Letter to Jonathon Porritt, Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission

Dear Jonathon Porritt,

I wish the new Commission well in it's Herculean task!

I have just read the specific objectives of the Commission in the November issue of Green Futures.
I would like to tell the Commission about some of the practical issues which have arisen over the last 4 years as I, my family and friends have been building a house seeking to embody principles of sustainability.

Our aim was to build a house within an average budget for a 3 bedroom detached dwelling, which was 1) beautiful
2) comfortable to live in
3) built with local labour
4) built with materials of low environmental impact which were
produced ethically
5) not requiring more energy to run than could be generated
on site from renewable sources.
We think we have achieved aims 1) - 4)
Although we have only gone some way towards achieving 5) - it is clear that the potential is there.

In order for ourselves and others to realise this aim fully it will be necessary to provide incentives to use renewable energy harvesting technologies - by making these affordable at the domestic level.

As it is now, we have a house which rarely needs any additional heating for 9 months of the year - and which only needs 5 kilowatts to maintain it at 20 degrees C, when the external temperature is -2 degrees C. The heat is provided by a high-performance centrally placed woodstove, fuelled with local coppiced wood (a sustainable carbon-neutral source of fuel) when passive solar gain is insufficient.

Rainwater collection and recycling will supply most of our water for domestic and garden use.

During the project I have considered whether this type of work, done by a large number of people, would contribute significantly to moving our society towards sustainability - and I believe it would.

On the following pages I will highlight some of the factors which at present make it difficult - and more expensive - for others to attempt projects with similar aims .

Factors which at present hinder sustainable building projects

1)Finance

The only way we could even consider this type of project was to find a source of mortgage funding which :-

a)Released some money before the project was started

b)Released it in stages as building proceeded

We were able to get these mortgage conditions with the help of The Ecology Building Society - but no other Building Society or Bank would consider our request.

As other forms of loan are prohibitively expensive, it would seem useful for the Commission to consider what factors could give other institutions incentives to provide mortgages on this basis.

2)VAT conditions for New Build vs Renovation

Although we rebuilt the house from the foundations up it was classed as a renovation, and was thus subject to VAT on all building materials and professional labour, making the project considerably more expensive than if we had made a similar building on a greenfield site.

This flies in the face of sustainable policies of encouraging renovation and renewal where possible -  and tends to promote greenfield building.

3) Building Regulations

A revision of building regulations could be a very important way of encouraging sustainability. It will be a tragedy if the large amount of new building planned in the near future is built to present minimum building standards.

a)Insulation

Standards of insulation are still far lower than in Denmark, which has a climate similar to our own.

Our experience is that doubling the present minimum standard is not very expensive when incorporated into a new structure - probably having a payback time of less than 5 years. Also it is far cheaper to incorporate it at the beginning than upgrading it later.

b)Passive solar design

Standards about the site orientation of buildings, coupled with standards about maximising the position and size of windows to optimise solar gain, could make a significant difference to long term energy needs.

c)Rainwater Harvesting

Requirements for some rainwater harvesting in all new buildings, at least for garden use, would make plans for increasing centralised reservoirs unnecessary.

3)Building Regulations contd.

d)Building materials

Sustainability standards for a range of the most important buiding materials could be incorporated into building regulations -eg. Embodied energy standards,Volatile Organic Compound emission upper limits, Toxicity standards for electrical insulation.

e)Flexibility

Some regulations need to be more flexible eg. Continental design of low-flush toilets, which use half the volume of water of British designs, were illegal because they had a plunger rather than a syphon system, but are just as effective.

4)Planning authorities

Our experience was that Planning Commitees did not have environmental considerations high on their agenda.

They appeared to be more concerned with keeping the status quo - than with encouraging good environmental practice.

There would seem to be great scope for raising awareness about sustainability and environmental issues with Planning Committee members.

(There are groups who have already developed expertise in this sort of training)

5)Dissemination of knowledge about environmentally friendly building materials and methods.

I had to spend a great deal of time researching the best building materials and methods with the help of various “green” organisations and practitioners.

eg.Architect - Andrew Yeats

Centre for Alternative Technology

Others who have completed similar projects

Consultants in water harvesting and management

Derby City Housing dept. etc.

Knowledge about the environmental impacts of different building materials and processes is almost entirely absent amongst local builders merchants and builders.

Our project was a source of considerable interest, curiosity and surprise to the local builders with whom we worked - and they are now hoping to use this knowledge in their future work.

There would seem also to be great scope for raising awareness about sustainability and environmental issues with builders and builder’s merchants.

6)Incentives to manufacture and install renewable energy harvesting technologies.

Doing this project has emphasised to me that renewable energy has the potential for suppying all our energy requirements.

In order for this to be realised Key Elements need to work together at different scales - and in different domains.

a)There needs to be political awareness that renewable energy can replace fossil fuels and make nuclear power unnecessary.

If only a fraction of the 100 watts per square metre of solar power in the UK is harvested - together with energy from the wind, waves and tides - coupled with increasingly energy efficient building and industrial processes, there will be enough energy to meet all our needs.

Currently the messages I hear on the news from politicians  still conveys the implication  that renewable energy is uneconomical and can only help marginally.

b)Politicians and economists together need to grasp the idea that the large variety of new industries that will develope in renewable energy, and in efficient non-polluting industrial processes are a great opportunity for new growth - and not just a cost.

c)Diversity of renewable energy harvesting and decentralisation of power production are keys to encouraging net power production on a domestic scale

 Much more attention needs to be paid to the potential for turning domestic scale buildings, industrial factories and offices into net power producers rather than consumers, using the electricity grid as a trading and balancing mechanism.

At the domestic scale - better insulation, passive solar design and solar water heating are already cost-effective under present economic conditions.

A combination of domestic scale :-

Wind turbines         Hydro-turbines

Photovoltaic roofing  and cladding materials

Sustainably managed wood fuel

Biogas generators running combined heat and power plants, or fuel cells

 - coupled with a smart grid interface - could turn homes, offices and factories into  power generators.

This would reduce the need for larger scale renewable energy projects, which can have adverse impacts if too extensive.

All the technologies above exist at present but require a combination of active incentives and realistic pricing of fossil fuels (to include environmental costs) - to allow them to take off. 

As large scale manufacturing develops in these new industries - economies of scale will further reduce prices.

Other renewable industries with potential at the domestic scale are encouraging the biofuel industry - including the production of methane and hydrogen from renewable sources - which will also be powering electric vehicles in the near future.

It seems quite feasible that with the right combination of policies these new industries would grow so rapidly that we could exceed our present Kyoto committments, which are, in fact, inadequate to keep atmospheric CO2 concentrations from exceeding an estimated safety ceiling of 550 parts per million.

                                                                                                                           28-11-00