Tip Top Buildings

Tackling climate change and carbon emissions need tackle a crucial sector - buildings. Buildings are the defining characteristic of the urban lifestyles that most of us live, a tangible demonstration of our impact of the environment around us. We live in houses and work/study in offices and spend large chunks, if not most of, our time in buildings.

The gold standard for how 'green' buildings are is a system for what's called BREEAM - the Building Research Establishment's Environmental Assessment Method (you can see why they abbreviate it...). BREEAM is more than just being 'green' - it takes a more holistic vision of sustainability at its centre, to move beyond legal requirements for health and safety to actively promoting resource efficiency, biodiversity, waste minimization in the context of the building.

Buildings are rated along a four-step scale of Pass, Good, Very Good and Excellent, and this rating takes into account the entire sequence of the building project - pre-construction (design), construction (recycling, cutting down on waste) and post-construction (maintenance). A prominent example includes the National Assembly for Wales Senedd in Cardiff being 'excellent' and the various schemes extend across all kinds of buildings, including, as I discovered today - prisons. Full specifics of the various BREEAMs in wonderful detail are available on their website, including how points are awarded to reach the different ratings.

One goal of this blog has been (at the risk of sounding too presumptious) to set out a vision for sustainability at UWA. The Go Green campaign (environmental policy, dedicated full-time staff, environmental audit and senior management support) is a crucial part of how sustainability can be embedded in operating structures and processes. BREEAM would be a key element of turning sustainability from principle to practice, for both new buildings and refurbishment projects.

I would expect and hope that all future building projects on campus meet a BREEAM 'very good' or 'excellent' rating. It is obviously more difficult to achieve given the quality of the existing buildings on campus and tearing down all the old, 1960s-era buildings isn't going to happen overnight. But gradually improving sustainability will lift the overall quality of the physical buildings that make up UWA, lead to lower running costs, and reflect a response to the environmental challenges in our world.

I am obviously happy to hear that the refurbishment of the Cledwyn spur on Penglais campus, which is, as I understand it, a full refurbishment bar building a new building, will be targeted to reach a 'very good' standard. This is a reasonably short project - over the summer to be ready by the beginning of the next academic year and I will try and put up more detail as I recieve it. A refurbishment of Penbryn blocks 1/2 beginning soon is contracted to a company called Dalkia, and their environmental policies and regulations appear fairly reassuring.