Contents
Introduction
Fuel Poverty
Sustainability and Global Warming Requirements
UK Climate Change Act (2008) Key Provisions
Energy Act 2011
The Reasons Behind Britain’s Inefficient Homes
The Green Deal Process
Section 2- Upgrading to an E rating Introduction
This report is an analysis of the energy inefficiency of a brick three storey terraced town house built around 1880 circa, and how the dwellings can be made efficient to meet required targets of 114MtCO2 by 2020 and also to comply with the Energy Act 2011 for the private rented sector
The UK has some of the oldest building stock in Europe. Therefore the buildings are poorly insulated which results in the heat leaking out and letting draught in. These buildings are accountable
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Figure 1 (Department of Energy & Climate Change, 2014)
Sustainability and Global Warming Requirements
The inefficient homes in the UK have catastrophic effects on global warming. The UK needs to become more energy efficient as at the moment it emits a large amount of greenhouse gases which risk dangerous climate change. The retrofitting of the brick three storey terraced town house is necessary in order to comply with the legislations set out by parliament in the UK Climate Change Act (2008) or if the house falls under the private rented sector it must comply with the Energy Act 2011.
UK Climate Change Act (2008)
This legislation an act of parliament came into act in 2008. The legislation creates a legally binding commitment to reduce the UK’s green house gas emissions drastically by 80% by 2050, and by 34% by 2020. These reductions are contrary to the 1990 emissions. Currently less than 200,000 properties are built every year. In order to rebuild the inefficient homes it would take approximately 120 years, which is not viable in order to reduce carbon emissions by 2050. Therefore the existing stock would need to be retrofitted to improve its energy
As stated by Turkington and Watson (2015), in 2000, the Labour Government introduced the Decent Homes Programme, which aimed to provide a minimum standard of housing conditions to houses in the public and private sector. The scheme was deemed as a success by a committee and was commended for providing a positive effect on the living conditions of the vast majority of social housing tenants. However Turkington and Watson also argued that although nearly three quarters of homes had met the minimum standards, over a quarter – roughly 6 million homes - had failed to meet them.
Being environmentally friendly isn’t merely a trend. After thousands of years of using the earth’s resources, we have finally come to realize that we are destroying this beautiful gift we were honored with. Architects play an influential role in trying to preserve this gift by encouraging a multitude of strategies that can be more cost efficient in the long run, be more comfortable for its users, and most importantly, have a lower carbon footprint. Strategies can include drastic changes to heat and air systems, construction material selections, or even specific design details to the architecture of a building that would reduce the amount of energy it consumes.
The main aim of factor 4 is to decrease the level of materials utilization and usage of human resources to one fourth level. The Factor 4 follows a set of guidelines for comparing design options and for evaluating the performance of buildings and their component systems. Factor 4 suggests that for humanity to live sustainably today, we must rapidly reduce resource consumption to one-quarter of its current levels. Fortunately, the technology to accomplish Factor 4 reductions in resource consumption already exists and requires only public policy prioritization and implementation.
In 1979 under Thatcher 's reign, the conservative government published its housing bill promising with it the Right to buy. A popular demand at the time as people living in social houses aspired to finally own their home. At the time a blessing, however 30 years later we find that the bill promised the current generation housing at a discounted price. however, only at the expense of the next. The bill forbade local authorities from replacing the council houses sold in the right to buy system. Due to the nature of the right to buy properties, the houses sold were not empty nor was it available, many of the properties were already inhabited. Over the course of 30 years, over 2 million social houses were sold; as a result, there was a large demand for social housing which the local authorities could not meet. Subsequently due to heavily discounted prices of the houses, used to ensure that those vulnerable families are able to become home owners; not enough income was being generated in order to build a replacement home. Since local authorities could not replace them themselves, social landlords struggled to build enough to replace those sold through the right to buy. The bill also opened made way for private companies to abuse the bill and make profit out of properties previously owned by the local authority.
However, the Action Plan is not likely to produce 9.8 Mt in new reductions by 2020, as the government stated. For example, the government claimed that using Greenhouse Gas Reduction Account funds to subsidize electricity prices which would produce 3 Mt in emission reductions. We found no evidence to support this claim and concluded that subsidizing electricity rates is not an acceptable use of these funds. Fortunately, the government is no longer proposing to divert Greenhouse Gas Reduction Account funds in this way.
The ‘Valley House’ (figures 1.1 - 1.3, page 3) exemplifies energy efficiency in both its locality and materials used. It has been strategically positioned within the existing topography on a north facing aspect to take advantage of the sunlight consistently throughout the day, minimising the need for daytime lighting, thus saving electricity. The main power
How did changing energy conditions affect the design of the homes of powerful people – comparison between the Forbidden City and 19th century merchants’ houses in Liverpool
To address this growing concern, people are now thinking of some innovative ways to address the space constraints. Most of the houses that you find in London or most of the house
Based on studies, the sustainability of using green roofs rely on the fact that they involve a reduction in heating and cooling loads. Especially for houses that have air conditioners, green roofs help in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are usually associated with air conditioning. Because of the normal warm weather in Melbourne, homeowners have air conditioners as their key sources of energy consumption. Same goes for the commercial sector. And because much of this energy is supplied through electricity, homes and commercial spaces serve as major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. It is because of this knowledge that homeowners nowadays have begun exploring other technologies that offer ways to reduce HVAC loads in their homes. One of the best options is the use of green
In Table Two it is shown that there is an even amount of positives and negatives to Green House Emissions. Some of the positives are improvement in fuel quality and reduction in the age of vehicles, and some of the negatives are greater volume of vehicles and greater traffic flows and congestion. The Victorian Government says ‘In Australia in 2002, cars contribution 43 million tonnes of carbon dioxide or equivalent greenhouse gases, which is 8% of total national emissions. Trucks and light commercial vehicles contribution 24 million tonnes. Together these represent 13% of Australia’s total emissions and since 1990 this figure has increased by 27%.’ (Victorian Government, 2010).
Energy efficiency and renewable energy sources are some of the important features that must be integrated to existing and future buildings in order to reduce their energy consumption and emissions footprint. Energy efficient advances in lighting, Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Systems (HVAC) constitutes some of the opportunities for improvement. Australia owns an important access to renewable energy sources through the entire extension of the country. Solar power and water heating, wind power and geothermal power are some of the technologies been implemented to reduce energy consumption and decouple from conventional sources.
In 2008 the UK government instigated the Climate Change Act 2008, the purpose of which is to create a framework to reduce carbon emissions as per the Kyoto Protocol. The key provisions of the Climate Change Act 2008 were the reductions of GHG by 80% by 2050 and of CO2 emissions by 26% by 2020 compared to the baseline in 1990.
Energy principles were a relatively new idea in the 1970s where Herzog implemented the use of the triangular shape of the house that is designed to collect free solar energy, which is later used to heat the house. Herzog used ‘environmental responsive architecture’ to integrate energy saving features into the home. Also many architects would argue that the principles of creating a house like this uses the principles of a ‘Lean 2 shed’, where it creates D.I.Y aesthetics.
According to the Bid Manger, at the outset consortium members reviewed the “Local Authority Requirement" and decided on the strategies to meet them. For sustainability, the decision was to achieve BREEAM “Excellent” on the new-built projects, and “Very good” on the refurbishment. The consortium also decided to exceed the authority’s planning requirements of 10% renewable energy generation. Two biomass boilers were installed on the two new-built PFI projects which provided around 98% of their heating requirement. The team was, therefore, able to achieve 24% renewable energy generation across the estate. The team also introduced further improvements to the buildings insulation and achieved
The energy analysis for the Architecture Annex was run with the settings of a 24/7 school or university building. The location was set to Urbana, IL, and the HVAC system was set to the default type. The analysis showed that most energy would be used on fuel,