Following on from last years implenetation of the residential Energy Performance Certificate there is now a commercial variant which is required for all building built, let or sold over 10,000 sq m. In October 2009 this is to be phased into all commercial buildings. With this change in energy compliance efficiency compliance there will be undoubtedly inherent duties to be faced by landlords to their beneficiaries with company directors needing to conform to section 172 of the Companies Act relating to ‘the impact of the company’s operation on the community and environment’.

To the landlord there will be added benefits of maintining high end rents if the building and services provision is less onerous on the tenant as result of legislation or running costs. This change has seen a increased role for an industry wide green lease code for landlords and tenants. The code which has been established by the Buildings Research Establishment requires residential developers to provide evidence that target credits are being achieved to increase overall improvement in all categories. The basis for a green lease can be built on many of these clauses:-

1. Rent incentives for reduction in overall energy consumption.

2. General building specification, fabric and performance.

3. Building service and plant.

4. Tenant help with waste recycling and energy consumptiion.

5. Commitment to waste recycling.

6. Green travel arrangements to reduce CO² emissions.

7. Utilisation of Seasonal food and fair trade food.

8. Use of renewable energy and microgeneration.

This leads to a range of significant environmental and societal benefits, including:
1.increased GHG savings from displacement of fossil fuels;
2.reduced use of artificial fertilisers, displacing greater amounts of GHG
3.reduced odour and flies at livestock units that adopt biogas
4. reduced diffuse pollution and improved water quality from better management of farm wastes.

The climate change (and economic) benefits of the process are improved when both heat and electricity are captured. In Germany, many biogas plants are fed with maize, but other high energy crops which use less fertiliser may show better returns. Biogas can be developed at farm scale, using simple equipment and farm based inputs, or on a larger scale as at Bedfordia Farms where the economics are supported by charging gate fees for treating food wastes from local businesses.

Biofuels

There is currently considerable controversy about the true benefits of biofuels (now referred to by some campaigners as agro-fuels), in terms of climate change,13 and about the potential to replace more than about 10% of road fuels from this source. However, the UK is committed to implementing a road-transport biofuels obligation (RTFO15) under which there would be a mandatory inclusion of 5% of fuels from renewable sources by 2010, and the reduced excise duty16 remains in place.

Campaigners often fail to distinguish between biofuels from different sources, which have very different energy ratios and effects on climate change.Whereas some biofuels involve land use change, which may put increased pressure on biodiversity, most of those actually used in the UK produce substantially more energy than was consumed in their production.

Assuming oilseed rape yields of 5.5 tonnes per hectare, and biodiesel yields of 415 kg to 470 kg per tonne of rapeseed, biodiesel production would be about 1.3 to 1.5 tonnes per hectare.

At current oil prices and rapeseed prices, it would be difficult to secure a margin from biodiesel produced from oilseeds, since in the UK biodiesel has to be sold at a discount to secure a market.Most commercially available biodiesel in the UK is produced from waste vegetable oils. However, it would in theory be possible to secure a margin if a premium price could be secured, probably from a distributor (with fuel depots) looking to enhance the green credentials of their product.

It is also important to consider biofuels which can be produced from wastes. The biofuel from waste with perhaps the greatest potential is biomethane, produced by refining biogas from anaerobic digestion plants.

In addition, in Australia the process of pyrolysis (burning at high temperatures in the absence of air20) is used to produce road quality diesel from waste plastics. One of the by-products of biomass pyrolysis is biochar (or agri-charr) which has potential to lock up significant quantities of carbon dioxide in soils, thus contributing to climate change mitigation.

There are other potential sources of biomass, for instance the planned £40m distillery plant in Roseisle on Speyside will halve its fuel bills by burning dried barley from the ‘spent wash’, a by-product of the distillation process, to generate heat.

Research is now underway in Northern Ireland to produce biofuels from seaweed.

Chartered surveyors should be wary of building mounted micro-wind turbines, which may place lateral pressures on brickwork which was never designed for such loadings.

However, large wind farm projects can provide attractive revenues to landowners and generate significant volumes of electricity as well as income from sale of renewable obligation certificates where the project is soundly based, with good wind conditions, and is well implemented and operated.

Renewable energy may be direct (such as solar water heating) or indirect such as biomass (generated by photosynthesis), wind (derived from thermal air currents) and hydro (derived from the hydrological cycle). Most renewable sources stem directly from the sun, whereas to some extent conventional energy sources involve ‘mining historical sunlight.’

Many critics of renewable energy point out the scale of, for instance wind-farm development, which would be necessary to replace conventional power generation plants. However, it seems likely that the UK, like other Northern European countries before us, will move towards more locally distributed generation, with many smaller plants from a variety of sources located much nearer to where the energy is to be used. In this scenario, each new plant would be expected to make only a marginal contribution to overall supply, while a much smaller proportion of the heat as well as electricity generated would be lost, for instance through cooling towers and in transmission to final users.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded, ‘Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years. The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land-use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.

The Stern review concluded that ‘if we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts are taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more. In contrast, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year.

The government has determined that by 2016, all new houses should be ‘carbon neutral’ or zero carbon. The definition of this (as set out in a consultation by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) in England in December 2008) is that such houses should: be built with high levels of energy efficiency; achieve at least a minimum level of carbon reductions through a combination of energy efficiency, onsite energy supply and/or (where relevant) directly connected low carbon or renewable heat; and choose from a range of (mainly offsite) solutions for tackling the remaining emissions.

A recent report commissioned by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) for the Renewables Advisory Board concludes that, due to the electricity load created by appliances, renewables are essential to meet zero carbon standards – which in theory will be required for all new houses by 2016 – even where homes are constructed to the highest levels of energy efficiency. The report predicted very little demand for renewable energy in new homes before 2016, with the market for onsite renewables growing rapidly after that, and the highest level of uptake for biomass CHP and solar photovoltaics.

It is worth bearing in mind though that as the rate of housing replacement is only about 4% of housing stock per year, the introduction of carbon free housing will have a limited effect in the short term towards achieving targets.

RENEWABLE ENERGY

For existing buildings, where it may not be possible or cost-effective to design in sufficient energy saving features, there will almost always be scope to reduce heat loss by measures such as double glazing and draught proofing. Wall, as well as ceiling insulation, will usually be a cost-effective option to be considered before installing renewable energy to support existing buildings. About one third of heat loss from a typical dwelling would be through the walls, and 15% through the roof.Wall cavities in homes built before 1990 will typically be un-insulated, and injecting insulation into the cavity will be a relatively low cost and highly cost effective option, costing perhaps £300 for a 3-bed semi-detached house.

In very old houses with no wall cavity, wall insulation may have to be installed internally – where room size allows (if necessary, some insulation value can be derived from specially designed wallpapers without significant loss of space) or externally where this is compatible with the appearance of the building. Choice of construction materials may also have a major impact on the levels of embedded energy.

Excluding the transport sector, heat accounts for over 70% of all the energy we use. For instance, in the domestic sector, space heating accounts for over 60% of energy use, water heating just over 23% and cooking 2.7%, leaving only 13% used for non-heat applications. The use of heat accounts for 47% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The UK government has signed up to the European Commission’s proposals to save 20% of energy consumption through improved energy efficiency by 2020.8 However, based on existing strategies to reduce energy demand, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predict global energy consumption is likely to grow by about 50% by 2030.

The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is being introduced across Europe to reduce emissions of CO2. Phase I of the scheme lasted from 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2007, and Phase II runs to the end of 2012. The Council of Ministers has agreed in principle to extend the scheme to the forestry and land use sectors. However, numerous obstacles lie ahead and it may be that other ways will need to be found to put a value on the carbon which can be locked up by agriculture and land management in the UK, and on the emissions thereby averted from other sectors.

In addition, the EU has agreed to adopt a binding commitment to meet 10% of road fuel supply from biofuels by 2020, subject to agreement on certain preconditions, and the UK Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, which implements this, took effect in April 2008.

In future, it may be possible for those supplying renewable energy sources to secure additional income by carbon trading, which could form an additional incentive. However, for the moment only installations in developing countries may count towards the accredited scheme.

Defra has commissioned work to consider the potential benefits of including agriculture, forestry and land management within carbon trading schemes, and the practicalities of so doing.

At some point, the EU ETS scope is likely to be extended to agriculture, and to emissions of nitrous oxides and methane, though the difficulty and transaction costs of measuring and marketing emissions from small enterprises remain to be resolved, and there are other easier targets to address first.

The Country Land and Business Association with sponsorship from the East of England Development Agency and Savills, has now introduced its ‘CALM’ (climate-aware land management) calculator for land-based businesses to use to calculate their own carbon-equivalence footprint and point the way to cost effective savings.

Quantative relationships between residential radon levels and health risks are difficult to show due to the nature of low dosage exposure over a long time. However research into the rates of lung cancer amongst workers in Uranium mines has shown linear relationship between exposure and radon levels.

Investigations carried out in South West England and Germany have all displayed significant positive relationships between   exposure to radon and lung cancer rates. It was also found that those that smoked were at an even greater risk.

It is well known that the greatest exposure to radon occurs in the indoor environment where people spend the majority of their time especially at nights where domestic radon levels are known to increase slightly. As a result of this there has been a lot of effort made in identify area at risk and remedial measures to counteract the risk of health problems.

The action level for radon in residential properties was set by the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB), which is now part of the Health Protection Agency at an annual average concentration of 200 Becquerel’s per cubic metre and where more than 1 percent of the housing stock is predicted to have radon concentration greater than the action level.

The effectiveness of both Action Levels and radon remediation programmes has been subject to debate. One question concerns the extent to which the Action Levels, based on the assumption of a linear relationship between radon levels in the home and actual exposure and typically expressed in terms of the mean annual radon concentration, reflect actual exposures.

If this assumption does not hold, then actual exposures may depart from the estimated exposure levels.

In the year 200O the United Nations brought together some of the World’s leading scientists in order to gather opinion and consensus at to what the greatest threats to the planet was in the first ten years of the new millennium. The impacts of climate change were given a derisory few paragraphs in an eight page document vaguely touching on air pollution. Topics such as carbon emissions were steady to in decline or steady. Issues such as loss of coral habitats were considered more of a threat to the planet than global warming.

What a difference a decade makes. Global warming, the environment and many associated issues has gone from being treated as the preserve of small community of eco based pressure groups and scientists to being at number one on the agenda list of the international community. Recognition of that the earth is detrimentally changing has been brought starkly into focus by more extreme weather. Extremes in weather have become more frequent, destructive and global in the last 10 years than ever before.

In early 2000 Southern Africa was hit by three weeks of tropical storms which left Mozambique inundated. Many thousands of people were killed and millions displaced from their homes. Along with the human suffering the country’s infrastructure was crippled. For example 90 percent of the irrigation network to the agricultural lands was damaged. The country was forced to appeal for international aid to the tune of $450 million to help avoid starvation and disease amongst its people and to begin the recovery process.  In 2009 Mozambique was hit again by an extreme flood event similar in magnitude to that experienced back in 2000.  The flood event in Mozambique was not a one off event, in the following months Cambodia and Thailand were also hit. By way of contrast India experienced one of its worst droughts ever.

Scientists are able to show relationships between the increase in ferocity and frequency of these natural hazards with the rapid change in climate resulting from anthropogenic emissions. The realisation of the severity of the situation began to filter through to Government and policy makers around the world. As if to solidify the importance of climate change in 2003 Europe experienced a heat wave which ultimately led to the death of 30,000 people. The following year proved to be a real turning point. Bizarrely, the first natural hazard to strike was not climate related but nevertheless the wake of devastation left by the Indian Ocean Tsunami served as a reminder as to the power of mother nature. Added to this, the continued globalisation of information means that more people than ever hear about disasters almost as they happen. Only 10 months after this the state of Louisanna in America was struck by hurricane Katrina which killed 1800 people and left an 81 million dollar cleanup bill not to mention the displacement of 1000’s of people from their communities. Even today huge area of New Orleans is just open ground where once there were whole neighbourhoods thrived.

As the sun sets on the this decade it is evident that climate change we find ourselves in is worse than predicted. Global temperature rises of 4 degrees over the next 50 years are conservative. The effects will dwarf some of the disasters the world has experienced of in this first decade of the millennium. A multilayered uni lateral response has to be encouraged with changes needing to occur right from the individual and household level right through to international policy makers. Nation states need to quantify agreements and targets and then adhere to them no matter what. It could be argued that it will be impossible to continue to grow sustainably if we need to remediate the damage already caused as well. This may well be the case but unless we react to the situation we find ourselves in now it may well be too late. In December, the worlds leaders are gathering in Copenhagen to hammer out agreements to offset teh rate of climate change. This summit meeting will be the blueprint for change and hopefully the leaders will put their differences aside to agree a deal. The deal will have considerable ramifications for not only the climate but also the global economy. Watch this space.