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“In Switzerland, everything is either illegal or compulsory,” joked our friend as he welcomed us to his home near Basel last week, and to illustrate the point he cited laws forbidding the flushing of toilets after 10pm and the use of lawnmowers on Sundays (seriously). Later he showed us his basement bomb shelter, with its 20cm thick concrete door and massive air filters. Amazingly, a generation after the end of the Cold War, Swiss law still requires every citizen to have quick access to a nuclear bunker. The UK Building Regulations may have some quirky features, I reflected, but nothing to compete with this.

Idiosyncrasies aside, recent revisions to the Building Regulations and the introduction of EPCs have had a profound influence on the building design process – and this is only the start. In October next year a new revision of the UK Regs will come into force targeting a 25% reduction in carbon emissions for new buildings compared to the 2006 level, to be followed (according to the draft plan) with successive further constraints at three-year intervals aimed at achieving zero carbon new buildings by 2019. The drive is set to continue thereafter with a target of an 80% reduction in total building stock carbon emissions by 2050.

In the US the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES, also known as Waxman-Markey) is working its way through Congress with the likelihood of Senate approval, after inevitable amendments, in the autumn. This would bring in a package of climate change busting measures including a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases and a radical tightening of building energy codes. The targeted improvements for buildings parallel the UK’s ambitions: a 30% energy reduction relative to baseline in 2010 and a progressive programme of further improvements up to 2030. The administration’s target for 2050 (with ACES and other measures) is an 83% reduction of building stock CO2 emissions.

If I emigrate to Switzerland I might just live to see those targets achieved. The country boasts the highest percentage of centenarians in Europe.

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Tags:CO2, EPCs, waxman-markey

I just read this great perspective on the bill from Matt Macko on CleanTechies.  Working at IES, which is solely focused on enabling low-energy building design and has a presence on both sides of the pond, I’ve seen the rise of the importance of carbon reduction first here in Europe and now in the US. Public opinion here is still divided, but the tide is definitely turning…

Matt comments on how US public opinion to the bill has been quite negative…

“The public response to this bill has not been good. Googling the bill generated several articles: almost all were in opposition. Sadly, people tote it as another method Obama has found to increase taxes. They claim it is an unnecessary step to solve a group of alarmists’ wild and false theory, Global Warming. Without arguing the validity of Global Warming, one friend put it to me this way: “If the believers are wrong and Global Warming is not true then we have implemented changes that will improve our environment and the Earth, if the naysayers are wrong and Global Warming does exist and we do nothing, our cities are underwater.”

There are however many (like Matt) in the US completely behind this bill and 100% committed to sustainable building design, not least Ed Mazria of Architecture 2030 - you should definitely read his take on the bill at http://www.architecture2030.org/news/news_072209.html

Or Jerry Yudelson, a US green building consultant, who released today a video looking at the differences of energy consumption between Europe and the US http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF4lZsx9Ifs. With advocates like this pushing alongside the bill you have to hope that general US public opinion will start to sway towards the positive sometime soon…

Even from a purely commercial perspective, the fact that there is now a market in the US for our building energy analysis software is pretty telling.  It’s been used here in the UK by the top building design firms for over 10 years now.  In the last 3, we’ve been able to open offices in both Boston and San Francisco, with all the major A&E firms engaging with us!

Bring on the change!

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Tags:Architecture 2030, carbon reduction, climate bill, climate change, Ed Mazria, Environment, Green Building, Sustainability, US vs. UK, waxman-markey, zero-carbon building