Reality not meeting design aspiration

Since its foundation in 2016, Noel Lawler Green Energy Solutions — now Lawler Sustainability, see page 2, Building Services Engineering (Sept/Oct 2020 — has been helping clients to improve the energy performance of their property portfolios. These efforts are being hampered by the following key issues.

• Design-for-compliance culture, i.e. energy performance is theoretical and not measured;

• An operational performance that is invisible to the market, most especially investors and occupiers;

• Actual energy performance is not easily acquired and can prove challenging to define;

• Oversimplified mandatory rating systems such as Display EnergyCertificates (DECs).

The 2019 Climate Action plan fails to commit to resolving these issues. However, there is a lost that policy makers could learn from international voluntary schemes such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and, more recently, Design for Performance in UK Offices. These schemes give us a pathway to transform buildings into high-performing assets.