The 43 organisations and companies, whose combined influence on building projects and developments is hugely significant, joined a squad headed by the Sustainable Development Commission, the Design Commission for Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government.

The home of Welsh Rugby provided the backdrop for the “coalition of the willing”, as they added their names to the landmark initiative. Members of the coalition include the Federation of Master Builders, the National House-Building Council, the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment and CBI Wales.

The initiative was launched at the Built Environment and Climate Change Summit at the Wales Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, by Environment, Sustainability and Housing Minister Jane Davidson and Jonathon Porritt, Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission.

The coalition will play a major role in the development of low/zero carbon buildings ahead of the UK Government’s target of achieving zero carbon new homes by 2016 and achieve a major step change in Wales by 2011. It will also work towards significantly increasing the energy efficiency of the existing building stock in Wales, contributing towards the Wales target of 3% annual reductions in emission reductions from 2011 onwards.

Reductions of 3% each year would enable Wales to achieve an 80% reduction before 2050. One method of reducing Wales’ carbon footprint is via improving the energy efficiency of buildings, as the direct and indirect consumption of energy from buildings generates approximately 40% of all carbon emissions in the UK.

The Assembly Government have stated the aspiration that all new buildings built from 2011 must be zero carbon in relation to space heating, hot water and lighting. By implementing the Code for Sustainable Homes and BREEAM it will help the industry take a stepped approach towards the target of zero carbon.

All new housing that has Assembly Government funding or is built on Welsh Assembly owned land must meet The Code for Sustainable Homes Level 3 (moving to Code level 4 as soon as practically possible) and all non domestic buildings must meet the BREEAM excellent standard.

The SDC and DCfW were asked by Jane Davidson AM, to create a “coalition of the willing” of key stakeholders from the private, public and voluntary sectors that will commit to taking a “can do” approach to tacking climate change through the built environment.

Ms Davidson said:
Today is another Wales first in the battle against climate change demonstrating our ‘can do’ attitude. We all believe early action is needed, and the charter confirms Wales’ commitment to do all we can to tackle climate change and reduce our carbon footprint.
The built environment is the largest contributor to greenhouse gases in Wales. The way in which we construct and use our homes and other buildings accounts for 40% of our total carbon emissions. It is vital that all our new buildings are energy efficient and as green as possible.
This charter is a demonstration of the coalition of the willing, of how diverse groups from all over Wales are ready to use their voice and powers to help Wales reduce its carbon footprint.
Jonathon Porritt, Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, said:
It is very heartening to see that Wales has the foresight and ambition to accelerate progress towards a sustainable built environment. I hope that the collaborative, coordinated approach demonstrated today will enable it to make swift progress and be an exemplar for the rest of the UK.

Defra Headquarters, Lion House, Alnwick

This BREEAM excellent building achieved a score of 80.72% in its Design & Procurement Assessment.

Interesting features of this building are:

• Biomass boilers provide 90% of the heat demand
• Photovoltaic collectors double as solar shading
• Exposed thermal mass enables night time cooling
• Winter solar gains maximised
• Good natural daylighting
• Natural ventilation with some mechanical displacement ventilation when needed
• In the Energy Section – ‘all the credits for energy performance beyond the current building regulations were achieved’. This means that the building had greater than 70% improvement in CO2 emissions than a standard Building Regulations compliant building!
• This was all achieved despite the site being rural with not very good transport links

The success of this building is attributed to the fact that detailed thermal modelling was carried out at an early stage to look at the different design options.

From 01 May 2008 a minimum of Code level 3 is required for all new housing promoted or supported by the Welsh Assembly Government or AGSB’s, whether directly procured, the subject of financial support, joint ventures, or projects on land sold, leased or disposed of in any other way for development. It also applies to all new housing on land improved or reclaimed with Assembly Government or AGSB funding that is still subject to financial clawback.

Registered social landlords are also being invited to identify schemes, within their work programmes, which can be part of a pilot that aims to develop projects to meet the requirements of higher Code levels, namely Code levels 4 and 5. This will also apply to other housing developments promoted or supported by the Welsh Assembly Government.

This further announcement is in support of the Assembly Government’s zero carbon aspirations. BREEAM excellent or equivalent is still a requirement for non residential developments promoted or supported by the Welsh Assembly Government.

This building in Ulm, Germany has been built using ‘passivhaus’ principles. It has a gross floor area of 8,000m² and 5 storeys. It is a reinforced concrete structure with prefabricated wooden façade. The highly insulated structure has the following insulation thicknesses – 200mm in the foundations, 350mm in the walls, and 500mm in the roof. The triple glazing is thermally insulated as are the frames. The building has 44% glazing, which aims to optimise the daylighting while controlling solar overheating.

The building is heated and cooled by means of 40 borehole heat exchangers which transfer heat or cooling to a large area of plastic tubing under the concrete floors. Heating is also provided by recovering the heat from exhaust air from the building.
Windows are openable. Humidity is regulated to at least 30%.

The final energy consumption for heating, ventilation, cooling and lighting was measured to be 47.2 kWh/m²/a in 2005.

This building has been featured for several reasons:
• It works on the principle of starting with a good basic building that requires little heating or cooling. It then adds the required technologies to create a healthy comfortable internal environment. What so often happens is that we start with the technologies and give little attention to getting a highly insulated airtight structure.

• Passivhaus principles have been used widely in Germany and Austria on domestic properties but large passivhaus office buildings are only just beginning to be developed.