CIBSE (Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers)              SBE0090

Written evidence from CIBSE (Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers)

THE RESPONDENT

The respondent is The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), the professional body which exists to ‘support the Science, Art and Practice of building services engineering, by providing our members and the public with first class information’.

CIBSE members design, install, operate, maintain and refurbish the systems in buildings.

CIBSE has over 20,000 members, about 15,000 in the UK. We publish best practice advice and guidance that is internationally recognised as authoritative. The CIBSE Knowledge Portal makes it available online as the leading systematic engineering resource for the building services sector.

www.cibse.org  

Reasons for submitting a response

CIBSE’s charitable objects, defined by its Royal Charter, is ‘The promotion for the benefit of the public in general of the art, science and practice” of building services engineering, and “the advancement of education and research” and “the publication of the useful results of such research” in building services engineering. As such, CIBSE has been very active in the fields of energy efficiency, carbon reduction, resource efficiency and climate adaptation for several decades.

In 2019 to increase our action in the face of the climate emergency, we published our first Climate Action Plan (https://www.cibse.org/news-and-policy/policy/technical-themes/net-zero ), which identifies areas where we have an opportunity and a responsibility to act, from guidance and training, input to government and local policy, through to codes of professional conducts and our own actions:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

§1 - While updates to building regulations have been consulted upon, they fall significantly short of what is required to ensure significant reductions in energy use and associated carbon emissions in practice. We do not detail this here as the inquiry’s focus is embodied carbon, but our recommendations are detailed in our recent response to the Future Building Standard consultation: https://www.cibse.org/News-and-Policy/Policy/Consultations/Closed-Consultations/Future-Buildings-Standard-Building-Regulations-Pa and we have included a summary in Appendix A. We stress this must be addressed and we would be very happy to discuss our concerns and recommendations with the EAC.

§2 – A significant opportunity to reduce embodied and operational carbon is in our approach to existing buildings and retrofit: the performance of existing buildings must be improved, and existing buildings should be adapted and re-used wherever possible, rather than demolished and replaced.

§3 -There is little progress and no firm commitment nor timescale for regulations to be introduced on embodied carbon. In parallel, some policy activities may have gone counter to this. These should be revised.

§4 - However, the past few years have seen significant progress which could pave the way to regulating embodied carbon, including:

• convergence on methods to assess embodied carbon, and emerging convergence on best practice targets for embodied carbon
• the new CIBSE TM65 methodology for assessment of embodied carbon in building services, previously a significant gap in methodology until such time that Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) become common for building services products
• new planning requirements by the Greater London Authority, which will help build expertise and supply chains and gather data, in turn creating benchmarks and targets.

This progress is evidenced in the growing consensus of professional bodies (including CIBSE) and other organisations calling for regulation of embodied carbon, most recently in the joint letter to the Secretary of State in response to the Future Building Standard consultation: https://www.cibse.org/news-and-policy/april-2021/cibse-joins-coalition-in-letter-to-government-over . 

§5 – Much of this inquiry focuses on materials to reduce embodied carbon. However, this is only a very limited part of the required approach: the impact of materials must be considered in the round, with upfront embodied carbon considered alongside whole-life embodied carbon (e.g. durability), operational carbon, and functional requirements. Resource efficiency (“lean design”) and waste reduction must also be considered. This means that overall embodied carbon assessments are a more suitable approach than blunt tools such as banning materials or preferring some over others.

RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS

Q1 - To what extent have the Climate Change Committee’s recommendations on decarbonising the structural fabric of new homes been met?

§6 - To very little extent, if any.

§7 - The CCC’s first recommendation on that matter, in their 2019 Housing Fit for the Future report, was: “Develop new policies to support a substantial increase in the use of wood in construction. This will need to focus on overcoming a range of cultural, skills and financial barriers in the construction sector. “

§8 - There are some initiatives in devolved administrations e.g. of note, the manifesto of the newly elected Welsh government: “Build in the right way using materials with low levels of embodied carbon, such as timber, and specifically Welsh timber, creating a timber based industrial strategy that can develop and sustain the high value production and processing of Welsh wood. This will take us further in tackling fuel poverty, create sustainable jobs and provide research and training opportunities”.  However, we are not aware of any UK-wide policy addressing the CCC recommendation.

§9 - In addition, a significant new piece of legislation has been the ban on combustible materials in external walls.

§10 - In the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, government committed to “ban combustible cladding” from high-rise residential buildings. In the event the legislation had to be framed to ban combustible materials, with certain legally specified exceptions, from the whole of the external wall of buildings in scope.

§11 - Initially this applied to some 12,000 existing buildings and we currently build about 600 new high-rise residential buildings each year. Government has since consulted on lowering the height of buildings covered by the ban and may reduce it to 11m, which would bring some 75,000 – 80,000 buildings in scope, and potentially a further 2,000 – 3,000 new buildings each year.

§12 - In parallel, the insurance and professional indemnity markets have hardened very considerably against the use of combustible materials, including timber, significantly restricting what the industry is insured to design or to build (whether or not it is in external walls).

§13 - All of this heightens the need for policies that will promote the use of timber more widely where it is reasonable and safe to do so, to contribute to the UK’s carbon reduction targets.

§14 - Ensuring safety is of course a priority, but does not conflict with sustainability objectives: a building that burns is not sustainable. CIBSE understand the difficulty of taking more refined approaches, for example clearly to define “cladding” in law, or to take account of levels of combustibility and of specific configurations (where the combustible material is located, what it is surrounded by etc). A more nuanced system would, for safety to be assured, rely on competence of the whole design and supply chain. The Building Safety Bill and other initiatives, such as the industry-led Construction Industry Council Climate Action Plan, aim to address the issue of competence, among others. As the new building safety regime is put in place and takes effect, with resulting improvements in competence and enforcement, then the approach to timber in buildings should be revised in order to allow its safe application in new and existing buildings.

§15 - The CCC’s second recommendation on that matter was: “Undertake low-regrets action to support the assessment and benchmarking of whole-life carbon in buildings with a view to informing the future policy framework. “

§16 - The only evidence of government action on this recommendation is a statement in the January 2021 MHCLG response to the Future Homes Standard consultation: “We will carry out wider work to consider the future of energy efficient and low carbon buildings. This will examine some of the broader and more fundamental questions (…) such as the role of (…) low carbon materials, including timber, in delivering low carbon construction where these can be used safely.” This is rather vague and non-committal. We are not aware of more specific actions taken or planned by government, nor of the possible legislative instruments being looked at to take these actions (e.g. planning framework, building regulations, product standards?).

§17 - This lack of action on embodied carbon has been raised by a significant number of organisations, including CIBSE, in the recent joint letter in response to the Future Building Standard consultation, April 2021: https://www.cibse.org/news-and-policy/april-2021/cibse-joins-coalition-in-letter-to-government-over.

§18 - We would also point out that to achieve significant improvements in “decarbonising the structural fabric of new homes”, we will need not only to use lower-carbon materials, but, crucially, to apply resource efficiency i.e. use less material through lean design and reduced waste production. A key element of this is building shape, which influences the amount of envelope and super- and sub-structure, often by far the most significant elements of upfront embodied carbon in new buildings. The current approach to Building Regulations Part L (which addresses operational carbon) does NOT encourage efficient building shapes, as each building is assessed for compliance by comparison with a building of the same shape. CIBSE have been recommending for some time that the approach based on a notional building should be reviewed, to drive improvements in absolute (not relative) performance, and encouraged to take building form into account. This could have both operational and embodied carbon benefits.

§19 - In addition, a number of measures go counter to the CCC recommendation; in particular, the missed opportunities to promote retrofit, retaining and improving existing buildings – see questions 4 and 10.

Q2 - How can materials be employed to reduce the carbon impact of new buildings, including efficient heating and cooling, and which materials are most effective at reducing embodied carbon?

§20 – Some materials, especially timber, clearly offer opportunities to reduce embodied and whole-life carbon, and their use must be encouraged – see question 1. With regards to materials employed in building services, CIBSE TM56, 2014 and TM65, 2021 offer some guidance but attention on this topic is relatively recent so further advice is likely to emerge in the next few years, as understanding and data availability increase – see also Question 5.

§21 - However, materials selection must be part of a broader approach to whole life carbon and functional requirements. Blanket approaches to promote or avoid the use of particular materials are too blunt and may not have the desired effects, because materials influence the whole life carbon impact and performance of buildings in a number of ways:

• Upfront embodied carbon
• Whole-life embodied carbon, influenced by factors such as durability, ease of maintenance and options at end of (their first useful) life
• Operational carbon: envelope and structural materials will influence a building’s thermal properties such as insulation and thermal mass; the materials used in building services systems may impact system efficiencies.
• Broader functional requirements e.g. higher levels of insulation will improve winter comfort; retrofitting double or triple glazing will reduce noise disturbance as well as reduce energy use improve winter comfort: all of these impacts have to be considered, alongside whole life carbon.

§22 - In addition, while some materials may have a lower embodied carbon (e.g. by weight or area of application), they may for the same application need to be used in different quantities (e.g. thicker insulation for the same U-value). A simple comparison between materials is therefore not necessarily relevant without considering their “functional unit”.

§23 - As simple illustrations in the case of building services:

• The materials used for radiators will influence their upfront embodied carbon (e.g. steel is typically lower carbon than aluminium per kg, but a radiator of the same output will weigh more). It will also impact operational efficiency and comfort (e.g. a steel radiator will have slower response times when heating is turned on/off, so it may be better suited in buildings in constant occupation and less well insulated).
• the choice of refrigerants in a cooling system will influence upfront embodied carbon, as well as greenhouse gas emissions from refrigerant leakage (through the refrigerant’s Global Warming Potential), and carbon emissions from energy use related to the efficiency of the system, which itself is influenced by the refrigerant.

§24- As per Question 1, we would also note that resource efficiency should come before materials selection: as well as reducing construction waste, this must include “lean” design to use less material, before selecting the material. In addition, lean design is an area where there are opportunities to benefit both embodied and operational carbon e.g. reducing demand and avoiding over-sizing can reduce upfront embodied carbon by reducing plant size, and it can also reduce operational carbon by reducing annual consumption and improving efficiency.

§25 - Altogether, this means that considering materials alone is insufficient. System design and the selection of materials and products have to take a number of factors into account, often with the best solution determined on a project-by-project basis, using an overall embodied and operational carbon approach.

Q3 - What role can nature-based materials can play in achieving the Government’s net zero ambition?

§26 – A key opportunity is timber – see questions 1 and 2, and estimates by the CCC of contributions from timber construction (hand in hand with forestry and land management) to the UK’s net zero target.

§27 – Another opportunity is the use of natural insulation materials: in addition to embodied carbon benefits, this could have benefits such as improved air quality (lower emissions of volatile organic compounds) and, particularly, in retrofit applications, moisture breathability and compatibility with heritage conservation approaches. We have received feedback that these applications could be helped by relatively simple measures, such as wider availability of options available in regulatory compliance calculations (i.e. SAP and associated software), where materials in the available database tend to be dominated by large manufacturers of, usually, non-nature-based materials.

§28 – It is really important to realise that, in both the case of timber and natural insulation, their widespread application would require the widespread development of skills and competence to avoid unintended consequences, since their properties, particularly in relation to moisture movement, are different from what is now “typical” design and construction practice. 

Q4 - What role can the planning system, permitted development and building regulations play in delivering a sustainable built environment? How can these policies incentivise developers to use low carbon materials and sustainable design?

§29 - Both the planning system and building regulations are fundamental in delivering a sustainable built environment, including:

• Minimum standards for new buildings which are energy efficient and low-carbon (embodied and operational), and provide safe, healthy and comfortable environments.
• Minimum standards and a route for existing buildings to improve and achieve the best possible standards. There are significant missed opportunities currently, with building regulations standards having seen only minimal upgrades in the past few years, and taking elemental approaches rather than whole-building or whole-house. This misses opportunities for improvements and risks leading to detrimental unintended consequences: our recommendations to the Future Buildings Standard consultation are summarised in Appendix A , and available in full here: https://www.cibse.org/News-and-Policy/Policy/Consultations/Closed-Consultations/Future-Buildings-Standard-Building-Regulations-Pa.
• Encouraging retrofit rather than demolition and new build: see details in question 10.

§30- The planning system and building regulations must work together:

• Planning is currently best placed, strategically, to encourage retrofit instead of demolition and new build; this could also become encouraged by building regulations if they required an assessment and minimisation of embodied carbon
• Planning is best placed to encourage consideration of building form, which influences both embodied and operational carbon – although building regulations could and should take better account of it (see question 1)
• Local planning policies can, where viable, drive the development of knowledge, competence and supply chains by introducing early requirements which, in turn, can inform building regulations. An example of this is the London Plan, which for many years now has required improvements of operational carbon compared to Building Regulations, in turn providing evidence for a gradual tightening of the regulations; the recent introduction in the London Plan of a requirement to assess embodied carbon will in turn provide data which could lead to benchmarks and targets; it will also develop industry skills, preparing it for the introduction of similar requirements in building regulations. 

§31 – Specific recommendations on the planning system:

• There are several ways in which the planning system could work better to drive a sustainable environment, including climate mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity, and health and wellbeing. CIBSE recommendations are detailed in our March 2020 position statement on planning and climate change (https://www.cibse.org/News-and-Policy/Policy/CIBSE-Position-Statements/Towards-a-Better-Planning-Framework-to-Address-Cli ) and in our April 2021 response to the NPPF & Design Code consultation, summarised in Appendix B and available in full here: https://www.cibse.org/News-and-Policy/Policy/Consultations/Closed-Consultations/National-Planning-Policy-Framework-and-National-Mo
• CIBSE have for a while expressed strong concerns about Permitted Development Rights, particularly when applied to the creation of housing from conversion. There is much evidence that this leads to housing of poor standards and potential health and safety hazards. 

§32 – Specific recommendations on building regulations: Joint letter to the Secretary of State (see §17), and response to the Future Buildings Standard consultation (see §29), and response to the Future Homes Consultation summarised in Appendix C and available in full here: https://www.cibse.org/News-and-Policy/Policy/Consultations/Closed-Consultations/Changes-to-Part-L-and-Part-F-of-the-Building-Regul .

§33 - The Architect Climate Action Network recently produced a report with a number of recommendations on ways which embodied carbon could be accounted for in the legislative framework: https://www.architectscan.org/embodiedcarbon  .

Q5 - What methods account for embodied carbon in buildings and how can this be consistently applied across the sector?

§34 – Recent years have seen significant convergence in methodologies, and most derive from the same European and British standards. The main one referred to in industry guidance and planning policy (e.g. London Plan) is the RICS professional statement, which CIBSE broadly support except for 2 points:

• Guidance on embodied carbon of building services: guidance is now available which was not at the time of the creation of the RICS statement - see §35.
• When assessing operational carbon from energy use, the RICS professional statement allows the use of Part L calculations. This is inappropriate since it only covers regulated energy uses, and is not meant as a prediction but a standardised assessment for compliance of the asset – the discrepancy between Part L calculations and actual energy use is well evidenced, with Part L results routinely significantly under-estimating actual energy use. This means that results under the RICS methodology can under-estimate operational carbon emissions from energy use, and therefore under-estimate the benefits of measures to reduce energy use (e.g. fabric efficiency).

§35 - CIBSE has provided guidance on resource efficiency and reducing embodied carbon from building services for a number of years:

• TM56 Resource Efficiency in Building Services, 2014, including considerations of embodied carbon and other environmental impacts
• TM65 Embodied carbon in Building Services: A Methodology, 2021, which intends to 1) encourage engineers to request Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), in order to create a market pull for their creation, and 2) assist embodied carbon calculations where EPDs are not available. CIBSE will be gathering data from calculations carried out using TM65, with the aim to create publicly available benchmarks and to inform industry and regulatory targets.
• Upcoming in 2021– guidance on embodied carbon in residential heating systems, to be followed by other types of systems.

§36 - Lessons should be gathered from early adopters, including those driven by the new requirements in the London Plan. This could help refine the methodologies and guidance. It could also lead to product standards (e.g. if detailed assessment found systematic opportunities in certain products) and to the development of rules of thumb which could be used at early project stages or on small projects where full embodied carbon assessments are too onerous.

§37 – There is already training available on methodologies such as the RICS one, and CIBSE are currently developing training on the use of TM65. It is possible that more formal routes will be developed by industry to improve consistency in embodied carbon assessments e.g. 3rd party verification, certified assessors etc. This is more likely to happen if government send strong signals that embodied carbon will become regulated in the future.

Q6 - Should the embodied carbon impact of alternative building materials take into account the carbon cost of manufacture and delivery to site, enabling customers to assess the relative impact of imported versus domestically sourced materials?

§38 – Yes, as per standard methodologies. All materials and products should be compared on a like-for-like basis, including manufacture and transport impacts, whether or not it is abroad.

§39 - This will help address a gap in the UK’s carbon targets, which currently exclude emissions abroad related to UK consumption (we acknowledge that government recently committed to include shipping and aviation in their Nationally Determined Contributions and 2035 carbon reduction target; this is a first step, but it does not include manufacture, often far more significant in carbon terms).

Q7 - How well is green infrastructure being incorporated into building design and developments to achieve climate resilience and other benefits?

§40 – This is not done often enough and is often reliant on the ambition of local planning policies. CIBSE have highlighted this on a number of occasions. For example, the consultation on the NPPF and National Model Design Codes (see §31) mostly refers to green infrastructure as “green space”, ignoring the multiple functions and benefits that green infrastructure can deliver, such as overheating risk mitigation and air quality.

Q8 - How should we take into account the use of materials to minimise carbon footprint, such as use of water harvesting from the roof, grey water circulation, porous surfaces for hardstanding, energy generation systems such as solar panels?

§41 – As a general rule, these systems should be included in the embodied carbon assessment. However, once the assessment is used in decision making then (as for all other design decisions), functionality has to be taken into account i.e. what is the overall embodied and operational carbon impact of these systems compared to others which deliver the same function. For example, when looking at on-site generation (e.g. PV panels), the question is whether, compared to other forms of generating electricity, they have a lower embodied and operational impact. The grid will decarbonise and therefore the relative operational carbon benefits of PVs may reduce in the future, but energy will still be needed to be produced by a system or another, with associated embodied as well as operational carbon expenditure, so on-site PVs may still offer benefits overall.

§42 – An important associated question is which carbon factors should be used in these assessments: it is relatively straightforward for upfront embodied carbon (since this has been spent already), but relies on projections and assumptions for whole life impacts. Guidance from government to bring consistency would be very useful on this issue.

Q9 - How should re-use and refurbishment of buildings be balanced with new developments?

§43 – A key instrument is planning, at which stage these decisions are made – see Questions 4 and 10. Broadly speaking, we recommend the following approach:

• Presumption in favour of re-use and adaptation of buildings, with onerous requirements to justify demolition if this is proposed
• Improved standards for retrofitted buildings, to improve their performance and desirability: the fast-tracked conversion of existing buildings into housing of low-quality through PDRs is NOT, in the long-term, safe or sustainable.
• The introduction of embodied carbon assessments (alongside operational carbon), which would encourage the retention of existing buildings.

§44 – More generally, while we acknowledge the overall need for more housing, and for housing that is affordable, there is also a need to think strategically about housing alongside transport links and jobs. Some areas of the country see significantly lower demand for housing (indeed, some have large numbers of under-occupied or empty homes). The pandemic has increased opportunities for jobs to be spread around the country thanks to the wide adoption of working-from-home. Furthermore, a proper national retrofit programme commensurate with our net zero target, as advocated by CIBSE and the Construction Leadership Council (https://www.constructionleadershipcouncil.co.uk/news/national-retrofit-strategy-consultative-document/ ), among others, and supported by a major investment in skills and focus on quality of work would create huge opportunities for job creation throughout the country. These two factors alone illustrate opportunities for the creation of new or improved homes away from high-demand areas such as London and the south-east, in areas where this would not necessarily need to be new build…

Q10 - What can the Government do to incentivise more repair, maintenance and retrofit of existing buildings?

§45 – We provided detailed recommendations to this question in our recent submission to the EAC inquiry on energy efficiency of existing homes (https://www.cibse.org/News-and-Policy/Policy/Consultations/Closed-Consultations/Energy-Efficiency-of-Existing-Homes ).  Key points are summarised here, but we very much encourage the EAC to consider our more detailed recommendations in that submission and would welcome the opportunity to discuss them with the EAC.

§46 - Our key recommendations to deliver retrofit at scale, at speed, with the intended benefits and without unintended detrimental consequences are:

-          Adopt a clear and visible retrofit strategy that is fully coordinated between government departments and linked to the heat decarbonisation strategy. It must have long- and short-term objectives to give confidence to supply chains to invest in development of skills, competence, business models and products. There must be efforts to increase awareness among homeowners, raise confidence in supply chains and potential benefits to justify the disruption and capital investment.

-          Review the regulatory framework to cover all relevant opportunity points for retrofit and all sections of the market, including building regulations, planning, MEES and ECO, the planning system and new requirements at point of sale. The review must consider how to address actual in-use performance.

-          This regulatory framework must fit into the new regulatory regime being developed under the Building Safety Bill to make sure that healthy and comfortable internal conditions and energy and carbon reduction are seen as key safety and performance requirements in their own right.

-          Monitor progress and be prepared to introduce incentives, requirements and additional support if regulations and market-driven demand do not deliver sufficient progress.

-          Adopt a whole-house approach to avoid carbon lock-ins and detrimental consequences and achieve more ambitious energy and carbon reductions.

-          Introduce digital building passports, with a clear route to net zero carbon and a record of the works carried out that transfers from owner to owner.

-          Learn from past reviews and make better use of existing schemes such as the PAS 2030/35 framework and Trustmark; adopt data gathering, monitoring and sharing throughout, and gather lessons to allow continuous improvements.

-          Put in place a strategy to develop supply chains skills and competence. This could start with requirements on public projects and could form an integral part of the post-pandemic recovery plans.

-          Carry out a review of energy pricing and financial incentives, to align with carbon, environmental and health objectives.

END OF MAIN SECTION

This response has been produced by Dr Julie Godefroy, Technical Manager at CIBSE. Do not hesitate to contact us for further information.

APPENDICES – SUPPORTING INFORMATION

APPENDIX A – RECOMMENDATIONS ON FUTURE BUILDING STANDARD - (EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FROM CIBSE RESPONSE TO CONSULTATION, APRIL 2021)

We welcome a number of aspects in the Future Homes Standard (FHS) response and the Future Buildings Standard (FBS) consultation, which we had called for in our response to the 2019-20 FHS consultation and other policy positions:

• The overall stated intention that from 2025, buildings should not need to be retrofitted to be net zero carbon in 2050. This is an essential first step towards delivering new housing that can achieve net zero standards without significant further cost to the homeowner or landlord and without significant use of additional financial, time and embodied carbon resources.
• Retaining the right for Local Authorities to set energy and carbon standards beyond regulatory minima, allowing more carbon savings earlier and ultimately developing the rest of the market
• Accelerated development of the FHS, with a draft now due in 2023. This will allow early adoption by market leaders and local authorities and support the development of supply chains. 
• Retaining fabric energy efficiency standards (FEES) whose removal created serious risks of fuel poverty and poor fabric performance. 

• For non-domestic buildings, clear statements acknowledging the performance gap, with a strengthening of commissioning requirements, some changes to the NCM to “better account for energy uses and incentivise appropriate design solutions”, and the new requirement for energy performance modelling (e.g. CIBSE TM54) for buildings over 1,000 m2.
• For non-domestic buildings, clear statements about the importance of heat decarbonisation, anticipating a central role for heat pumps and no role for hydrogen in the timescale considered.

However, there are a number of proposed measures which cause concern and may cause unintended consequences, and some measures which CIBSE considers necessary that are omitted. These concerns and omissions are set out below along with our recommendations for inclusion in the 2021 and 2025 revisions: 

Competence, skills, and supply chains

Many of the topics and proposals detailed above will require significant skills updates and upgrades across the whole of the supply chain. They are not optional extras, they are essential to achieving the necessary successful outcomes from the measures detailed. Without a serious and sustained focus on skills over many years then significant aspects of the programme are in jeopardy from the outset. There are 2 particular areas where this is the case:

• Airtightness and ventilation, to improve energy efficiency and protect the health of occupants
• Low-carbon heat: Moving from a predominantly gas fuelled domestic sector to a predominantly electric fuelled one requires significant (re)training to deliver performance and protect consumers.

The outline Future Homes / Buildings Standard must clearly show what supply chains will be expected to deliver, so they can start preparing now, and the 2021 revision must represent a clear step towards 2025 requirements, to provide further incentives for supply chain development.

In addition, and recognising that this cannot be addressed by Building Regulations alone, MHCLG should work closely with BEIS to develop a buildings policy which covers safety, sustainability and skills. For a more detailed analysis please see the Royal Academy of Engineering paper “Beyond COVID-19: laying the foundations for a net zero recovery[1].

General comments on the consultation package

We acknowledge that a consultation seeking to tackle new and existing buildings, domestic and non-domestic, 2021 and 2025, and Parts L, F and overheating, was a significant challenge to produce, and we appreciate all the work which went into it. However, following our own analysis as well as the feedback we have received from several parties, we would like to raise concerns about some of the information provided which, together with the breadth of the consultation, may prevent MHCLG from gathering truly well-informed and thorough responses. The following items are of particular concern as they are significant topics for building performance, carbon emissions, and the health of occupants, and we are concerned about the quality of responses as a result. There may be others which we have not been able to spot:

• Question 17 – connection to existing district heating networks: erroneous carbon factor of the notional district heating network (0.19kgCO2/kWh stated in the draft NCM). We are grateful for MHCLG’s response to our query on this topic, and we have communicated this it to members who had raised it with us, to the LETI network, and via social media, but given the short timescale we are wary that a number of respondents will respond on the basis of “carbon factor of 0.19”.
• Question 110 - FEES: Unclear wording (“high” or “low”), which was clarified to the LETI network and passed on to CIBSE, as we raised our concerns to them. This is a significant topic under consultation, and we are concerned about the ease of interpreting responses as a result.
• New overheating standard and simplified method: as detailed in our response, we very much support the introduction of a regulatory standard on this issue, and support the principle of a simplified method. However, these are clearly significant changes, which could have long-term consequences on thousands of buildings and residents, and the proposals are currently difficult to assess thoroughly given the lack of explanatory material i.e. how the method was arrived at, and what testing was carried out on its robustness.
• Changes and omissions e.g. Removal of reference to summer comfort appraisals for non-domestic buildings: the current draft ADL2 omits an important statement highlighting the limits of considering only summer gains, and recommending an assessment of thermal comfort in non-domestic buildings – see details in Question 53. Not only is this a change CIBSE strongly advise against, it is also a significant change which has not been highlighted in the consultation document and draft AD, nor covered by a consultation question. This is of specific concern for this topic, but also raises the question of whether other important changes are proposed, which have not been highlighted and are not covered by consultation questions. Faced with such a wide ranging and important consultation, industry cannot be expected to spot every single change or omission, and we are concerned that important ones may not have been raised and will consequently not receive the scrutiny and feedback they deserve.

APPENDIX B – RECOMMENDATIONS ON NPPF & DESIGN CODES (EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FROM CIBSE RESPONSE TO CONSULTATION, APRIL 2021)

CIBSE submitted a response to this consultation making the following suggestions:

• ​The NPPF and National Model Design Code must make it explicit that the planning system must contribute to meeting the UK’s Net Zero Carbon legal target and, not just “mitigating” greenhouse gas emissions.
• The NPPF and National Model Design Code must make it clear that works to existing buildings, which are subject to planning applications, should also contribute to the Net Zero challenge. 
• The National Model Design Code should acknowledge a much more comprehensive definition of green infrastructure and should make it clear that green infrastructure should be assessed and planned in view of its multiple functional services.
• MHCLG should provide more guidance on how the Design Codes and new Approved document on overheating will work together.
• The National Model Design Code must include guidance on noise, particularly in relation to residential and other sensitive sites where noise can cause health issues and increase reliance on mechanical plant.
• Under recent developments, an increasing amount of works falls outside planning requirements, through Permitted Development Rights. This goes against quality, environmental and health objectives and must be revisited.
• Under the proposed overhauled system of NPPF and design codes, it is unclear how planning at the strategic local authority and regional scale will occur and what guidance and requirements will need to be followed. This strategic planning must happen for the effective delivery of zero carbon energy infrastructure, and green infrastructure.
• As plan-making, decision-making, implementation and monitoring will rely on Local Authority resources, which have been under constant and significant strain for several years, the Government should provide more adequate support to Local Authorities to ensure planning objectives are delivered consistently and without undue delays in the planning process. 

Full response: https://www.cibse.org/News-and-Policy/Policy/Consultations/Closed-Consultations/National-Planning-Policy-Framework-and-National-Mo

APPENDIX C – RECOMMENDATIONS ON FUTURE HOMES STANDARD (EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FROM CIBSE RESPONSE TO CONSULTATION, FEBRUARY 2020)

As the consultation document itself states, “Despite progress reducing emissions from homes, we need to go much further. New homes being built now and in the next 5-10 years will still exist in 2050 and therefore we must ensure that the energy efficiency standards we set for them put us on track to meet the 2050 target.” This echoes the statement by Chris Stark, Chief Executive of the Committee on Climate Change that “The UK has achieved major changes in complex systems before, but not at the scale that the Committee on Climate Change has now recommended to reach net-zero in the UK.”1

The report specifically recommends, in relation to reducing energy demand in buildings, that BEIS and MHCLG: “Ensure that the implementation of the Hackitt Review addresses the energy efficiency performance gap on the evolution of and compliance with buildings standards and in the development of skills, standards, procedures and capacity within the building industry sector.”

We very much agree with the stated overall ambition described, but have strong concerns that the proposals set out are not sufficiently ambitious to deliver significant progress towards meeting the objectives of reducing carbon emissions, annual energy consumption and peak demand, and ensuring affordability to consumers. The proposals for Part L 2020 do not represent the required “meaningful and achievable step” towards zero carbon, and the timeline and content of the Future Homes Standard is not ambitious enough, nor does it begin to address real in-use energy performance and carbon emissions.

In summary, we recommend the following:

• Tighten requirements on the performance of buildings themselves (independently from grid decarbonisation) to deliver additional savings in carbon emissions, reduce annual energy consumption and peak demand, and keep heating costs lower. There is evidence that more ambitious improvements are already being delivered – see Appendix 1 & 2, and this needs to be captured in the updated requirements of Part L. This is particularly important to minimise the building of new homes that might later need further retrofitting of energy efficiency measures, at much greater cost to the owners and at a significant penalty in embodied energy and diversion of resources from refurbishing some of the 27m buildings that need to be retrofitted by 2050. Economising on energy efficiency measures now might help to achieve favourable impact assessment calculations in the very short term but will lock in significant future costs and probably carbon emissions. The no-regrets objective now needs to be the most efficient fabric possible for new buildings.
• Review the notional building, which is currently proposed to have a gas boiler: instead, the notional building should encourage the transition to low-carbon heating and strongly discourage all-electric buildings with poor fabric performance. It should have excellent fabric efficiency and a low carbon source of heating. The currently proposed notional building sends the wrong signal and allows detrimental relaxations to fabric performance – see next point, and Appendix 3.
• Ensure that the proposals overall strongly encourage a fabric first approach: currently, the proposals for removing the FEES, combined with a gas-heated notional building and a lower grid carbon factor, mean that a 2020 Part L compliant building could have worse fabric performance than one complying with 2013 Part L – see Appendix 3. This is clearly very much in the wrong direction in terms of reducing energy consumption and peak demand and also causes fuel poverty concerns. We acknowledge that the consultation is to some extent aware of this risk and proposes to introduce a heat affordability metric to address it, however the plans for this metric are unclear. It seems more appropriate and straightforward to avoid the problem in the first place by retaining the full fabric energy efficiency standards, which were developed in collaboration with the industry through the work of the Zero Carbon Hub and changing the fuel setting of the notional building. FEES have the additional benefit of incentivising consideration of building form, including shape and orientation, a crucial step of passive design which is missed under the current approach of a notional building which has the same shape and orientation as the actual building – see Appendix 4.
• Assess heat networks on a fair basis: the current proposed “technology factor” for schemes connected to heat networks would provide an excessive (45%!) allowance for additional heating emissions. While we understand heat networks may benefit certain situations (e.g. hard-to-treat conservation areas), this should not be at the expense of increasing emissions for new development. Fudge factors which distort the assessment of building performance and do not treat technologies equitably are unfair and must be avoided. If proved beneficial for reasons other than reducing carbon emissions in new dwellings, then heat networks can be encouraged through other means than Part L. The argument that networks offer flexible low-carbon heating options in the future may be valid, but this needs to happen now, instead of potentially locking large areas into a gas-fired future, at significant initial expenditure of finances and embodied carbon and with impacts on air quality too.

• Review performance metrics: the proposals currently include 2 « system » metrics (carbon, and primary energy), which do not help connecting consumers with actual building performance and do not encourage building performance directly enough, as they are heavily dependent on the wider system. We understand this is considered necessary for the implementation of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), but we strongly encourage other metrics to be considered e.g. retaining FEES (or other similar heating demand metric). With the proposals for changes to primary legislation in the planned Building Safety Bill, there is the scope to introduce powers to not only address the safety of buildings in use, as recommended by Dame Judith Hackitt and accepted by government, but also to address energy performance in use. This could be done through targets for metered energy in the future (either as kWh/m2/yr targets, or through a system similar to Display Energy Certificates, which would allow adjustments for some factors such as weather and occupancy, to take account of homes occupied by the elderly 2). This could also go some way towards addressing heat affordability, alleviating the need for such a metric which, we believe, cannot entirely be dealt with under Part L alone.
• Commit to developing the Future Homes Standard (FHS) in 2020: as the consultation document itself states “We need to help the industry reach a position where it can deliver in 2025.” “The first steps in facilitating these changes are to provide a clear vision for implementing the Future Homes Standard”. The current consultation proposes what the FHS should require for fabric, which should allow MHCLG to release the FHS well before 2025, much earlier than proposed. Early certainty about the content and implementation of the FHS will drive market leaders to adopt it early; in addition, government should consider ways to incentivise early adoption. This will help MHCLG gather lessons learnt and will support expertise and supply chains, ensuring the whole industry is ready by 2025, at the least costs and with reduced risks of unintended consequences.
• Within the FHS, state a clear trajectory towards operational requirements covering all energy uses and create the necessary legislative framework accordingly. The evidence that this is required is compelling, as the current approach is not delivering the required step changes in energy consumption – see Appendix 5. There is now growing consensus that such a transition is required, as illustrated by the recent Building Performance Network joint position statement signed by key organisations in the built environment, including CIBSE3. CIBSE have in a 2019 Briefing Paper4 proposed a route for this.

• Create the legislative framework allowing the introduction of a requirement for disclosure of operational performance. We have previously called for this to be introduced in time for Part L 2020; while we acknowledge the required legislative work may now be difficult to complete on time for the introduction of Part L 2020, we recommend that government should publish a statement of intent by the time Part L 2020 is introduced, and prepare the legislative framework to be ready by 2023 at the very latest). Disclosure is the necessary first step towards regulatory operational performance, in order to raise awareness of performance issues and build experience in monitoring and reporting procedures; this could for example be done on an aggregate basis for schemes above a certain number of dwellings, to protect privacy and reflect building performance trends regardless of variations in the behaviour of individual householders.
• Retain the powers for local authorities to set requirements beyond minimum building regulations requirements (subject to the usual viability testing of their local plans and planning applications). Again, this is a crucial part of helping to develop supply chains and expertise, benefiting the whole market. There is evidence from local authorities that preventing this would increase carbon emissions, compared to their current (already tested) plans. If local communities are to be given the powers to give priority to “beautiful homes”, then they should be allowed to prioritise energy efficient, low carbon, homes as well.
• Part L and Part F are inextricably linked, particularly as we move towards very low energy buildings. We have indicated in our responses the key links between these documents. This means that government needs to show the direction of travel on Part F, whether in the Future Homes Standard or in Part F: it needs to be clear that low energy and low carbon buildings will mean exemplar airtightness and appropriate ventilation to deliver good indoor air quality, This may mean that many more homes have mechanical ventilation and heat recovery systems, and so it is essential to prepare supply chains and ensure that from 2025 new homes are not only very low in energy and carbon, but also provide healthy and comfortable environments.
• In order to truly prepare for a net zero carbon UK in a changing climate, the FHS should also include consideration of other elements, whether by introducing new requirements or setting a direction for travel, including:

o Peak demand: this should at the very least be estimated and reported on; MCHLG could review this and consider the need to limit peak demand in the future if required, subject to how well buildings perform and the pressures on the electricity grid

o Embodied carbon: we recommend that from 2025, the embodied carbon of key building elements should be considered, so that data is gathered by MHCLG for the purpose of benchmarking and future standard setting, and to develop the expertise of the industry.

o Adaptation and resilience to climate change, including considerations of overheating, water consumption, flooding, and drainage.

We have a provided a substantial amount of supporting information to illustrate and justify our comments, and point at possible solutions. This is meant to be helpful. We would be very happy to discuss this with MHCLG and to review options for revised proposals and the development of the FHS.

We also look forward to the expected consultation on a new overheating standard, and on existing dwellings and non-domestic buildings. Existing buildings are the real challenge, hence why we must get it right with new buildings as soon as possible, to avoid adding to future challenges. Many points made in this response, including the overall methodology approach and the need for a move to operational performance requirements, are as relevant to these sectors and we would hope they can be taken into account in the development of those upcoming proposals too.

Industry consensus

Our response has been informed by contributions from members and wider stakeholders, including impact assessments of the proposed changes. We want to stress the huge and unprecedented level of interest from industry, which reflects an undoubted appetite for more ambitious proposals and a meaningful step towards net zero carbon.

In very large part our response is consistent with that of other prominent built environment bodies, including the RIBA, Green Building Council, London Energy Transformation Initiative, and Greater London Authority. We are aware that the RTPI and CIEH also agree on the points relevant to their expertise.

1 Statement in the Foreword to “Shifting the Focus” – full reference Eyre, N and Killip, G. (eds). 2019. Shifting the focus: energy demand in a net-zero carbon UK. Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions. Oxford, UK. ISBN: 978-1-913299-00-2

2 For a research paper exploring residential operational ratings, see for example: Lomas K. J. et al, A domestic operational rating for UK homes: Concept, formulation and application, Energy & Buildings, 2019

3 BPN joint position statement on building performance , November 2019: https://building- performance.network/advocacy/building-performance-joint-position-statement

4 CIBSE Briefing Paper on route to net zero carbon buildings, August 2019 https://www.cibse.org/getmedia/bdaf4dee-5980- 4b58-871c-a24e88c010d4/CIBSE-Steps-to-net-zero-carbon-buildings.pdf.aspx

END OF SUBMISSION

May 2021