How Decarbonisation Can Help Estates Meet Sustainability Goals

Decarbonisation has a huge role to play when meeting the UK’s ambitious carbon targets – but does public sector support go far enough? Associate Hannah Kissick thinks more funding is needed to help estates move away from fossil fuels.

The year is 2050. The UK has succeeded in its mission to build back greener and decarbonise all sectors of the economy. Schools, hospitals and businesses have all transitioned to clean energy sources and have reduced operational demand to manageable levels. The UK is net zero carbon. This is the vision of the UK government and the devolved administrations, which the construction industry has an essential role in making reality.

With 25% of carbon emissions produced by the built environment, the property and construction industry can affect real change on the road to net zero. As a result, both the public and private sectors have the responsibility to match their development programmes with their sustainability efforts.

This is where decarbonisation will make a difference. By ensuring individual development plans tie in with forward-thinking shared energy plans, we can limit unexpected expenditure and achieve multiple aims. So, how is this ideal scenario progressing within the public sector?

Funding decarbonisation in the public sector

Putting its money where its mouth is, the UK government and its non-departmental public body Salix Finance are supporting organisations by providing a number of funding schemes dedicated to enabling the public sector to reduce their carbon emissions.

The Low Carbon Skills Fund provides grants to help public bodies produce a heat decarbonisation plan (HDP) alongside specialist consultants in the first instance. This involves carrying out an analysis of the public bodies' building or estate and developing a strategy to move the site away from a natural gas or oil-fired heating strategy towards a lower CO2 emitting alternative.

Once this plan is in place, the next step is the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) that provides grants to implement heat decarbonisation and energy efficiency measures. This source of funding is not only available to those with a HDP already in place but also those that have independently completed the required calculations, measuring potential costs and predicted CO2 savings.

Phase one of the PSDS provided £1 billion in grants over the financial years 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, and phase two provided £75 million of grant funding for the financial year 2021-2022 with a stronger focus on heat decarbonisation. Phase three is set to provide £1.425 billion of grant funding over the financial years 2022-2023 to 2024-2025 following the closure of the application period in October 2022.

Naturally, the public bodies competing for these grants require support from experts in the field. We have supported many NHS and education sector clients with more than 15 applications across both funding streams, developing successful HDPs and design strategies.

The PSDS supports the aim of reducing emissions from public sector buildings by 75% by 2037, an objective that can be tackled in various ways.

Implementing a fabric first approach

One way, and our preferred way, is a fabric first approach. Incorporating the learnings from our Passivhaus expertise, we aim to reduce the energy demand first and then find a suitable solution to make the remaining demand low or zero carbon.

Utilising thermal imaging and heat flux monitors, it is possible to assess the thermal performance of buildings, which is particularly helpful when dealing with older buildings where construction documentation can be hard to come by. These technologies allow us to see where heat is escaping, how it’s travelling within a building and how well a room holds its temperature.

Our surveys often show general inefficiencies in existing systems or building elements that are not fitted or working properly – changing these can usually provide energy reductions without any significant capital expenditure. This can be as simple as changing control strategies or upgrading draughty windows and doors. Cold bridges can account for up to 30% of a building’s heat loss and are impossible to see with the naked eye, so thermographic surveys helping to identify why a building may have an unexpectedly high heat load are essential for finding these heat-saving wins.

We use innovative modelling techniques to show the current energy usage and emissions in comparison to proposed interventions. These low or no carbon energy sources may include air or ground source heat pumps or renewable energy such as solar panels.

Heat pumps are often seen as the first answer to a low carbon heating solution, but this is not always the case. While heat pumps can be three times more efficient than gas options, electricity is currently almost four times more expensive. Therefore, moving straight to an electric solution could be more expensive for the end user and a difficult transition during an energy crisis. For this reason, reducing demand is a key priority.

We work closely with our clients to provide a range of options to improve the energy efficiency of their building fabric before recommending low or zero carbon heat sources, ensuring all plans are suited to their wider net zero strategies. These strategies are forward thinking, meaning our solutions must be too. Futureproofing is always considered, leaving space for adjustments should advances in technology make sources such as hydrogen a more attractive option.

The close collaboration doesn’t stop with clients either. Working with manufacturers, we are able to make sure that all data we provide in our modelling is accurate in order to provide reliable estimates to our clients and prevent unwanted surprises.

Lean, clean and green estates

Like many others in the higher education sector, the University of Reading has committed to becoming net zero by 2030. To support this journey, the university made a successful application for Salix Phase 2 funding from the Low Carbon Skills Fund. We were brought in to develop a decarbonisation plan focusing on the Earley Gate buildings, constructed between the 1950s and the early 2000s and located at the university’s Whiteknights campus.

Our goal was to provide the client with all the information necessary to make confident, informed decisions that align with the wider decarbonisation vision. This was made easier by communicating how any interventions will perform long-term and achieved by providing life cycle projections of the proposed systems’ operational and maintenance costs, as well as sensitivity to escalating energy prices.

Funding the future

With the range of technology now available to expose inefficiencies, a fabric first approach has true merit. Government funding is a great start to ensuring organisations are on board and able to meet their own sustainability targets. However, in our experience, that funding is often not even enough to cover the fabric improvements we recommend, let alone the full decarbonisation of an estate.

Capital costs are restricting public sector organisations from pushing forward with decarbonisation efforts. Can we truly expect the private sector to follow suit without the incentive of government funding?

Progress is progress and should not be shunned. But more needs to be done to ensure we are able to meet the UK’s net zero carbon targets. It is imperative that we make these changes now before the climate crisis worsens.

To learn more about what we are doing for public sector clients on a journey to a net zero carbon estate or to find out how we can help you with a project, get in touch.