ZEDlife

Bill Dunster

• Publisher: RIBA Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000701289
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

The argument for low-cost, zero-energy, zero-waste architecture has never been timelier, while the mainstream has largely abandoned or neglected this agenda: in the UK the recent mandatory zero-carbon performance targets for new homes have been postponed or forgotten at a time when thousands of new homes will be built, and there is already a shortage of electric generating capacity. This book offers a forceful challenge to the current addiction to overconsumption of natural capital and energy, and provides workable, sustainable solutions for zero-carbon, zero-waste design.

Part I
Introduction

I.1 How to achieve a step change reduction in carbon footprint at the same time as achieving an overall increase in quality of life.

We use the word ZEDlife to describe how everyone could live in a way that will make things better if they knew how. The primary aim is to make fossil fuels, incineration and nuclear power things of the past. This is so much easier than people realise.

We have taken care to ensure that what we are suggesting here can be adopted without making drastic changes to current buildings and infrastructure. By keeping it simple, the transition to a resource-efficient society powered by renewable energy systems can move forwards gradually over the next three decades.

No doubt the solutions of today will be pushed aside by better ones in the future, but this book offers the best we can do for now – technology that sadly doesn’t get discussed in the media. Once it is known about, the public can demand it and put pressure on politicians to play their part.

Whoever can do this first – companies or whole countries – will have the commercial advantage as they attract international investment and achieve economies of scale fastest, while reducing the money spent competing and cleaning up after fossil fuels. Think of Silicon Valley in the 1990s, but triggered in this case by national governments setting environmental performance standards that in turn set the rules for global industrial supply chains.

A painful failure in this regard occurred in March 2015 when the UK government, under pressure from volume housebuilders, decided to scrap the implementation of Code 6 of the Code for Sustainable Homes. Seven years of preparation by the house-building industry, under the expert guidance of the highly respected Building Research Establishment (BRE), was meant to lead up to compulsory adoption in 2016. This wasn’t just the imposition of ‘green crap’ as the prime minister of the time chose to call it,¹ but a major opportunity for British manufacturing and services to compete internationally. Instead, the cancellation virtually handed the advantage to the European ‘Passivhaus’ supply chain. When (we hope, rather than ‘if’) this political decision is eventually reversed by a future administration, the UK will find its industry only fit for delivering the minimum legal standards required by the building regulations. We shall have lost the business advantage together with the benefits of lower energy bills for consumers and the stock of higher-value homes that could have accrued in the meantime.

Not surprisingly, the countries that set the highest environmental performance standards develop the international supply chains that win the most business. If our governments neglect to look after our interests in this way, we must do the best we can without their help. We called our office ZEDfactory to reflect the need for planning and collaboration with fabricators and industrialists. The ‘ZED’ stands for Zero [Fossil] Energy Development. Bringing together architects and engineers with industrial production is the only way to create the tools that will realise a workable low-carbon society. This way, architecture can play a role that is more valuable to society than its normally limited scope of giving cosmetic treatment to buildings whose design is really determined by market forces working with minimum environmental standards.

Humans are the only species that has tried to self-consciously plan its survival on earth. This attempt defines civilisation, so let’s not lose sight of it now. The ability to observe what is happening to the environment, to understand the reasons for change and then to anticipate future change is unique to our species. Right now, the risks are higher than they have ever been. Fuel costs will rise over the long term, accelerating climate change and conflict over dwindling resources. The actions of governments, slowed by their own internal conflicts, cannot be expected to rise to the challenges of change (fig. I.1).

The good news is that we have reached the point where we can understand building physics and associated technology well enough to empower individuals to solve their own infrastructure requirements without asking for permission or assistance from a central authority.

The decentralisation of information technology, local transport, energy and infrastructure is similar to the displacement of landlines by mobile phones – all that was required was a piece of kit we didn’t have before. This DIY future is well underway and it is time to assemble the tools and make them available to as many people as possible.

Chapter One
A Beginner’s Guide to ZEDlife

1.1 Mature skygardens at BedZED, reaching the residential density of Soho.

The ZEDlife – a philosophy for the construction industry?

Humans are the first species that have tried to self-consciously plan their survival, but our ability to do so has fluctuated throughout time. Recently it has become clear that not enough people understand the problem, let alone the solution. We have formulated ZEDlife as a relatively simple plan for creating stability in society by ceasing to deplete the natural capital of the earth on which we live.

The need for such a scheme ought to be beyond question. Survival is far from assured, and in the face of such dangers there is no place for schemes that are too complex, or liable to fail. We need a plan robust enough to survive a wide variety of unexpected events. Solutions to the impending crisis have been held back by disagreement over details and the conflicts of political groups and their supporters. This is why attempts to achieve solutions by political means are too slow to keep pace with rising fuel costs, accelerating climate change and conflict over dwindling resources.

What is natural capital? It means resources such as fresh water, fertile soil and predictable climate events. As climate change accelerates, these resources are depleted and ‘business as usual’ becomes untenable, so our ingenuity will be tested. The ZEDlife strategy will undoubtedly change in response to new threats and our ever greater understanding of how best to adapt to them. The following 12 priorities are fundamental to our collective survival:

1: Stop Runaway Climate Change

Climate change is not desirable and there is an international consensus for reducing human generated atmospheric greenhouse gases. The targets defined by COP21, the conference held in Paris in 2015, must be delivered well before the planned deadlines to maximise our chances of staying within relatively benign levels of global temperature rise.

2: Leave All Fossil Fuels in the Ground

All fossil fuels should be left in the ground. Extracting them from the ground means they will be burnt by someone somewhere on the planet, no matter what international treaties have been signed. If the developed world increases energy efficiency, paradoxically this makes the problem worse, as the oil producers are likely to cut their prices and entice developing countries to abandon their drives for efficiency and consume more oil and gas instead. The outcome is at best neutral, and this in itself is a further step towards disaster (fig. 1.2, overleaf).

1.2 Fossil fuels equals conflict.

1.3 It is important not to forget Chernobyl and Fukushima.

1.4 The capital cost of nuclear power could make it poor value for money and the high embodied CO₂ of construction and legacy suggest that a whole-life carbon footprint analysis may reveal that the electricity produced is far from carbon neutral.

3: Replace Fossil Fuels with Progressively Viable Alternatives

We must replace fossil fuels with renewable energy alternatives, and nuclear fuels are not among them. Nuclear materials can poison food and water supplies, and no one can confidently predict the indefinite continuation of high levels of monitoring and the absence of natural or man-made disasters at nuclear sites. Thirty years after the nuclear pollution from Chernobyl spread to the British Isles, Welsh lamb can still show high levels of radiation, while the only nuclear storage we have at Sellafield still discharges into local air, sea and land even though it is not supposed to. There is no independent evidence that nuclear is a valid low-carbon energy source – or that it can be responsibly managed for millennia. There are renewable alternatives that carry virtually no risks, so we should not be considering further dangers from this outdated fossil fuel technology (figs 1.3–1.5).

1.5 The decommissioning and radioactive legacy containment costs of the UK’s existing nuclear power programme are similar to the reported costs of the UK?s two Gulf wars. Redeploying the same funds into energy efficiency and renewable energy could have avoided both.

4: Make Any Human Activity Climate Neutral

Carbon footprinting is a key concept to apply to every operation that we undertake – housing, offices or industrial uses, among many others. It is based on an equation between a certain site area and a target of carbon reduction. The aim is to generate a slight surplus of renewable energy from within the site to ‘repay’ the carbon produced during its creation and maintenance on an annual basis, while also matching its annual energy demand. The target is reached if the carbon footprint represented by the set-up of the project (‘the embodied carbon’) can be repaid within the estimated lifespan of that project. If this can be achieved, the project can be deemed climate neutral.

This is the goal, and if every construction project were to adopt this overall target quickly enough, human induced climate change could gradually reduce. This strategy might be a turning point in the evolution of human civilization because the threat of runaway global warming could be averted and the situation stabilised.

This simple shared priority must form the basis of any future government or legislation that claims to be acting on behalf of the best interests of the majority of its citizens. Since the first work on this book, the political situation has deteriorated in this respect in the US and the contagion may spread. This is why the COP21 agreement represents both a practical and symbolic line that now divides hope from despair.

1.6 Can carbon be the new currency in our social evolution?

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Foreword
• PART I INTRODUCTION
• PART II THE ZEDLIFE TOOLS
• PART III CASE STUDIES: APPLYING THE TOOLS
• References
• Index
• Image credits