A better organised future

The UK government has committed to a stretching and legally binding emission reduction target – to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2050. We are also committed to a milestone of 15 percent of renewable energy generation by 2020 (of which 33 percent is anticipated to be from heat and 45 percent from electricity), and to landfill and water use targets. 

A substantial contribution to our emission reductions will be required to be met from the built environment, which is responsible for approximately 40 percent of our overall emissions and also has one of the highest and most cost effective emission reduction potential.  In order meet this challenge, we need to reduce emissions not only from the construction, occupation and operation of buildings themselves, but also all of the infrastructure and spaces between our buildings.

In addition to our carbon reduction targets, we also face challenges of resource efficiency (including better management of our water and waste) which are acute in certain areas and likely to become more so over time, and of designing a built environment which is economically and socially sustainable, and a place where people want to live and work.

Deployment of integrated, cost effective, low carbon community-scale infrastructure (such as community scale heating, water harvesting and telecommunications) can have an important role in meeting the challenges of delivering a sustainable built environment. Compared to many European countries, the UK has seen relatively little in the way of such community schemes. In July 2009, the UK Green Building Council and the Zero Carbon Hub convened a task group to assess the challenges associated with delivering community scale infrastructure and to make recommendations on methods, models, approaches and policy changes to overcome these challenges. 

The group’s findings point clearly towards a future in which community-scale heating, water and waste management all have a key role to play. When infrastructure like this is installed, if it is planned and delivered in an integrated way, it can offer considerable carbon and cost savings and community benefits. This is particularly the case in urban environments, such as city centres and their surroundings, where the mix of commercial, residential, public sector and industrial buildings provides a density and diversity of supply and demand.

Since the publication of the report, we have seen a number of significant developments in government policy which embrace the task group recommendations, and are key to developing the sort of policy framework that can unlock the financial and sustainability potential of that well planned community scale infrastructure can deliver.

Building the evidence base
It almost goes without saying that community infrastructure will not be appropriate for every area, or everyone, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Identifying what is the most sustainable and appropriate local infrastructure package for any given area requires reference to a comprehensive body of relevant evidence. Even in dense urban environments, where the energy demand may be relatively easy to predict, the information necessary to identify opportunities for energy generation, waste/resource use, and water management as a combined package is rarely readily accessible.

A major barrier to the implementation of a coherent and locally relevant programme of community infrastructure is the absence, in most areas, of any consistent approach or methodology aimed at systematically identifying availability, location and type of predicted and potential supply and demand.

The recommendation therefore was for local authorities to develop ‘Sustainability Option Plans’, identifying and publishing  the availability, location and type of predicted and potential supply and existing and planned demand of all relevant resource flows (including water, waste and energy) in the area. A Sustainability Options Plan which shows both local supply and demand would provide the evidence base necessary planning and delivering locally appropriate solutions.

DECC recently published Warm Homes, Greener Homes: A Strategy for Household Energy Management. This strategy contained a number of commitments, including the commitment to commission a “national heat map” by the end of this year. This will be similar to LDA’s London Heat Map, which is an interactive tool that allows users to identify opportunities for decentralised energy projects in London.

The task group recommended that this should form the backbone of sustainable plans, with other elements could then be overlaid on it, including for example, evidence from local water cycle studies.

A range of tools and guidelines, which will support the development of the options plans, have also recently been released, including DECC’s new guidelines to help local authorities calculate the potential their areas have for renewable, and Advantage West Midlands’ location analysis tool, designed to identify sites with potential to host waste technologies as an alternative to landfill.

Financial support
Simply identifying what infrastructure might benefit a community is not alone sufficient. In order for there to be the necessary investment in community infrastructure from the private, and indeed the public sector, the financial model must deliver the required financial returns to its investors. We need, therefore, to overcome the economic barriers to delivery of community infrastructure.

In terms of the finances for community heat networks, there is a need to mitigate the costs (high capital cost and low risk-adjusted rates of return) and enhance or “de-risk” revenue concerns, such as uncertainty of a customer base, insufficient anchor loads and public and stakeholder perception.  

With respect to revenue and risk concerns, a key recommendation of the task group was that public sector buildings should be required, where available and viable, to connect to existing or planned community heat networks, to provide an ‘anchor load’ of demand, and large businesses should be encouraged to do the same, a principle which is similar to securing anchor tenants for a building. In addition to the volume of the heat demand provided by public sector buildings, which gives revenue security, the demand profile (such as the time of day heat is required) is different from residential and commercial buildings which have a material impact on the community-wide efficiency of the network.

It is pleasing to see that since the task group report was published, we have seen DECC in Warm Homes, Greener Homes, make a commitment to consider this issue, and CLG address it in the proposed new Sustainable Development PPS (which combines PPS 1 and 22) which is currently out for consultation.

With regard to capital concerns, it is recognised that the current deliberations in respect of the definition of “zero carbon” for domestic and non-domestic buildings (and in particular the finalisation of the list of allowable solutions) represent a significant opportunity to use the construction of new buildings as a catalyst for improving the overall sustainability of the community. Specifically, the ‘allowable solutions’ mechanism should be used as a way of providing additional ring fenced capital to support the delivery of heat infrastructure.

What is evident through the studies discussions is that taking a holistic and integrated approach to the way in which we design and deploy our infrastructure is essential if we are to create a low-carbon, and resource efficient, built environment. Local partnerships, whether they be a public-private or entirely private sector, will be essential in delivering appropriate, high quality, integrated low carbon sustainable services.

Delivering integrated infrastructure will remain complex, but the emerging policy landscape offers significant opportunities to businesses which recognise the financial and sustainability benefits of investing in the creation of sustainable communities.