'Wind, wave - or we'll go nuclear'

SustainableBuilding: Buildings eat up 60 per cent of the country's electricity - that's why we have to build sustainably, the head of building service engineers tells Emma Cullinan

"People are going to have to face up to the fact that either we have to put in wind farms and wave generation, and so on, or we will have no choice but to go down the nuclear route. Sustainable measures might seem optional at the moment but it won't be optional for long," says Kevin Kelly, head of learning development at DIT in Bolton Street and chairman of the CIBSE (The Chartered Institution of Building Service Engineers) in Ireland, which has just held its first major conference on sustainable design.

The conference was organised to raise awareness of sustainability in the design and construction of buildings and look at changes happening legislatively and in working practice.

While some services engineers in Ireland, such as Buro Happold, Homan O'Brien, Davis Associates and Arup, are already experts in sustainable solutions for buildings, they can only offer the service if the client wants it and many buildings are still being designed and constructed that guzzle gas and oil.

While we're all aware that these will eventually run out and that they are currently polluting the world, Ireland doesn't seem in any great rush to come up with alternatives. We emit twice the number of greenhouse gasses that Sweden does, said Xavier Dubuisson of Sustainable Energy Ireland at the conference.

Ireland's fuel consumption, on a downward trend since signing up to Kyoto, recently went up again, according to the latest figures from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). The fact that when our GDP goes up, so does our energy consumption, says a lot about our attitude to fuel use and standard of living.

Buildings are huge energy users, accounting for 60 per cent of electricty consumption in Ireland, according to SEI, although more and more architects and engineers are incorporating all sorts of sustainable elements in structures such as passive solar design, shading and ground heat pumps.

Examples discussed at the conference included ground energy thermal transfer systems developed by John Burgess of Arup in the Glucksman art gallery in Cork, by architects O'Donnell and Tuomey. The SEI presentation cited Inchydoney Island Lodge and Spa in Cork, which installed solar panels, wood-pellet boilers and a heat-recovery system last November, to heat the hotel and its water supply.

Proprietor Des O'Dowd admits that he needed a lot of reassurance from installation company Renewable Energy Management Systems, of Bandon, Co Cork, that this would work, but he has already seen a substantial reduction in energy bills. As well as saving money he was interested in the sustainable element.

"Tourists come to Ireland for its green and pleasant countryside. A truly green environment is much more appealing to people " Yet many buildings are still using traditional services, such as air conditioning which use huge amounts of energy and aren't even needed. One issue, says Kelly, is that there is little incentive to change. "There are problems with fees," he says, "because the higher the cost of the services, the higher a building services engineer's fee will be. So what is the incentive for them to design out the air conditioning and come up with an innovative design that requires more hours of input and new ways of thinking, when they will get a higher percentage on the costlier, less-efficient air conditioning installation?

"So the fee structure has to change and the whole design team has to come together at a very early stage and negotiate how they're going to design sustainably with a client who is going to think differently. A client who will decide to pay more for the design element to get a better, holistically designed building that uses less energy."

While eco-friendliness has had its hippie image, the issue is fast becoming practical and financial, not least because the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive came into force this January and is now being rolled out. Buildings will be assessed for their energy use, in the same way that electrical appliances already are.

"The directive is coming down the line at a rate of knots and the CIBSE position is that we must be there and have a say in that." Kelly believes that architects and engineers need to come together earlier in the design process to incorporate all of the sustainable elements into the building effectively.

"That is already happening in some of the leading edge companies in this country, so it's not a new idea, but this would be best practice. It is best practice in the UK and other parts of the world and people in Ireland are beginning to identify that this is what we need.

Services engineers need to look at innovative ways of designing and working with the architects. And architects are aware that they need to work with us.

"We require holistic designs that integrate a building's services with the building's fabric. For instance, if you want to reduce lighting costs you can increase daylight penetration into the building but then this brings up the issue of increased solar gain. There are ways around this but these things need to be considered by the engineers and architects at the early design stage.

"Another issue would be a building's orientation. This affects engineers when we calculate our loads and it would be best to get advice before deciding which way to orientate a building or where to put the glass because we can calculate daylight penetration and solar gains at that stage.

Also, you can't suddenly change the aspect of the building, or its height or depth, without it affecting the engineer. That happens sometimes during a build and they say 'Sure it wouldn't affect you guys, you're the engineers', but, sure, it does affect us."

As well as professionals working together, Kelly also wants professional groups to be more coordinated. While each group is addressing sustainability for their own members he says that, collectively, "everyone is a bit disorganised and we need to come together better than we are doing. The professional groups need to say what they're going to do and have a shared conference that allows us to talk to one another."

What has been really heartening is that Kelly, in his role at DIT which provides research opportunities in post-graduate programmes for engineers as well as developing undergraduate modules in sustainable engineering, has found that students are more attracted to services engineering courses that include sustainability options.

It seems that we could be safe in the hands of the next generation.