Birmingham: taking a city-wide view
UK Green Building Council chief executive says devolution could be driver behind future green initiative.
The chief executive of the UK Green Building Council, the sustainability organisation for the industry’s supply chain and clients, believes that city-led retrofit and energy initiatives could be one of the defining features of the built environment green agenda in the coming years.
Julie Hirigoyen was speaking to Construction Manager ahead of the organisation’s Birmingham Summit on 23-24 February, when 100 public and private sector decision makers from the city and other parts of the country will debate the future of sustainable cities.
Julie Hirigoyen: “Gearing up”
The summit follows a similar event in Manchester last year, and Hirigoyen says that it marks a shift towards seeing cities – rather than regions, or nations – as the organising principle on retrofit, renewable energy and “smart cities”.
It also follows the devolution of powers away from Westminster to “city regions”. Six devolution deals are already in place in England, including one for Birmingham and the west midlands agreed last November.
“We’re gearing up our activities with cities in line with the devolution agenda. This scale provides a better lens to think about sustainability. It’s difficult to achieve a really sustainable outcome when you’re working on one building plot, you need a system-level approach,” Hirigoyen said.
However, she emphasised that city-level initiatives would complement, rather than replace, national policy, such as the outcome of the forthcoming Bonfield Review. “The retrofit agenda needs to be addressed through both national policy and city-wide schemes. But city level authorities and the scale of the city certainly offers an opportunity to think about the housing retrofit challenge,” she said.
The possible new emphasis in the sustainability agenda follows the failure of the Green Deal, the key policy initiative designed to cut emissions from the UK’s domestic building stock, and the scaling back of incentives on renewable energy.
But the COP 21 Paris Agreement renewed the focus on the built environment, with the UK-GBC, the World Green Building Council, the RICS and others launching a Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction, with a shared mission to build greater climate resilience into cities and infrastructure. The alliance was initiated by the French government and the UN’s Environment Programme.
"It’s difficult to achieve a really sustainable outcome when you’re working on one building plot, you need a system-level approach."
Julie Hirigoyen, UK GBC
At COP 21, the UK-GBC also launched its own commitments to reduce its operational emissions and to “upskill the industry and support and challenge our members”. And 60 member companies made carbon-cutting commitments on the UK-GBC “pledge wall”, including The Crown Estate, Marks & Spencer, British Land, Lendlease, Land Securities, Derwent and Argent.
Hirigoyen said: “We will be certainly trying to track members’ progress against the pledges. Organisations tend to measure things slightly differently, but regardless of what they measure, we’ll be looking at the trends over time.”
A member of the Green Construction Board, Hirigoyen said that its various working groups are currently drafting detailed action plans. “We’re very keen to inject more action and have a more outcome-oriented group. And BIM clearly has the potential to make that carbon information more accessible,” she said.
Within the UKGBC, other initiatives include a task group looking at bridging the “performance gap”, and there is a continuing focus on promoting health and well-being, including setting up a Healthy Homes Task Group. A report on the retail sector is due to be published in early February.
