SPECIAL FEATURE
We obviously make sure that whatever we do is considered to be energy efficient and responsiblE— and has got to bring shareholder value”
locked down as the environmental criteria against which any other commercial chiller would then be judged if that other company wanted to get an LCA. That was probably one of the demonstrable outcomes of that. Most companies are working on products that are more environmentally responsible through R&D, which is a little different from having a particular team who do nothing but ensure that energy efficiency and sustainability is driven into our business. It’s not just to be green. We obviously make sure that whatever we do is considered to be energy efficient and responsible and has got to bring shareholder value. We are a public trading company and make sure that the number of criteria’s is met, which will benefit the product or service. We
also make sure it complies with the usual energy efficiency and sustainability standards. By conducting some of these LCAs, we did the very first one with a third party environmental consultant. Part of our brief was not just to get the product done and certified for our sales brochure; we actually extended the commission so that we can learn how to conduct an LCA, to use it as a model that can be driven into our businesses, so that all design teams across the company can use it through a process. We now have something called a green portfolio, which is a subset of our development portfolio, accessible online.
Scott Coombes Director at AESG
Scott Coombes: Do you find that innovation takes a long time to catch on here among designers and consultants? The reason I say that is because there’s a project that I’m working on at the moment, and they’ve provided a small district cooling plant for couple of the buildings there and they’ve used an air-cooled chiller. That seems mad to me because an air cooled chiller has a COP (coefficient of performance) of 2.8
or 3, whereas you can use a watercooled chiller at 4.5, 5 or 6—very good COPs. And it just seems that there’s a lot of design that’s progressing at the moment, and the consultants are just going with what they know and understand for the last 20 years as opposed to maybe taking on new, innovative technologies. Is there any way that you as a supplier of technologies can help to educate or encourage the consultants?
Peter Blanchflower: There’s a lot of truth in what you say. Without getting too esoteric, we can see that in the choices made by some consultants and contractors who are presented with traditional products and also the high efficiency model that costs 5% more. Trying to get that extra 5% out of that project is extremely difficult. They all say “that’s really nice, love to have it—I am green as well,” but they’re not going to pay that extra 5%. Then you go through the energy calculation and demonstrate that the extra 5% would have a payback period of 3 or 4 years. But often, sad to say, clients would opt for the model that has the best initial price.
November 2012
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