolishing and building anew would lead to 11,413.2 tonnes of CO2e when refurbishing it would involve a comparitively low 4,100 tonnes of CO2e. Philip Oldfield, director of the University of New South Wales’ architecture programme, calculated that the difference between the two would be equivalent to “1,590 passenger cars driven for one year”.
Research in 2021 by heritage body Historic England also found that “carefully retrofitting” historic buildings “can lead to substantial carbon savings in the long term”
With World Building Council figures showing that buildings producing almost 40 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, there is a sense that defaulting to retrofit could be a key trend in 2022.
Prioritise planning
One reason is that there is increasing pressure for the governments of the UK to weigh more carefully which planning applications to grant or reject based on the green credentials of the buildings proposed. Countryside campaign group CPRE recently backed this move. Andrew Wood, its spatial planning lead, said that government planning reforms in England must factor in that “cutting carbon should be a basic criterion for major new projects to be considered”. The body also argued for greater powers for local authorities to make these decisions in local applications.
For instance, plans for the ‘Tulip’ – a 305m tower proposed for the City of London – were rejected on appeal by the government for primarily environmental reasons. Secretary of State Michael Gove said that “the extensive measures that would be taken to minimise carbon emissions during construction would not outweigh the highly unsustainable concept of using vast
quantities of reinforced concrete for the foundations and lift shaft to transport visitors to as high a level as possible to enjoy a view”.
This decision is believed to be the first time the government has cited embodied carbon as a consideration in a planning decision letter.
Also, and as we report elsewhere in this edition, post-PFI thinking about the private financing of public buildings could include models that encourage the retrofitting of energy generation / storage assets, extending further a building’s operational life.
Government’s retrofitting role
Recently, the TV personality and architect George Clarke argued for the construction and building engineering sectors to play a key role in addressing the climate crisis, aswell as for financial incentives to encourage fresh investment and new approaches from building owners.
Clarke told delegates at a recent Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) conference that businesses can generate a much lower carbon footprint.
“This can be taken further with sustainable workplace strategies. Companies often ditch old furniture and replace it with something new off the shelf. But lots of items – desks, chairs, sofas – can be refurbished to such a high standard that they appear as good as new. Not only is this a great environmental option, but a much cheaper one too.
“If we want to truly embrace sustainability, we must look to make use of existing spaces rather than building new. As more businesses choose to redesign and refit, that can encourage a shift among builders and developers.”
Steve McGregor, group managing director at DMA Group, said: “It’s probably never been clearer that making buildings work better reduces energy consumption and similarly emissions. Repurposing, refurbishing and refitting existing stock, rather than simply demolishing and rebuilding them, makes more sense than ever at this point. However, the renewable alternatives that are necessary to break our national dependency on conventional fossil fuels are expensive, so ensuring that green funding is available is a prerequisite. Funders must rise to that challenge.”
the government had to be on board for a “global retrofit revolution” by abolishing VAT on the restoration and conversion of existing buildings. He described current government measures to address the carbon impact of housing as “a drop in the ocean” and the fact that 10 per cent of all UK households were currently in fuel poverty as a “national scandal”.
He also said there were plenty of reasons to be optimistic and urged the industry to reinvent itself by inspiring young people to work with the wide range of new technologies being used to build greener and more sustainable structures.
Workplace practicalities
Rachel Houghton, managing director at Business Moves Group, said: “It’s a staggering statistic that buildings are responsible for 39 per cent of global energy-related carbon emissions. However, I don’t think this is particularly well-known outside of construction circles.
“When planning a workplace change project, a lot of businesses might think that moving to a new-build with a high energyefficiency rating is a good choice for sustainability. But the truth is that focusing on a redesign or refit is much more sustainable, whether in an existing space or relocating to an ‘older’ building. Adopting and reconfiguring an existing building can be a much more sustainable solution. With advances in redesign and refit in existing buildings, we can minimise the carbon impact.
“An existing building has already spent its embodied carbon – the emissions created in creating and transporting the raw materials and actually constructing the building. By reworking an existing space, Decarbonising the system
Earlier in 2021, and with a view to speeding up the decarbonisation process, Boris Johnson followed advice given by the Climate Change Committee in its Sixth Carbon Budget recommendations,. These include plans to totally decarbonise the power system by 2035.
At the time technical lead at BESA, Graeme Fox, told Facilitate: “At least 80 per cent of our current stock will still be in use in 2050 so a radical, well-funded national retrofit strategy must be a top priority. Only then can our industry get its teeth into sorting out the performance gap in hundreds of thousands of buildings."
