The Concrete Center Supports Long-Term Sustainability for Proposed Non-Residential Sustainable Code

September 4, 2007 // Published as a news service by IHS

The U.K. Green Building Council (UK-GBC) brought together BRE and Arup to research the feasibility and potential framework for a non-domestic equivalent of the Code for Sustainable Homes.

The move follows the statement by Yvette Cooper, the housing and planning minister, that, "Buildings account for half of the country's carbon emissions. We have set ambitious targets for housing and are now determined to make rapid progress on commercial buildings too."

It is expected that the sustainable commercial building code will include an evolution of the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) ratings and ensure that commercial buildings are "zero carbon enabled" by putting infrastructure in place to achieve low energy and water use.

The Code for Sustainable Homes was launched last year, but according to The Concrete Centre, it was a missed opportunity in several areas.

"By concentrating on the embodied CO2 impact of construction materials and not the far greater on-going operational CO2 emissions of homes, the Code for Sustainable Homes missed a very important point," said Guy Thompson, head of housing and sustainability at The Concrete Centre. "In addition, the code failed to take account of issues such as transportation, the impact of climate change on temperatures and whole life performance."

It is the confusion between environmental and long-term sustainability that Thompson said is the main failure of the Code for Sustainable Homes. "The impact of a building should be measured through its lifetime operation and serviceability, not just through the embodied energy of the materials used to construct it," Thompson said.

Source: The Concrete Centre.