Government urged to back green office makeovers

The government is being urged to extend its green initiative to non-domestic buildings

The government is today facing calls to extend its plans for a nationwide green home makeover programme designed to enhance the energy efficiency of the nation's domestic buildings to cover non-domestic buildings such as commercial properties, schools and hospitals.

Earlier this month, the government unveiled ambitious plans to provide every home in the UK with a green makeover as part of a strategy to cut emissions from the housing stock to almost zero by 2050.

Speaking at the launch of the initiative, climate change and energy secretary Ed Miliband said that the government would consult on extending the proposed green loans scheme for homeowners to small businesses. However, critics from the building industry said that overall the proposals offered little support for businesses seeking to cut emissions from across their building stock.

"There are parts of the energy saving consultation that cover non-domestic buildings, but they are not very substantial," said John Alker of the UK Green Building Council. "Many non-domestic buildings will be covered by the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) but in terms of new policies there is not much on the table at the moment."

According to new research released today by Kingspan Group, a provider of sustainable construction products, an energy efficiency programme to refurbish non-domestic buildings could create 50,000 long term jobs while saving UK plc £700m in lower energy bills.

The study, which was undertaken by consultancy Caleb Management Services, calculates that with £27bn already spent each year on refurbishing existing buildings investing an extra $1.9bn to ensure all these projects enhance the buildings energy efficiency could deliver carbon savings equivalent to taking five million cars off the road.

Mark Harris, divisional building technology director at Kingspan Insulated Panels, said that the most effective means of enabling this investment would be for the government to extend plans for green loans for homeowners to cover non-domestic buildings.

"Domestic buildings create more emissions so there is a case for saying they should be addressed first, but non-domestic buildings should not be too far behind," he said. "We need the government to provide finance in some way so that firms can pay back green building loans out of the energy bill savings."

The report also called on the government to impose standards that would require all non-domestic buildings to achieve a minimum level C Energy Performance Certificate rating by 2022.

A representative for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said that the owners of many non-domestic buildings would be incentivised to enhance their energy efficiency once their organisation is included in the CRC cap-and-trade scheme from next year.

He added that the government also had in place a target to ensure all new non-domestic buildings meet zero carbon standards by 2019 and that individual departments such as the Department for Health had wide ranging programmes in place to improve the efficiency of their buildings.

In related news, steel giant Corus and the British Constructional Steelwork Association (BCSA) today announced the launch of a new initiative designed to support the government's zero carbon building targets.

To mark the launch of the new Target Zero initiative the BCSA unveiled a new study outlining how new zero carbon school designs could cut carbon emissions by 10m tonnes a year.

The association said that it would follow the schools report with similar studies for warehouses, offices, supermarkets and mixed use buildings, which will set out fully-costed designs that demonstrate how to achieve the three highest BREEAM ratings and meet tighter building regulations.