New report identifies retrofit opportunities for commercial sector

Date: 9th January 2014

 

A new report was published this week that identifies changes to policy and practice that are required to transform the performance efficiency of commercial buildings on city-wide scale. The report was written by lead author Professor Tim Dixon, Research Programme Leader: Sustainability in the Built Environment (SustBE) at the University of Reading and was based on interviews with some 40 interviews key players in the commercial property sector.

The research suggests that the rate of retrofit in the commercial property sector is low and major changes to policy and practice are needed to increase progress. Despite a number of examples of light touch retrofit such as the installation of LED lighting and improved building management systems, the rate of retrofit remains slow.  It also highlights the under-utilisation of city-wide initiatives such as district heating schemes which is referenced in the title as ‘city-blind’ which is another priniciple component in the lack of progress in the commercial property sector.

Central to this body of research is the investigation of current and future trends that are required to determine the scale of the challenges facing retrofitting a city-wide scale. The work formed part of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s (EPSRC) Retrofit 2050 programme and was carried out with the assistance of Oxford Brookes University.

The report outlines a series of recommendations that will help propel the  transformance to a low carbon buildings society, and ultimately the Utopian ideal of zero carbon buildings. Recommendations focus on the tightening of policy and practice including:

• Mandatory DECs underpinned by incentives such as stamp duty reductions for energy efficient property
• Restructuring of the Green Deal, and increased support from the UK Green Investment Bank at city level
• An approved products and suppliers list to inform users of retrofit technologies
• Better performance in operational data and improved support for new and emerging technologies
• Clearer consistency in commercial retrofit assessment standards around BREEAM, Ska rating and other standards
• Better consistency in monitoring and verification standards

Further to the recommendations, the report concludes that growth of multi-scale commercial property niche experiments at the individual and portfolio level are subtantial but the City-scale projects that utilise schemes such district heating or city-wide retrofitting programmes are under-served. It is because of this that there is a need for greater collaboration that is underpinned by public-private sector partnerships and strong governance.

Tim Dixon said: “This research shows that the commercial property sector still has much to do in order to connect with the wider community in cities. Part of the problem lies in finding a consistent definition for retrofit, but we also need to have an integrated retrofit focus on energy, water and waste, and not just energy. This is a very different sector from domestic property, and its diversity, complexity and its risk-averse nature all present big challenges.”

The report, City-wide or City blind? An analysis of emergent retrofit practices in the UK commercial property sector, is available here.

 

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