Such events seem to be occurring with increasing frequency and ferocity, and there is a growing imperative to do more than a bit of gentle rubbish separation and token recycling to reduce future impacts.

As our buildings are an even bigger carbon burner than our cars - the estimate of 40 per cent of the EU's energy consumption is thought to be a conservative guess - it does make sense to start with bricks and mortar.

While voluntary schemes, such as the BRE Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), have provided a means for the property development industry to mitigate the environmental impact of buildings it produces, and a means by which potential occupiers can compare the relative 'greenness' of buildings with a BREEAM rating, a little more compulsion is about to be added to the process.

From October this year, Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) will be required for all properties including homes, commercial and public buildings when they are bought, sold, built or rented. Larger public buildings will also need to display an energy certificate. The measure derives from European legislation - the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) - designed to help the EU meet its climate change objectives under the Kyoto Protocol. The EPBD appeared in draft in 2001 and became European Law on 5 January 2003.

Like the labels that now come with washing machines and other white goods, EPCs will provide a rating between A and G for each building. Additionally they will include recommendations for improvement.

One concern with the certificates has been the shortage of qualified assessors. This has already delayed implementation. Another is their arbitrary nature.

At the recent Urban Land Institute Sustainable Cities Awards and conference event, John Richards, CEO of shopping centre development company Hammerson, said that the assessments are of essentially empty buildings. Because EPCs will not take into account the number of people who will ultimately occupy or use a building - in the case of Birmingham's Bullring, 40 million visits per year, for example - Richards says an assessment might make a building seem more inefficient than is really the case.

Richards' comment does seem to highlight the need for industry professionals - both the shopping centre's occupiers and developers - to help shape the law in the first place.

Speaking at the ICSC European Conference 2008 in Amsterdam during April, lobbyist Catherine Stewart, group practice leader at Interel Cabinet Stewart European Affairs, urged the private sector to get more involved in the policy-making process at both a European and national level. She warned that policy-makers are not always in touch with the real world and once the laws they make reach the statute books, they tend to be permanent. It is then a case of learning to live with them.

Because European policy-making procedure is long and complicated and it can take five years to get new law on the statute book, "You have to get in early and stay with it to have influence", Stewart says. The process is open and transparent, she continues. "The European institutions are keen to hear what you have to say." She also says the process is not as confrontational as at national level and is more 'consensus seeking'.

"Legislation can pose a threat in terms of cost, or giving your competitors an advantage, but it is also an opportunity," she adds.

"You need to educate policy-makers because in Brussels they live in this sort of bubble and have very little contact with the real world, and you need to go there and tell them what your world is like.

"How many of them have actually been onto a building site? How many of them actually know how an air-conditioning system works? These are the things that you need to tell them so that when they are making the legislation about how green life is going to be, they understand the practical implications."

The veracity of her advice could be revealed all too soon. The Energy Efficiency In Buildings Directive, which effectively spawned the EPC, is to be further strengthened by the EU.

"Brussels pushes the agenda, encourages thinking and provides a catalyst for setting standards, so it's very important you're there making sure they're going in the right direction," Stewart concludes.

Printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend

Bookmark this

---