Examination of Witnesses (Question Number
60-71)
MR PAUL
KING, MR
JOHN ALKER
AND DR
RICHARD SIMMONS
13 MAY 2008
Q60 Chairman: What about the position
of the impact of the construction and demolition process?
Mr King: In terms of embodied
energy?
Q61 Chairman: Yes. If you look at
the whole-life environmental impact, the carbon emissions associated
with the building from before it is built until after it has been
demolished, clearly the bit in the middle is crucial and may go
on for decades and hopefully will, but there is quite a significant
impact at the start and the end as well.
Mr King: That is right. Currently
the definition is somewhat limited by the current form of regulation
which does not take into account the embodied energy in the construction
and, in effect, the demolition process. We have had separate discussions
with the departments responsible, CLG, around these issues, and
of course as we move forward to ever more efficient buildings
the proportion of energy that is embodied in materials and so
on of course becomes increasingly important, and it becomes an
increasingly large percentage of the whole. The thing is that
the principle would still apply. If we are talking about percentage
reductions, if that percentage is increased by the inclusion in
the future, which we think would be a sensible step forward of
embedded energy, then the same definition could apply.
Mr Alker: Government observers
from several departments sat on that task group. We wanted them
involved as one of the stakeholders from the very start of that
process. We have been very encouraged at the Government's willingness
to listen and respond to the concerns.
Q62 Chairman: I want to bring CABE
in here on the question of offsets which you have referred to
in your memorandum,[19]
which this Committee has done some work on last year. Do you think
there should be some sort of recognition, that there needs to
be a limit on what contribution offsets can make to achieve those
targets?
Dr Simmons: I think there should.
We were actually thinking very much specifically in terms of the
existing housing stock and how one might create a market to invest
in improvements to the existing house stock, which has some parallels
I think with what UK-GBC are saying. Our particular interest was
in whether or not one can create genuine offsets. It is very difficult
to do so. Many of the offset schemes that exist, as you will know
from the work you have done, actually come to an end, for example,
if you invest in forests when the trees come down, and you have
got to deal with the issues of carbon which arise from that. We
are quite interested in the idea that you might create a fund
to invest in the public housing stock—the local authority
and housing association stock—which would be a genuine way
of encouraging offset investors to invest in something which would
reduce carbon emissions; because we cannot at the moment see many
mechanisms in place to deal with the bigger issue of the existing
building stock. The kinds of developments we are doing now on
new developments are going to create a two-tier housing market
before long if we are not careful. We will have invested a lot
in the new housing stock but not enough in the existing housing
stock. Having said that, we do think offsetting is a last resort,
because obviously what we do not want to do is create an environment
in which people feel they have dealt with the problem when in
fact they have not but they have salved their conscience with
an off-set. We do think that looking at ways of investing in the
existing housing stock could be a way at least of kick-starting
the process of incentivising people to invest in that.
Q63 Jo Swinson: In their written
evidence the Energy Saving Trust told us that since the announcement
of the 2016 target two years ago over 10% of the time allowed
has elapsed but "with little progress in terms of co-ordinated
implementation". Do you think we are still on track to build
two million new homes by 2016 to progressively higher standards,
and then another million zero carbon homes by 2020?
Mr King: I would start by saying
that the Green Building Council and its members think that the
zero carbon policy and the zero carbon target are the right policy
and the right target, with the right level of ambition given the
urgency with which we have got to address these issues. I would
also say that there has been quite a remarkable level of innovation
and determination from significant parts of the industry to address
this issue. I would go on to say, however, that of course it is
early days. What we are talking about is, frankly, over the next
few years fundamentally changing the product that is a new home
at a time when we are also significantly increasing numbers to
be supplied in a short timescale and, at the moment, in some quite
difficult economic circumstances. The challenge, therefore, is
at least a triple one and cannot be underestimated. What is essential
therefore is that we get a real coordination of effort to address
the barriers that we know exist. The top of our list was a more
flexible but still robust definition of zero carbon, which we
hope we can further address through the consultation being put
out by CLG over the summer; but there are a raft of other issues
to do with technology, in terms of building fabric and design;
in terms of products and services to go into these buildings,
related to renewable energy and other things; to do with skills
ranging right the way across from community leadership and professional
skills right through to the trades levels skills in actually delivering
these homes on the ground; through to public engagement issues,
in terms of how we communicate, frankly, the benefits of more
sustainable energy efficient homes and create a demand for them
rather than fear about them. There are many things that need to
be done. John Calcutt, in the Calcutt Review of housing delivery
published in the autumn last year,[20]
recommended that the existing 2016 zero carbon taskforce, as co-chaired
by the Housing Minister and by Stuart Basely of the Homebuilders'
Federation, needed to be ramped-up in terms of a day-to-day operation
mechanism vehicle to drive forward work to overcome these issues.
In fact what that vehicle might do is precisely the kind of work
that actually the group that I have just described did with respect
to the definition: bring together multi-stakeholders—as
you have seen there are many different stakeholders with clear
interests in this area—and they need to be brought together
to thrash out some of these issues to overcome the barriers. The
proposed vehicle for that, with the working title of the zero
carbon delivery vehicle, is something that is under discussion
and we hope will be underway shortly. The Housing Minister, on
the back of the Callcutt Review, asked the UK Green Building Council
to undertake a feasibility study for the establishment of this
body which we did. A recommendation was made and we took that
back to the 2016 Taskforce, and there was a commitment in the
Budget announcements in the spring that the Government would provide
some core funding and support for the establishment of that vehicle.
That needs to happen with urgency. That body needs to be an independent
entity that can take into account all the different stakeholders'
views and really move this forward.
Dr Simmons: We are quite sceptical
at the moment. CABE's experience of the house-building industry,
which I think is reflected by the UK-GBC's evidence as well, is
that it is quite slow to innovate. We will see innovation from
some people, and Barratt, for example, are just about the launch
a Code 6 home, a sample home, at the BRE's place at Watford; but
to get that mainstreamed into the industry is very difficult,
just as it has been very difficult to get other aspects of design
policy, like green infrastructure we were talking about earlier,
into the industry's activities. CABE's other big worry is that
while we are focussing on the box in which people live, which
is absolutely vital, we also need to look at the wider built environment,
the way places function. You can imagine the situation where everybody
has got a green home but they are still driving a very large car
to and from it and long distances to the shops. We really need
to look at how communities are designed and how they operate,
and not just at the box itself. The house-builders have said they
would like to be regulated just through the building regulations
and the planning system should leave this issue alone. We do not
agree with that because the planning system is what deals with
everything outside the box, and it would go on doing so. We think
it is absolutely vital that the Government maintains a balance
between the planning system and the building regulations to make
sure that we are taking account of the larger area. If I give
you an example, CABE is working at the moment in the Thames Gateway,
as are many others; the Government has declared its intent to
an eco-region in the Thames Gateway as the first eco-region in
the UK. We think it is vital that the Department of Transport
is part of that partnership to look at sustainable transport measures
in the Gateway, as well as looking at homes and green infrastructure
all of which are already on the table. We do not see the Department
of Transport at the moment rushing forward to participate in reducing
demand for transport and creating greater greener measures of
moving about, so the Government really has to get its act together
across the piece.
Mr King: I wholly support all
of those points, and I would not wish by any means to appear complacent
about the ability of the house-building industry to embrace this
agenda and leap forward. However, I think it is notable that some
of the companies who are taking this agenda most seriously are
actually responsible for the delivery of some of the biggest volumes
of new homes. I would go back to the reason that we believe zero
carbon is symbolically so important, and that is because it moved
us from the debate about lower carbon. Lower carbon to some extent
trapped us in a mindset about incremental improvements, doing
what we did before just a little bit better. Zero carbon has started
to make people think outside the box. How can we fundamentally
rethink what we are doing? What is happening as a consequence
is that house-builders are opening their doors and inviting in
designers, architects, environmental engineers and others to completely
rethink their product, and in many cases their businesses actually.
So we are seeing all sorts of interesting things happening, which
I think then opens up the door to the broader considerations about
design not only of the product but the broader spatial level design
of developments and so on. I hope that is a very complementary
trend.
Q64 Jo Swinson: Obviously it is great
that you are supporting these targets and you think they are the
right targets, but your memo seems to suggest[21]
that you think the current trajectory towards that is too steep.
How do you square that circle if the trajectory is too steep but
you agree with the targets?
Mr King: I think perhaps the point
you are referring to in our submissions is really to highlight
the size of the step between the last two steps, in terms of changes
to building regulations, because we go from a change in 2013,
which represents a 44% improvement over the current regulations
to 100% zero carbon by 2016, and what is sometimes overlooked
is that because people look at the figures and they think that
the step there is actually between 44% and 100% improvement, in
fact it is more like a step between 44% and 140% because, as I
explained, that kind of step takes into account the estimated
level of occupant energy use and the resulting carbon emissions.
I think there are some inherent problems in that and in terms
of the calibration of some of the steps of the Code what we have
discovered as we have looked at those and the industry has looked
at those in detail, is there a danger that if you draw the lines
of those rungs of the ladder in the wrong place it can create
certain cul-de-sacs where, for example, at one level a certain
renewable technology becomes a very good idea but at the next
level it ceases to be a good idea and actually you want to replace
it with something else. So of course that has a rather dangerous
unintended consequence in terms of making or breaking whole markets
for particular products. So I think this is an area—and
there are a number of other areas—where we need to strike
the balance between the advantages of the Code, which is very
powerful for the industry because it has said for the first time,
explicitly, "This is the step-wise trajectory of regulations.
You now know where you are going. It is steep but you know where
you are going so you have certainty to plan and invest."
But on the other hand we need to balance that with some reality
in terms of our ability to learn as we go along, and where we
support these problems we have the flexibility to tweak them or
adapt that process—not throw it out, but make sensible adaptations.
Mr Simmons: I think we would also
expect to see the industry responding. If you look at Germany
where they have the Passive House Standard, for example, it is
possible to add triple glazing because it is mass produced, but
in the UK so far that market does not exist. But as we see the
technology developing and we see in responding to the supply side
of things that we start to create new technologies and different
ways of dealing with the issues that is quite important because
a lot here depends on the kinds of places we want to make. So,
for example, one can see the very high zero developments that
can be zero carbon quite easily but might not meet the Environment
Agency and Natural England's aspirations for an infrastructure
in the same way. How you get to a zero carbon residential tower
I think is yet to be fully explained, so there are quite a lot
of issues that are still to be explored, to which we do not know
the answers, on which architects are working very vigorously to
solve.
Mr King: To throw in a very specific
point, which is something that came out of our report launch yesterday,
was the particular example from Barratts that actually there were
certain technologies that were unavailable to them in terms of
UK manufactured components six months ago, which today are now
available. So I think it is worth recognising the rate of change
in some of these areas.
Mr Alker: I would just add as
well, the point about moving from 2013 to 2016 obviously relates
to the definition as well, and that is made easier if we have
a more flexible, but equally robust definition of zero carbon.
Q65 Dr Turner: What measures would
you use to judge the success of the government's eco-towns initiative?
Mr King: Very quickly, I think
it would be when the first of these eco-towns is, as it were,
opened to the public, people will go and visit them and walk around
and think, "What a fantastic place to live and bring up my
family."
Mr Alker: When Tim Henman's dad
moves into one, who has been a major campaigner against them!
Dr Simmons: I think there are
two measures of success. Firstly there is the human element that
Paul described. If you look at the very first garden cities there
were people who moved to those as pioneers because they were enthusiastic
about the ideas that underlay the garden city. One has to be a
bit cautious, therefore, about the early adopters, if you like;
we do want to make places where ordinary people will want to go
and live and will feel that if they are living a sustainable lifestyle
it will work for them. The tests which has been set out in the
consultation document at the broad level are pretty good actually—the
issues around connectivity and so on—but we think that the
government will need to put much clearer measurable targets against
those broad categories, so to say exactly what they think they
mean. I am declaring an interest here as a member of the Challenge
Panel that the government set up to try to challenge the developers
to work harder on what they are doing. We will be setting some
pretty demanding tests ourselves, but we will be looking to the
developers to come forward with a set of propositions that we
can actually test and say yes, they will be truly zero carbon.
One of the interesting things about this approach is it is quite
different from the plan-led approaches that have been adopted
previously, and therefore it is also quite challenging for many
people. I think, because we are looking for innovations to come
forward by saying that these are broad concepts, now come along
and show us how well you can do. The danger of that, of course,
is that one might make compromises that one should not make, so
I think the government does need to set some benchmarks—I
will not go into the details of what those might be here because
it would take too long—to be able to say, for example, that
if they accept, say, the UK-GBC's definition of zero carbon and
every home should meet that, that they have at least the minimum
level of 20% of good public space, that they deal only through
a sustainable urban drainage as far as possible—those kinds
of tests need to be set out and need to be understood as we go
into the assessment. If you do anything else then I think the
issue of how they relate to their neighbouring local communities
will become a problem. Kate Wood set some tests around connectivity.
It is quite difficult to see a community of 5000 to 10,000 people
as a stand-alone in the community. If you think of somewhere like
Sevenoaks, which is about 18,000 people, so it could be about
the size of an eco-town, it does not exist on its own; it has
a mainline railway into London, it depends on its neighbouring
economies and it has links into those. It can be challenging for
many of the eco-town sites to meet the public transport tests
that we would set, which is that you should not be looking at
a net increase in the number of cars on the road as a result of
these eco-towns, for example; you should be looking at ways to
encourage people to use public transport and that will require
some fairly significant investment. If you look at examples on
the continent, say Freiburg or Hammarby, at the moment there is
nowhere in the UK you can go to and say, "This is a sustainable
community which has been thought through as a sustainable community."
If you go to Hammarby and Freiburg the approach has been a very
significant investment by the public sector in those places, for
example to create a good infrastructure network and drainage and
so on. So we have been quite demanding of the private sector with
the eco-towns' proposals, and I think again that we would be very
interested in the investment strategy, how it is actually going
to work and will they get delivered, and we are very interested
as to who is going to own the place afterwards and who is going
to look after it. So I hope it is a fairly thorough set of tests.
Q66 Dr Turner: It is indeed. CABE
have called for all major new developments to be subject to the
same hopefully rigorous tests that are going to be applied to
the eco-towns in 2016.
Dr Simmons: Yes.
Q67 Dr Turner: Can you see this working
practically?
Dr Simmons: I think it is pretty
demanding but if we are going to use eco-towns to set the standard—and
I think that is the purpose of them, they are there to be the
exemplars—then I do not see why the rest of the population
should not benefit from exactly the same tests. In fact the government
has said in the Thames Gateway already it is going to have what
they call an eco-quarter, where they are going to apply the eco-town
principles to a substantial chunk of new developments in the Thames
Gateway. So it seems that that principle is understood. The industry
will probably find it quite challenging but if we do not do that
then how are we going to get to the stage of having somewhere
like Birmingham, for example, being able to describe itself as
an eco-city?
Q68 Dr Turner: Some local communities
have reacted less than favourably towards the notion of having
an eco-town implanted within them or next to them. What do you
suggest should be done to ensure that they actually see some tangible
benefit from eco-towns?
Mr King: May I come in on that?
I was going to say that one of the Green Building Council's first
reactions to the eco-towns' prospectus last year was, "It
is a shame they are called eco-towns actually because really we
should be talking about good quality places," and I think
the sooner that the "eco" bit is subsumed within a broader
definition of a quality new community the better. We have had
discussions with CLG and others about some of the criteria and
Richard has already alluded to the fact that one of the criteria
talks about a separate and distinct identity, and while there
is a positive side to that, which is that you create a place that
has an aura about it, has a particular feel about it, the downside
is that you suggest that it is separate from existing communities.
What we think is that these places should actually inherently
add value to existing communities. I think the way that neighbouring
communities should experience that is absolutely in terms of enhanced
transport infrastructure and enhanced amenities that they can
also share and benefit from and, frankly, increase asset values
over time. They should actually experience a benefit, and I think
that lies at the heart of the debate about whether or not people
are prepared to have new developments in their backyard. I think
we need to underline and emphasise the benefits for existing communities
as strongly as we emphasise the benefits for the people who are
actually going to live in the new houses.
Q69 Mr Caton: We have mentioned the
Code for Sustainable Homes. What impact do you think the mandatory
rating for all new homes against the cold is going to have on
the market for new homes? Is it going to get developers to go
for higher environmental standards; and, just as important, is
it going to get house buyers to choose those higher standards?
Mr King: We felt that the mandatory
rating was a very important step, introduced by the previous Housing
Minister. I think it is clearly too early to tell what effect
it is having because it literally was only introduced this month.
Just as frankly, I think it is too early to tell exactly what
the effect of the Energy Performance Certificates for existing
homes will be. However, we are confident that it will have an
effect over time. If you are going to purchase a new home and
you are given a pack of information and one of the pieces of paper
that you have to be given is a certificate saying that this does
not meet the Code for Sustainable Homes, a Code which is designed
to set higher standards, it is likely to prompt the question—at
least among a proportion of people—to say "Why not?"
Therefore, I think the opportunity is there for house builders
to turn that on its head, get on board with higher levels, higher
standards and market the benefits to their customers. I think
there are very few medium and larger house builders who do not
have at least part of their business firmly linked into public
sector contracts in one form and another, and obviously there,
where the Code, albeit at the moment at the lower levels is a
requirement, it already will touch the business practices of most
medium to larger house builders. So they are beginning to internalise
this and they will begin to ask the questions—and indeed
I know they are—"Actually if we are having to gear
up to build to these standards for this proportion of our business
does it not make sense in terms of economies of scale and so on
to actually roll it out across our business?" Again, I do
not want to appear complacent and that is the optimistic view,
but there are signs that that is beginning to happen.
Dr Simmons: Perhaps I can give
a specific example. There is a development in Oxley Park in Milton
Keynes, which has been developed by Taylor Wimpey with Rogers
Stirk, Harbour—that is Richard Rogers' practice—as
the architects. They are extremely modern looking homes and they
are not at the highest level of the Code as yet, of course, but
they have been designed, for example, to be airtight, with modest
forced ventilation, so you cannot open the windows in there. They
have been built using modern methods of construction and timber
frame construction and they have been designed to be reasonably
highly sustainable although, as I say, they do not go as far as
we would like them to go. I went to visit the site recently and
the site manager told me that he cannot sell enough of them. Notwithstanding
some of the survey data you have seen, which say that people prefer
traditional homes, they were selling them off plan, which they
almost never do apparently, and they have decided that although
they would probably work with different architects in the future
they would probably use the same basic system. What they did say
was—and this was part of the £60,000 house competition,
by the way, which the former Deputy Prime Minister launched—that
within that price bracket they could not go as far as things like
rainwater harvesting, so there is some way to go still, as we
said, to get the technologies to be affordable, but it is interesting
that people were demanding them, and Milton Keynes obviously is
something of a special case because it has had a number of different
experimental house types in the past. This is a proper housing
estate where you go and live, and not an experiment, which people
are really keen to buy.
Q70 Mr Chaytor: Is there a serious
risk that purchasers of zero carbon homes might subsequently start
to install less environmentally friendly features and how consistent
could your advice be to guard against that? How do you stop someone
from switching their offsite renewable supplier to an offsite
fossil fuel supplier?
Mr King: I think the key here
lies in making—in the sense in the same way that eco-towns
should be just quality towns—Code homes or zero carbon homes
should be seen to be more efficient, better homes, and all that
you are doing in the end is actually making it easy, affordable
and attractive for people to live in those homes. If you install
things which have perverse consequences that clearly compromise
people's behaviour or their lifestyle aspirations, of course you
are going to have an effect where people are going to react against
that and try and get round it or retrofit out of it, or whatever.
So I think going back to the set of barriers that we need to overcome
is one of looking at the consequences in terms of people's behaviour
when they are living in a home doing ordinary things, like having
a shower or having a bath, thinking about what the impact will
be, and talking to people over the next few years and looking
at different products to make sure that you are not putting in
things that people want to rip out the minute they move in. I
think it is very interesting that recently the NHBC produced a
report which was looking at consumer perceptions around zero carbon
homes. NHBC produced some highlights from that report that basically
flagged up some very strong concerns that some people might have
about the effect on their lifestyle of living in a zero carbon
home; that some people might be scared that they would not be
allowed to open their windows ever or open the door for fear of
letting some air into their airtight home and these sorts of things.
Actually on closer examination the evidence in that report sets
out a much more balanced and, I would say, in some places positively
optimistic view of the benefits that people perceive in terms
of more energy efficient homes, and in some cases would like people
to go further. As somebody who lives in a highly energy efficient
home myself I think there are many benefits that can be easily
communicated and indeed marketed to prospective customers.
Dr Simmons: I think there are
some specific things. I have recently bought a monitor which I
stuck on my electricity supply so I can now find out how much
I am consuming when I switch on different bits of kit, and I think
every home should have one and the electricity suppliers should
give you one. You can carry it around the house; it changes our
behaviour. The only thing it will not change is the behaviour
of teenagers! You do have to recognise that it is a serious business
and in some ways a serious point, which is that people lead different
lives in their homes over different stages of their habitation
there. So a zero carbon home may be more zero carbon at some stages
in your life than others, I guess, and we probably just have to
live with that. But it is also about making sure that the products
we have access to in the wider market are going to be able to
used comfortably in all sorts of homes. One of the interesting
things, for example, is I have seen designs which rely on the
heat generated by television sets that help to warm the house.
That is fine if you have a television set or if you have one that
produces enough heat to do that; so you need to think in the long
term about how technologies might change more broadly when you
are designing homes, and that is where the best architects are
at the moment. We have worked with architects who actually say
that you really do not need to install a central heating system;
you need the potential of some low level background heating. That
is interesting because it is true but it is quite hard to sell.
In fact it was sold to the people I was talking about in Oxley
Wood, but for house builders it is a really big step—"What,
there is no central heating system; what do my sales people say
to people?" Those are some challenges that the house building
industry and the government maybe has to work on to get across
the information and then give people inside the home the information
that they need to manage it day to day.
Q71 Mr Chaytor: Are there more problematic
issues of future proofing or planned obsolescence in respect of
zero carbon homes than in respect of conventional homes? Are we
going to see a rapid change in domestic technologies in the next
few years that might make some of the things that are being installed
by 2016 completely out of date?
Mr King: I do not think it is
explicitly linked to the fact that there is zero carbon other
than the fact that these are rapidly changing products, and as
with any new product area there will be products that are proved
to work well and will succeed in the long term and others that
will fall by the wayside. I think this is a particularly charged
area where some of the technologies that could fall by the wayside
will have a disproportionate effect in terms of confidence, if
you like, in, for example, some of the micro-renewable technologies
with which people are familiar. That is why some of the process
is underway to introduce the accreditation of those sorts of products
and indeed the services of installing them are so important in
order to give people confidence that actually they are getting
a reliable bit of kit on their home which is going to be easy
to maintain, it is going to do what it says it was going to do,
and so on.
Dr Simmons: I think this is a
big issue actually because if you take the houses I have described
in Milton Keynes they are fantastic, but local builders are going
to find it very difficult to extend them in the future unless
they have been trained in how to extend that particular kind of
house. Similarly, the bits of kit that are in the houses, the
small fan that drives the air through, that is a tiny fan and
uses solar power to drive it so there is a photovoltaic cell and
there is a fan, and those things, as Paul said, need to be accredited—you
need to know how to get hold of replacements, you need to know
how to fit them responsibly. So there is a whole area here for
developing the businesses of builders of crafts people in these
new technologies. Then if you up that a step further, you can
start to apply that to existing homes? So in some ways, it is
a great business opportunity but we do need to make sure that
it is done to a high standard to make sure that we do not lose
the benefits, because tacking on a traditionally built extension
to some of the new technology homes would simply destroy the zero
carbon nature of the product.
Mr King: I would like to point
out that there is a potentially more serious implication, which
is that of, quite understandably, a lot of the focus—apart
obviously from the previous discussion of this Committee about
flood risk and so on—on the terms of the Code and in terms
of new house building has tended to be on mitigation in terms
of climate change, and of course adaptation is a very real issue
that we need to be thinking about. Some of the current trends
that we are seeing in house building are towards lightweight construction,
particularly in offsite construction methods and so on, and we
have to think carefully about the consequences of building homes
that actually in a rather unpredictable and changing climate in
the future may not withstand the test of time in terms of a radically
different climate.
Chairman: We will have to call this to
a halt as we have more witnesses coming in. Thank you very much
for coming in and for your contribution and we will certainly
reflect on the report.
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