Bernard McKeown, managing director of energy consultancy CADmeleon, has called on the government to address existing building stock as a matter of urgency in order to meet its long term carbon reduction targets.

The UK faces an uphill struggle in order to meet its self-imposed carbon targets unless it tackles the efficiency of existing ageing building stock. There are currently 1.8 million non-domestic buildings in the UK and it is estimated that over two thirds of the existing stock will still be standing by 2050, so in order to make high impact reductions in carbon, an effective energy efficiency retrofit plan must be rolled out.

Buildings that pre-date 1985, when energy efficiency was first introduced to the Building Regulations, are, on average, highly inefficient, so the opportunity to implement policies, programmes and products that will see the roll out of those low carbon technologies as part of a pan-government efficiency programme will go a long way to the abatement of carbon emissions in the UK.

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Mr McKeown said: "If the performance of public buildings was measured and understood in terms of sustainability, energy and emissions performance, the government would be much better placed to effectively reduce carbon emissions.

"That’s why the government should insist on the comprehensive use of environmental and design quality assessment tools for all buildings on post-occupancy evaluations for refurbished public buildings. This is the only way to drive continuous improvement within existing building stock.

"Energy Performance Certificates that were introduced by government two years ago have been a step in the right direction. However, in order to create a truer indication of a building’s energy performance, a comparison of actual consumption with theoretical optimum efficiency should be standardised benchmarking protocol."

CADmeleon has developed Carbon Estates, an energy management tool which monitors energy consumption from the built environment before planning refurbishment programmes which are simulated in the virtual retrofit tool.

(GK)