Annex 1
SUSTAINABLE SCHOOL BUILDINGS: KEY ISSUES
Briefing for HM Treasury
Sustainable Development Commission, November
2006
Why this paper?
England's schools are currently undergoing a
major programme of capital investment, bringing with it tremendous
opportunities for building sustainable schools, which can act
as showcases of sustainable development in their communities.
Over £2 billion per year is being invested in rebuilding
or refurbishing all secondary schools through the Building Schools
for the Future (BSF) programme, and a Primary Capital Programme
to rebuild or refurbish half of primary schools will be launched
shortly. These programmes therefore offer a huge opportunity to
put sustainable procurement into practice and make a reality of
whole life value.
The UK's climate change goal is to reduce carbon
emissions by 60% by 2050. In the face of rising consumption, this
is a major challenge and will require significant effort from
all sectors. Even then achieving this target is unlikely to be
sufficient: there is already increasing evidence that reductions
in the order of 80-90% will be required by 2050 or sooner. The
Government is committed to leading by example and a clear commitment
in a major public building programme will send a powerful message
to the private sector that Government is committed to early action
on meeting this goal. The BSF is a unique opportunity: it is unlikely
that there will be another overhaul of the school estate before
2050.
A recent scoping study commissioned by the DfES
with the SDC investigated the total carbon footprint of the schools
estate—including emissions from energy use in school buildings,
commuting to school and procurement activities. The scoping study
shows that while the schools estate contributes 2% to national
carbon emissions, it represents almost 15% of UK public sector
emissions. Half of the emissions that schools produce derive from
energy use within school buildings, which can be directly influenced
by capital investment.[4]
Schools spend a significant amount of money
on heating and powering buildings. Primary schools each spend
on average £6,300/year on energy, and secondary schools each
spend £39,000-£55,000/year on energy,[5]
the latter is comparable to the cost of a teacher. Volatile energy
and water prices mean schools may be at risk of unaffordable bills
if they are not safeguarded through well designed efficient school
buildings. Further, the extended schools programme will increase
energy costs for buildings by up to 40% due to increased opening
hours of school buildings.
Through the BSF programme half of all secondary
schools will be rebuilt, and 35% will undergo major refurbishments.
15% of secondary schools will undergo minor refurb without any
energy efficiency improvements required.
What do we think needs to be done?
The Sustainable Development Commission is a
aware that the schools programme is being put into place in a
way that is delivering sub-optimal outcomes for sustainable development,
and we list below the actions we believe Government needs to put
in place to deliver a change in focus. Evidence from existing
school building projects reveals that the wider benefits of a
sustainable development approach is not being factored into funding
decisions. Our advice focuses on the following areas:
— The use of whole life costing for
wider sustainability benefits.
— Funding mechanisms to ensure long
term energy and carbon savings can be delivered.
— Adjusting the design of the capital
programmes to enable improved delivery.
— An outcome focus to evaluate whether
the outcomes will align with broader sustainable development goals.
These are summarised below and the rest of this
paper develops these in some further detail. Attached at the Annex
is an analysis of the current BREEAM Schools, which is the basis
for BSF schools design, and this explores some of the inadequacies
of the standard from a sustainable development perspective.
SUMMARY OF
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Research
Commission research into the whole-life costs
and benefits to schools and their communities of sustainable building
measures. We know the score on energy efficiency, but the benefits
of investments in water, waste, travel, food etc. are less quantified.
2. Invest to save
Put in place a mechanism to fund sustainable
buildings and grounds investment in new and existing schools,
based around the whole-life cost reduction model identified above.
The SDC has identified three options:
(a) The Government funds a national invest
to save scheme since benefits arise across departmental boundaries
(eg DH benefits of sustainable travel and food; Defra benefits
from reduced energy use).
(b) The Government matches local authority
(or school-level) contributions (like current Salix scheme co-funded
by Carbon Trust) to create a rolling fund held locally that can
be used to invest in measures identified through the research
above.[6]
(c) Third party funding is used to finance
specific sustainability measures, ie schools/local authorities
partner with specialist Energy Services Companies (ESCOs) which
can provide capital funding for the sustainable energy systems
and take on operational/maintenance risk in return for a long
term energy supply contract. This approach could be expanded to
cover a range of utilities including water and waste, but is unlikely
to be a model to finance wider sustainability measures.
3. Design of BSF and other capital programmes
Make the following adjustments in BSF/other
capital programmes to drive system change:
(a) Extend the lifetime of the BSF programme
from 15 to 20 years. In other words spend the same amount each
year on creating fewer, higher-quality, schools, but continue
beyond the current end date of 2018 to ensure the same number
of schools benefit to a higher standard.
(b) Re-evaluate PFI contracting arrangements
to build in stronger incentives for meeting sustainability goals.
The 25-30 year lifetime of a PFI contract is clearly less than
the expected lifetime of a school building, but should allow whole
life savings to be made on significant resource efficiency measures.
Unfortunately, PFI investment decisions are commonly made on the
basis of much shorter timescales.
(c) Develop a much bolder, and more absolute,
minimum standard for school buildings—ie a Code for Sustainable
Schools—to replace the current BREEAM Schools standard and
other ad hoc guidance.
4. Focus on outcomes
Current Government efforts to support sustainable
school design are input rather than outcome focused. Hence it
is currently unclear how a programme like BSF will contribute
to macro-level sustainable goals like carbon emissions reductions.
This is a highly significant weakness: BSF should be working towards
an explicit vision that is aligned with Government strategy on
sustainable development.
(a) Government should set out a national
strategy for the environmental performance of the schools estate.
(b) This should include bold targets for
2010, 2015 and 2020 and explain how the various forms of capital
investment will help achieve them.
(c) Targets should cover at least carbon
emissions (including carbon neutral status), water demand, waste
production and travel management.
(d) In the area of carbon emissions, they
could mirror central govt commitments to carbon neutrality by
2012.
What next?
The Sustainable Development Commission would
welcome discussion with HMT officials to explore these ideas further.
The SDC Chair, Jonathon Porritt is meeting with the Stephen Timms,
Chief Secretary to the Treasury, on 7 November, and will almost
certainly raise some of these issues at that meeting.
SUSTAINABLE SCHOOLS
We need to make a radical impact on children's
understanding and experience of sustainable development if they
are to develop the life skills needed to participate in a sustainable
society. Formal education has a crucial role to play in promoting
sustainable development, both in raising awareness, forming values
and developing skills.
Promoting sustainable development in schools
means integrating high standards of achievement and behaviour
with the goals of healthy living, environmental awareness, community
involvement and citizenship—many of the same aspirations
as Every Child Matters.
The DfES Sustainable Schools strategy[7]—consulted
on over the summer 2006—proposes a framework for sustainable
development in schools through eight sustainability "doorways"
as follows:
| 1 Food and drink |
5 Buildings and grounds |
| 2 Energy and water | 6 Inclusion and participation
|
| 3 Travel and traffic | 7 Local well-being
|
| 4 Purchasing and waste | 8 Global dimension
|
| |
A strong theme within the DfES Sustainable Schools strategy
is that school buildings, grounds and the local surroundings offer
a resource for learning about real issues in real places among
real people as a natural part of their education.
SCHOOLS AND
CLIMATE CHANGE
The UK Sustainable Development Strategy states that "the
Building Schools for the Future programme will ensure that all
new schools and Academies will be models for sustainable development."
And further that it "provides a valuable opportunity for
increasing the efficiency of the school building stock".[8]
One particular area of interest is the contribution that
BSF will make to reducing the carbon footprint of the schools
estate, and to reducing emissions in line with the Government's
Climate Change Programme. Half of secondary schools will be rebuilt
through BSF and 35% will undergo major refurbishment. These schools
will be required to meet the carbon performance standards of the
Building Regulations. 15% of secondary schools (500 schools) will
undergo "minor refurbishment" without any energy efficiency
improvement required.
Energy Efficiency
Sustainable Development Commission research shows there are
opportunities for maximising the sustainability benefits from
the schools' building programme through introducing energy efficiency
measures into these schools. They will save 5,000 tonnes of carbon
(tC) per year, with a five year payback, after which they would
benefit from an average of £5,000 cost savings per year.
This will be achieved through low cost measures such as installing
improved energy controls, improved lighting, insulated pipework
and draught-proofing.
Renewables
On site renewable technologies such as micro-wind, photovoltaics,
solar water heating and biomass heating can raise awareness in
schools and their communities and contribute to the commercialisation
of microgeneration technology.
Using microgeneration as demonstration technologies in just
10% of the 3,000 secondary and 9,000 primary schools due for major
refurbishment/rebuild would save at least 23,400 tC with payback
on the capital cost within the timescale of a PFI contract (25-30
years—without grant funding). A £50 million capital
grant stream has been announced for the installation of microgeneration
technologies for local housing authorities, housing associations,
schools and other public sector buildings and charitable bodies.
Criteria for award of grant funding have not yet been released,
so it is not clear how many schools will be able to benefit from
funding for microgeneration.
As this funding is very unlikely to cover 100% of microgeneration
installation costs, match funding will need to be found by schools.
BREEAM SCHOOLS
— The DfES's response to the sustainability agenda
has been to make it a condition of capital funding that new build
and refurbishment projects achieve at least a "very good"
rating under the BRE's environmental assessment method for schools
"BREEAM Schools".
— The SDC has explored the eight DfES doorways in
terms of how they could be supported by sustainable school building
design. This analysis is included as an Annex in this paper. The
role played by the BREEAM Schools standard is also described.
Potential targets for a vision for the school estate are also
suggested—the SDC is initiating a process to develop a vision
so this is work in progress.
— This brief analysis suggests that BREEAM Schools
does encourage incremental improvement in environmental design
of school buildings, beyond the statutory minimum of the Building
Regulations and DfES Building Bulletins, but by itself BREEAM
is not sufficient to deliver sustainable schools across the piece.
Furthermore:
— BREEAM Schools does not offer a vision of sustainable
school buildings that those commissioning, designing and constructing
can work towards. One consequence is that we do not know how BSF
will contribute as a whole to, for example, carbon emissions reduction,
waste minimisation, water consumption and sustainable travel (for
example, we cannot know if carbon emissions will increase or decrease).
— BREEAM Schools is a flexible standard allowing
credits to be scored in any area. The tradability on key resource
efficiency areas such as energy and water consumption should be
reduced to set minimum standards for key resource efficiency criteria.
This would mean that all projects would have to achieve a defined
energy efficiency/carbon reduction standard above the regulatory
minimum. The development of the Code for Sustainable Homes[9]
is tackling this weakness.
— BREEAM Schools does not address areas of the built
environment that would contribute to the "food and drink"
doorway, identified in the Sustainable Schools consultation. It
could also incentivise higher performance on other doorways such
as "local wellbeing" and "global dimension".
— In many priority areas, BREEAM Schools does not
incentivise higher performance above the credit thresholds—ie
it rewards designs that incorporate cycle parking for 10% of pupils,
but does not give any incentive to increase facilities towards
100% of pupils.
— The DfES has not identified a vision for the contribution
of the transformation of the schools estate to "macro"
UK sustainable development goals, and so intervention is being
implemented on a piecemeal basis. The SDC recommends that a vision
(plus associated action plan and guidance) should be developed
and agreed immediately for the schools estate at 2020. We recommend
this work is undertaken in cooperation with industry, client and
policy stakeholders to encourage buy-in to the outcomes.
— We consider that a radical review of the standards
in BSF and other capital programmes will be necessary to deliver
sustainable schools. Such a review would take in BREEAM alongside
the range of other requirements, goals, bulletins, standards and
guidance that has become associated with capital investment in
schools.
FUNDING AND
WHOLE LIFE
VALUE
— Schools capital and operational budgets have traditionally
been kept separate, yet the concept of procuring for whole life
value blurs this distinction. School buildings should be financed
to deliver the best value to pupils and their communities over
the life of the building. To realise these sustainability benefits
means ensuring that capital and running costs can be looked at
together—whereas these have traditionally been split in
the schools funding framework even for PFI contracts. It means
moving away from artificial limits—such as fixed budgets
per m2 of school floor area.
— Whole life costing is the practice of looking
at the cost of building, maintaining and running a building across
its whole life, rather than just the build cost. This funding
approach is supported by HM Treasury, who would in general expect
departments to factor in such best practice across their own capital
programme. The situation is different with BSF, however, as the
DfES and HM Treasury signed up to a 15-year programme to rebuild
or remodel every secondary school in the country. We understand
that any rethink involving a higher initial build-cost would be
very likely to affect the length of the BSF programme and would
therefore need to be agreed across Government.
— The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is being
used to finance the majority of the new build schools in BSF.
In theory, PFI supports whole life costing as the responsibility
(and risk) of both building and maintaining/operating the building
over 25 years is held by private sector contractors. As such,
they are incentivised to invest in energy-saving and other cost
reducing measures (eg durable or low maintenance elements), as
these will, over time, contribute to increased profits. In practice,
many PFI companies keep their capital and revenue budgets separate,
only consider very short paybacks, and miss the opportunities
that exist to optimise sustainable design over the buildings'
lifetime.
— The majority of the BSF refurbishments are procured
conventionally. DfES do not fund this at whole-life levels, and
whilst it encourages local authorities to do so, this is not mandatory.
This means that for the 50% of secondary schools that are being
refurbished, there is no means in place for schools to invest
additional capital up front in order to protect themselves from
rising utilities costs in future, or to maximise their contribution
to wider sustainability goals.
— Schools themselves do have an incentive to invest
in whole-life measures as the pay back is directly to their budgets.
However, they are constrained by both a lack of awareness of basic
energy-saving measures, and insufficient funding for major works.
Many schools do not have the capacity or inclination to make significant
sustainability interventions.
— Not all sustainable design features will provide
a whole-life financial return directly to schools, PFI companies
or local authorities, yet they may produce real health, environmental
and economic benefits to communities and the wider public sector.
Examples include school transport, catering, food growing, conservation,
or sustainable technologies with long pay back periods. Many of
these features link directly to the goals of Every Child Matters,
children's achievement and government strategies and goals around
sustainable development and communities.
— The various procurement methods and financing
mechanisms being used in schools capital investment should be
reviewed and strengthened so that no school project aspiring to
increase its contribution to sustainable development is denied
that opportunity.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
FINANCING SUSTAINABLE
SCHOOLS
1. Research
— Commission research into the whole-life costs
and benefits to schools and their communities of sustainable building
measures. We know the score on energy efficiency, but the benefits
of investments in water, waste, travel, food etc are less quantified.
2. Invest to save
— Put in place a mechanism to fund sustainable buildings
and grounds investment in new and existing schools, based around
the whole-life cost reduction model identified above. The SDC
has identified three options:
(d) The Government funds a national invest to save scheme
since benefits arise across departmental boundaries (eg DH benefits
of sustainable travel and food; Defra benefits from reduced energy
use).
(e) The Government matches local authority (or school-level)
contributions (like current Salix scheme co-funded by Carbon Trust)
to create a rolling fund held locally that can be used to invest
in measures identified through the research above.[10]
(f) Third party funding is used to finance specific sustainability
measures, ie schools/local authorities partner with specialist
Energy Services Companies (ESCOs) which can provide capital funding
for the sustainable energy systems and take on operational/maintenance
risk in return for a long term energy supply contract. This approach
could be expanded to cover a range of utilities including water
and waste, but is unlikely to be a model to finance wider sustainability
measures.
3. Design of BSF and other capital programmes
— Make the following adjustments in BSF/other capital
programmes to drive system change:
(a) Extend the lifetime of the BSF programme from 15 to
20 years. In other words spend the same amount each year on creating
fewer, higher-quality, schools, but continue past the current
end date of 2018 to ensure the same number of schools benefit.
(b) Re-evaluate PFI contracting arrangements to build
in stronger incentives for meeting sustainability goals. The 25-30
year lifetime of a PFI contract is clearly less than the expected
lifetime of a school building, but should allow whole life savings
to be made on significant resource efficiency measures. Unfortunately,
PFI investment decisions are commonly made on the basis of much
shorter timescales.
(c) Develop a much bolder, and more absolute, minimum
standard for school buildings—ie a Code for Sustainable
Schools—to replace the current BREEAM Schools standard and
other ad hoc guidance.
4. Focus on outcomes
— As explained previously, current Government efforts
to support sustainable school design are input rather than outcome
focused. Hence it is currently unclear how a programme like BSF
will contribute to macro-level sustainable goals like carbon emissions
reductions. This is a highly significant weakness: BSF should
be working towards an explicit vision that is aligned with Government
strategy on sustainable development.
(a) Government should set out a national strategy for
the environmental performance of the schools estate, including
bold targets for 2010, 2015 and 2020, and explain how the various
forms of capital investment will help achieve them.
(b) Targets should cover at least carbon emissions (including
carbon neutral goal), water demand, waste production and travel
management, and should mirror central government commitments such
as carbon neutrality by 2012.
CONCLUSION
— The BSF programme provides a unique opportunity
for the schools estate to contribute significantly to sustainable
development goals. Schools are in a key position to influence
learning and lifestyles of pupils and also the wider communities
in which they are located.
— The standards that have been established for BSF
and the funding mechanisms in place do not support schools in
fully achieving the sustainable performance set out in the DfES
Sustainable Schools Strategy (2006) and the UK Sustainable Development
Strategy.
— As recommended by the Sustainable Procurement
Task Force, the DfES and HM Treasury need to work together to
review how schools (rebuilds and refurbishments) can be procured
on the basis of whole life value (broadly defined) to maximise
the contribution to sustainable development.
4
Sustainable Development Commission, 2006, Schools Carbon Footprinting:
Scoping Study. Back
5
BRE, 2006, Review of opportunities for improved carbon savings
from spend on education buildings. Back
6
For example the SDC understands that the DfES is planning to
bring forward additional devolved capital funding to schools.
A proportion of this funding could be reserved to create a revolving
fund for sustainability measures. Back
7
DfES, 2006, Sustainable Schools: for pupils, communities and
the environment. Back
8
HM Government, 2005, Securing the Future: delivering UK Sustainable
Development Strategy. Back
9
New homes standard being developed by DCLG. Back
10
For example the SDC understands that the DfES is planning to
bring forward additional devolved capital funding to schools.
A proportion of this funding could be reserved specifically to
create a revolving fund for sustainability measures. Back
|
