Greener construction: Where next for Ireland's building stock?

You would imagine that the Government would at least be leading by example, but that’s clearly not the case when only 2 out of the 238 office buildings occupied by Government departments and State agencies have achieved an “A” BER level.

Under European legislation, the Energy Efficiency Directive, the push is on to achieve a standard of Nearly Zero Energy Building (NZEB) for 3% of Government building stock by way of retrofitting. The 3% rate also applies to buildings that are being purchased by Government bodies or buildings where they are entering into a rental agreement for their use. NZEB figures are calculated using similar methodology as that used in calculating BER. The Government, therefore, will be obliged to focus on both efficiency and performance of the buildings they use.

In the meantime, the building sector is getting on with aligning their practices and their buildings at a seemingly faster rate. There’s nothing like the profit motive to get people working and nowadays, it’s very difficult to sell anything — particularly buildings — unless you can demonstrate in concrete terms how sustainable your product is.

In the UK, a number of buildings are held up as examples of how you can produce a zero-carbon construction, but according to Savills UK, approximately 83% (or 1.4 billion square feet) of all retail space is currently below their Energy Performance Certificate B rating; something that would potentially make all that space unlettable by 2030.

Savills has taken the lead on addressing this problem in Britain by presenting a six-point plan to the Government designed to show legislators where they need to best concentrate their efforts. According to a recent report by Savills UK, change in the right direction is currently being driven by the demands of occupiers and investors. 

One of the areas of change that’s highlighted by the estate agents’ report is that the practice of occupiers paying higher rents for the more sustainable spaces needs to change; to reward rather than to punish, so that the push continues towards carbon-neutrality.

Here in Ireland, Savills has also been to the fore in promoting the cause of NZEB and carbon-neutral construction and in analysing the situation in Ireland, where similar challenges are being faced.

In a recent article on the subject, Orla Coyle, Head of Energy and Sustainability at Savills Ireland wrote: “The problems for getting building stock to comply with these kinds of levels is that 78% of the office stock in Dublin was built between 1955 and 2005 — well before the NZEB standards were introduced.” 

Any breaks in leases coming up represent the best opportunities, she says, for the Government to decarbonise their stock and move into more modern buildings:

“For the 46% of buildings (98) that are rented by government bodies in Dublin, lease breaks present the best opportunity to vacate older, poorly-rated buildings which are dependent on fossil fuels, and occupy newer buildings with better energy ratings, with more potential to decarbonise using renewable sources."

A good number of such opportunities will be coming along over the next two years, according to the Economic and Evaluation data from the Irish Government, which suggests that the leases on some 446,000ft2 of office space leased by the OPW are due to expire between 2023 and 2025. 

This represents 20% of the total amount of office space leased by the OPW in the capital, therefore switching to more energy-efficient buildings for such a substantial portion of buildings can be done if the will is there to do it. Modernising a fifth of the building stock over a few years would be a very significant step towards decarbonisation. 

This is all not to say that the State is moribund in its approach — it’s just not as committed as it should be and, perhaps, it will be in the coming years.

In July of this year, for example, the new headquarters of An Post was officially opened at the Exo Building adjacent to the Point Depot on the North Wall Quay in Dublin. This was a prime example of the kind of action that Government bodies need to take on a multiple level — vacating an older building for a newer one with an A3 BER.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that this particular Government body was a company with one foot in the private sector because although that represented 184,000ft2 of moving in the right direction, the State also took on leases around the same time of 89,000ft2 of space rated either C or D.

The Government should take lessons directly from the private sector, Orla Coyle says: “If the Government can learn from the private sector and apply these lessons to their portfolio of buildings, it can make significant strides towards its environmental goals.” 

The way to accelerate the process is by using the lease break opportunities to ‘trade up’ to more efficient buildings while at engaging in an aggressive programme of retrofitting.

The big question is; Is there an appetite for such an approach amongst the shadows of the variant decision-makers in the Civil Service?

The tide could be turning in the form of the launch late last month of a public consultation on a Draft Green Public Procurement Strategy and Action Plan, by Ossian Smyth, Minister of State at the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications.

There was a Green Procurement Plan in place since a decade but as has now become self-evident, this plan is in urgent need of an upgrade and perhaps with a Green Party participating in Government now (and with all kinds of deadlines approaching), the focus on achieving carbon-neutral goals will be sharper.

The consultation process has filtered out to the local authorities, with plenty of participation coming back in spades. However, one criticism being levelled at the plan is that it doesn’t address a fundamental question: while pushing for new buildings is all well and good, what precisely is the environmental cost of demolition?

This question is being addressed by our neighbours in the UK, where there is now a process of assessment before you go knocking down an old building and putting up a more carbon-neutral one. The “Twentieth Century Society” are halting demolitions on the grounds of non-justification of the proposed demolition from a carbon-sustainable point of view.

Here in Ireland, developers have been knocking down perfectly good buildings in the name of carbon-neutral progress but nobody seems to be measuring the impact of such actions. Some examples of hastily-demolished buildings in the Dublin area alone include the Herbert Simms lifeguard shelter that was demolished on Bull Island. 

Currently, there’s a campaign being led by Frank McDonald to prevent the proposed demolition of the Stephen Court building on Merrion Square — one that many would say is a perfectly good building and which is to be demolished.

“What’s lacking is an analysis of where the materials are coming from to create the new building and where the waste materials are going,” says Emma Gilleece, architectural historian and writer. “Only that way can we assess the real carbon cost… I think that retrofitting will become extremely important in the near future but in the current Climate Action Plan, there’s nothing about halting demolition.” 

Amongst the growing number of people who are concerned about the rush to demolish before considering retrofitting, there is also the feeling that much of rushing is geared towards trying to make our building more appealing to foreign investors; particularly the large American tech companies.

The drive for new buildings should continue but one shouldn’t rush into providing what Corporate America want without first taking a hard look at the precise cost of demolition. So while new building is going to play its part in getting our buildings ready for 2030, retrofitting, it seems, is due to become an increasingly important part of the picture in the coming years.