Transcript 1391_C_2016-06-22_17-53-47_1391 WATSON CESB16

Rewarding the green: inadvertent and
intended impact on industrial heritage
Mark WATSON
Historic Environment Scotland; [email protected]
Open hearth furnace, Nizhny Tagil,
Russia, 1994
Carbon emissions do cause climate
change
 Should we imprison the
relics of the coal industry
that caused climate to
change?
 Or keep them as warnings?
 Carbon capture is still
some way off.
 But energy savings can be
made through good use of
what is already built
Embodied energy as part of whole life costing
My theme=
not Cradle to Grave
 I will expand on the few
incentives for considering
embodied energy already
expended in making a
building, as part of the
equation in deciding
whether or not to keep it in
use, or to re-use it. You have
to think about the
environmental cost of a
new replacement.
But cradle to rebirth,
without burial
 SAP and EPC pay no heed
to embodied energy,
because their focus is on
supposed energy in use,
but the American LEED
system does at least
acknowledge whole-life
costing.
 See the annex 57 special
session on EEC at CESB16
We need to monitor impacts of
climate change over time
 Ironbridge World
Heritage Site, UK
 A door records floods
from 1929 to 2008
Flooding of a converted textile mill in Dundee, so
defences were put up.
Adapt and mitigate, Kyoto to
The challenge of climate change,
Copenhagen to Paris
 How to capture
carbon?
 reduce emissions? or
 ensure that the carbon
already spent is used
again and again?
(at Port Dundas Distillery
in Glasgow)
The carbon footprint measures the
 Total amount of carbon
dioxide emissions that is
directly and indirectly
caused by an activity or
is accumulated over the
life stages of a product
 a city has one too!
(the High Line, New York
City)
Whole life costing
1. Whole life costing shows that re-use of buildings can
reduce the carbon emissions arising from demolition
and building anew, and go some way towards reversing
the harm industry has brought to the environment
through climate change.
2. The more is kept, the better the outcome in terms of
waste not taken to landfill.
3. Existing materials contain embodied energy already
spent, and less energy need be devoted to bringing in
new building materials
Historic buildings capture embodied energy
 Historic buildings can make a significant contribution towards
meeting targets for climate change reduction:
 already built,
 adaptable to meet new purposes and may be
 upgraded in ways sympathetic to their character and
performance. (Edward St Mill, Dundee, to a Housing
Association)
Emissions in use or Embodied energy?
 Operational savings (by insulation or renewable
energy) take many years and rely on human action
to keep up proper maintenance. Benefits could be
lost if refurbishment cycles are short.
 Savings in embodied energy achieve immediate
reductions in carbon and are passive, don’t need
ongoing attention.
Refit cycles
 Short design life and refit
cycles increase lifetime
emissions. Embodied
assessment captures this.
SAP assessment of
emissions in use does not.
 right: Logie Schoolhouse,
a Europa Nostra award
winner, in its 3rd use
(school/ church/ house) in
180 years
 = 60-year cycle
Traditional thermal mass (Logie
Schoolhouse built of clay)
 Built and maintained from
locally sourced materials,
traditional buildings rely
on their thermal mass for
warmth and cooling,
natural light and
ventilation. Knowledge of
these systems help
designers of modern
green buildings.
British homes are less well insulated than those in
Nordic countries and Germany. But grants in Finland
to insulate houses had a disastrous impact on existing
buildings, shortening their lives due to rot.
Traditional wooden houses in Pispala, Tampere, Finland
Healthy buildings: don’t seal
them up
Buildings traditionally rely on:
 Thermal mass for an even
climate
 Natural light and ventilation
 Vapour-permeable walls to
absorb and release moisture
For insulation options see
http://www.changeworks.org
.uk/content.php?linkid=373
Ventilation extracts from the Lighthouse
building in Glasgow by CR MacKintosh
 Plenum heating:
 Cool fresh air drawn in
at the bottom, warms
up and rises as it
becomes stale, to be
naturally dispersed
through these
ventilators.
yet
 there are environmentalists who say that the real
problem lies in all the old buildings that are “hard
to treat”. If only their demolition could be
speeded up the earth would be more
sustainable.
Finding: The current demolition rate needs to be
increased fourfold, targeted at the most
inefficient and unhealthy homes.
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/40house.php
 But would it?
40% House campaign demands
more demolition
Under the 40% House scenario, the demolition rate increases from
20,000 per year now to 80,000 p.a. in 2016 and stays at this level
until 2050, giving a total demolition over the whole period 20052050 of 3.2 million properties.
Savings beyond those would come from increasing the demolition rate
further to 150,000 per year and would reduce the notional lifespan
of the average building to 250 years.
To get down to 120 years, demolition would have to rise to 234,000 per
year. This would enable energy consumption for space and water
heating to reduce by 24%
234,000 dwellings demolished in
the UK in a single year means
= 9% of all Scottish
dwellings, or more
than:
= the total number in
Edinburgh (217,654)
 A lot of celebrities
have signed up to
support the campaign
 But evidence is turning
against destruction.
C20th Law Courts use more energy than 19th Century
courts, that are being closed (Min of Justice research)
UK government Building Performance
Evaluation Programme: Findings from
non-domestic projects’
 “Average total carbon
emissions were 3.8
times higher than the
average design estimate
– and only 1 of the 49
buildings had actual
carbon emissions that
matched the design
estimate.”**
• “Energy Performance
Certificates (EPC) do not
reliably predict actual
energy use in buildings –
and there is very little
correlation between EPCs
and Display Energy
Certificates, which record
actual energy use.”
Innovate UK, Jan 2016
Building conservation meets the
recycling protocol by
1. reducing need to build new by re-use of
buildings;
2. re-using buildings and their components,
reclaiming where practicable materials such
as roofing slate, brick and building stone
3. recycling and remanufacturing of materials:
easier say where lime is the binder rather than
cement
(in descending order of preference):
Opportunities for mitigation
(©Davis Langdon)
 Refurbishment/ re-use existing structure
 Reduce structural member sizes through post
tensioning
 Specify materials manufactured using renewable
energy
 Increase recycled and down-cycled content
 Locally-sourced materials
 Use alternatives to plastics and other resourceintensive materials
Ettrick Mill, Selkirk, before and
after conversion to business hub
EPC excellent for Ettrick Mill, Eildon Housing
Association, 2009, Scottish Borders
Long life/ Loose fit buildings
 The most adaptable
building may be an old
industrial building that
has gone through
several changes of use
already, e.g.
 Sugar refinery/ VAT69
whisky bond, and now
offices in an Edinburgh
mixed-use development
Bonnington Bond, Leith,
Edinburgh
Whisky warehouse ->
c.1908
Sugar refinery / store ->
1865
McEwan’s Maltings ->
1865
Scheme A is contrary to use
zoning: Scheme B fits zoning
Bonnington Bond’s conversion
has saved:
182,830,000 MBTU =
 1,589,826 litres of
gasoline or
 192 896 619 800 000
joules or
 192 897 timber
windows or
 65,000 UPVC windows
The Greenest Building is the One
Already Built
 EMBODIED ENERGY CALCULATOR
 To use this calculator, begin by choosing your property
type from the box on the left. In the box labelled gross
floor area enter your building's total square footage.
Click calculate to get the amount of energy "embodied"
(that's the total energy spent in the production of a
building, from the manufacture of materials to their
delivery to construction) in your building!
X sq. ft. = MBTU Embodied Energy Investment*
With the May T Watts carbon
calculator, if Bonnington Bond
were demolished
 Embodied energy invested (heavy construction)
116,400,000 MBTU
 demolition if totally removed
+1,440,000,000 BTU
 new build as light construction for industrial units
+64,990,000 MBTU
 = 182,830,000 MBTU total would be used
British Thermal Unit
 1 BTU= one match
 1 MBTU= 1,000 cu.ft. of gas or approx I joule
 1 Million BTU = 1 055.06 megajoules
Other measures of embodied energy in materials are found in
MJ so for example,
 uPVC window 620 MJ/m = 2980 MJ
 Timber window 207 MJ/m = 995 MJ
Material
Embodied energy
Wood Products
Paints 450 ft2 per gallon
Asphalt Products
Glass Products: Windows
Glass Products: Plate
Stone & Clay Products: Concrete
Stone & Clay Products: Brick
Primary Iron & Steel Products
Primary Non-Ferrous Products
9000 BTU/BDFT
1000 BTU/sq. ft.
2000 BTU/sq. ft.
15000 BTU/sq. ft.
40000 BTU/sq. ft.
96000 BTU/cf
400000 BTU/cf
25000 BTU/lb
95000 BTU/lb
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
 LCA examines the total environmental impact of a
material or product through every step of its life from obtaining raw materials (for example, through
mining or logging) all the way through manufacture,
transport to a store, use in the home and disposal
or recycling.
 (May T. Watts Appreciation Society-sponsored
Embodied Energy Calculator )
 As the energy efficiency of houses and appliances
increases, embodied energy will become increasingly
important.
Life Cycle Assessment or
Whole-life costing
 LCA can consider a range of environmental impacts
such as
 resource depletion,
 energy and water use,
 greenhouse emissions,
 waste generation and so on
http://www.thegreenestbuilding.org/survey.html
Reuse of building materials commonly saves about 95% of
embodied energy that would otherwise be wasted.
http://greenestbuildingistheonealreadybuilt.blogspot.com/
General Post Office or
Waverleygate in Edinburgh
New home for Creative Scotland
Case study: Edinburgh General
Post Office or Waverleygate
 Façade retention was a
hugely expensive and
time consuming
process
 countless lorries took
rubble, concrete and
steel away over many
months.
Edinburgh General Post Office,
steel and concrete
Work underway: building is cored
 Then new floors were
brought in around a
new lightwell.
 The notional value of
the building justifies
the investment made
in it by institutional
investors such as
pension funds.
Emissions saved in use?
 Waverleygate claims to
be a very green office
in terms of its energy
performance:
 chilled beams for
cooling (£6.70 per m2,
25% cheaper than
other systems)
 A green roof.
Waverleygate embodied energy
cost
 Calculating performance in
use is not easy while
empty. Emissions could
only count as saved if they
had previously been made
elsewhere in a leaky office.
 The environmental costs of
transporting so much
away, and bringing so
much new structure in the embodied energy costoutweigh any benefits
until it is occupied.
Using the greenest building
calculator, to demolish the GPO
means:
Embodied energy lost
+Demolition energy
+New embodied energy
=Energy lost and spent:




211,313,530 MBTU
2,614,188,000 BTU
211,313,530 MBTU
422,627,277 MBTU
 =3,675,020 gallons of
petrol/gasoline
http://www.thegreenestbuil
ding.org.
What does 3,675,020 gallons of
petrol/gasoline mean?
 It would take you
283,298,421 Km in a
Skoda Fabia
from Earth to Mars or
 79,981,635 Km in a
Ferrari from Mercury to
the Sun
What if some of the interior had
been preserved?
 No allowance is made
by WRAP in UK
 But in USA it would get
some credit through
LEED
US Green Building Council
America is more green!
 The US approach gives some credit to use or re-use of a
building. See http://www.usgbc.org/Default.aspx
 Keeping more of other walls and floor structure means a
much greater saving in terms of the overall carbon footprint.
Example of a Scottish wool mill: Tower Mill in Hawick
Tower Mill, Hawick, built 1851 over
River Slitrig
Tower Mill floorspace
 21,635.44sq ft before
the work
 20,343.77sq ft. after
 (In fact the building is
bigger but some floors
have been removed in
the cinema)
Carbon calculator: if Tower Mill
were demolished instead
 extant embodied energy
 if demolished
 new work total LOST
 29,856,300 MBTU
 201,209,592 BTU
 58,119,900 MBTU
What if Tower Mill were
demolished instead?
 total 58,119,900 MBTU
LOST AND SPENT
 = 505,390 GALLONS
 = 258,015 LBS OFCO2
 = 3.5 US households in
a year
 = 61 320 087 MJ
 = 22,000 UPVC
windows
Frome Silk Mill
Fairfield Shipyard offices,
Govan Workspace, Glasgow
Short=term use of industrial heritage?
 "Long-life loose-fit" is a
motto relevant to
functional industrial
buildings.
 Temporary uses in “found”
industrial spaces buy time
cheaply (West Ward
Printing Works, a 4-day
pop-up at Dundee
International Design
Festival, May 2015)
 The best use for an
industrial building might be
its next use.
Hidden Door Festival Edinburgh May 2014
‘Hidden Door’ is no longer hidden
Now those arches are
permanently used
 And the Hidden Door has
moved on to a Lighting
depot in 2015 & 2016
 So the best use might be
the next one
 The Praha Biennale does
this too!
 The greenest buildings are
the ones that are already
built.
.
summary
 As emissions in use fall, embodied carbon will become
the main area for achieving sustainable development.
 Cultural heritage conservation people need to learn the
language of energy conservation
 We cannot just assume that energy conservation will
take the same side as building conservation, but
 Industrial buildings, due to the often high embodied
energy in their heavy construction, will play an
important part. Thank you.
 [email protected]
 @markrustbucket