A scheme’s sustainability comes from the way it is used and managed more than the way it is built. But rating systems often fail to reflect this.
The day before it opened, the Co-operative Group’s new £114m Manchester office at One Angel Square was declared the most environmentally-friendly building in the world.
Big cheers greeted the news – the Queen made an appearance to cut the ribbon and shake hands. That was 15 months ago. But how green is the Co-Op HQ’s performance?
The Co-Op preferred not to talk, even in general terms, about its award-winning building’s performance. “We don’t feel that now is the time,” the group told EG.
Despite the company’s silence, there is no doubting that the Co-Op’s Angel Square building was designed to be a lean, green sustainability machine. Constructed by Dutch giant BAM, the building is powered by crops grown on the group’s farms, and features rainwater harvesting and heat recovery, along with a 300,000 sq ft thermal sponge. It has a BREEAM “outstanding” rating, having scored an unprecedented, world-beating score of 95.3%.
While the Co-Op’s building design is near flawless, there is still debate over one of the biggest dilemmas with sustainable office development: ultimately the greenness of your building depends on how people actually use it, not the certificates you won up front.
Paul Appleby is one of the UK’s senior green building consultants and has worked with the World Green Building Council. He says that a good green building can be turned into a pale-green poor-performer by inadequate management, poor data collection and slack data analysis.
“You can get an outstanding green rating for your building on some measures, but it could nonetheless perform poorly. And in a big building the huge challenge is minimising the difference between predicted energy consumption and actual energy consumption.
“The gap between predicted and achieved could be enormous – 60% or 70% – if you get a cumulative failure to respond to data,” he says.
Closing the gap
He adds: “If you capture data, analyse it effectively and respond quickly, you can close the gap. There are some building energy management systems that can do that, as they learn about how the building works.”
Alan Somerville, director of sustainability at DTZ, is also concerned that good green buildings risk turning into poor energy performers if managers do not collect and study enough of the right performance data.
“Data is at the centre of all this. It has been the single biggest issue, both acquiring data and analysing it. Without data on how the asset is performing, it is impossible to understand what is happening, or to improve it. And I have stopped being surprised by the number of occupiers who have no data. This includes major organisations, which you would have expected to sort this out. Similarly, on performance targets, you need to be clear about what you want to achieve, not just pick a random number because it sounds good.”
The upshot of poor data, poor analysis and poor management is that a dark-green building can produce very pale-green results.
Appleby says: “It is absolutely possible to have a big green building, heavily applauded, that doesn’t perform well, but then, should it be possible to get a green building rating without proving that the building works as intended?”
Appleby’s question is one that has been troubling many in the sustainability world. The BREEAM In-Use rating is intended to provide an answer, measuring performance over a longer period of occupation, but it is not widely used in the UK.
BREEAM points to examples in Paris, where Wereldhave and its tenant EDF have just achieved “outstanding” under BREEAM In-Use at the 204,000 sq ft Carre Vert complex, following its “outstanding” BREEAM New Construction. There are other examples around Europe – not least in Romania.
In the UK, British Land, which is currently at work on the new 700,000 sq ft building for Swiss bank UBS at 5 Broadgate, EC2, knows a thing or two about getting big buildings to go green for keeps. Sarah Cary, BL’s sustainable developments executive, says the relative unpopularity of BREEAM In-Use ratings in the UK is a function of a property investment market that does not price long-term value adequately.
“The real challenge is that in the UK there is no obvious relationship between how buildings work and their asset value,” Cary says. “In other countries there is a very direct relationship. Buildings that work less well, less efficiently, sell for less. Energy performance certificates are not good enough, and we looked at BREEAM In-Use and decided it was complicated.
“We are working on other measures of how a building performs, not how it is designed. We follow the guidance of the British Buildings Partnership, and we want to see a market in which that data can be used by occupiers.”
Yes, she says, a big office building presents some big opportunities to go green. “A bespoke building means more time to make decisions, and more client interest to get it right. At Broadgate we have used a high recycled metal content in the cladding, and 38% of the overall materials are the products of recycling.
“But it takes an extra level of resources to manage the building well. You need professional management, the right software, and specialist advice,” she says.
For now, Cary, like Appleby, concludes that even the most garlanded green building could turn out to be a disappointment if it is not well managed.
“It is definitely possible,” she says. “It is all about how you set up your building management, how you incentivise. It takes a lot of work. British Land has managed a 36% cut in landlord carbon emissions in four years across the portfolio, and that has saved our occupiers nearly £7m. But it took years and a lot of management time.”
There are signs of change. The Chartered Institute of Building Service Engineers’ Building Performance Awards now insist on at least one year’s full performance data before considering entries. And investors are starting to wonder about their buildings’ long-term performance and how it might affect values. IPD’s Ecopas portfolio analysis service is heading in this direction, say observers, although there is work to be done to make sustainability assessments an important investment tool.
Building a green building is one thing; using it in a sustainable, carbon-efficient way is quite another. And the on-off relationship between the two is not stable yet.
Ecopas: identifying eco risks
IPD launched its Eco-Portfolio Analysis Service in 2012. It is a confidential benchmarking service designed to highlight the potential environmental risks in a real estate investment portfolio, and shows how one portfolio compares with the eco risks taken by others.
