Debate 22 - Notes

Is the stick a big enough carrot?

1. Only 2 things that drive change are regulation and market forces. Also emotion? Where will corporates go in the future? Not sure that they will. Always powerful lip service paid to emotion. Financial returns is the main driver + reputational risk

2. If it is true that corporations are not going to respond to anything else it means it is time to change the market. Pavlov. Condition in another way

3. Not just large organisations. Big developer issue about sustainability. Is it the local authority? Update as easy as possible. Sustainability has to start right across the board and not rely on one sector

4. Emotion is integral with the market –branding but bits of the market where this will take a long time. In building market planners represent the community. They are the short-term conscience. Bigger role for planners until we get generations who can act this way

5. Contractors will build what developers want and developers will build what their customers want. Too much environmental hoodwinking. Certificates could be useful for informing the debate.

6. We have come at this as labelling as the opportunity to change everything. Display is not the issue (not going to affect purchasing decisions), disclosure is – getting them into the public domain.

7. We are the pension holders = policy holders. How much are we prepare to trade on financial security for sustainability? Often there is an automatic assumption that behaving sustain ably will dilute performance but no real reason for this assumption

8. Paul’s paper was distancing himself? Who guards the guardians? Large guardians are the insurance industry. Problem in traditional approach is that it believes that the future is predictable. We are entering an age when this is not so. Dog bonds. Insurance industry talking about not insuring according to postcodes but by buildings. This could be a key financial driver. Means the stick is quite a big enough carrot. Use certificates to check the dog bonds – but in increasing unpredictable world, the premium grows. What does failure to get insurance do to asset values (Thames Gateway?)

9. Making this far too complicated. Carbon will be the currency. This is the year when we begin to think positively about carbon.

10. Looking at risks of a value of a property in the future, we must realise that we will have to do something about carbon. Rating is a good approach.

11. Talked about the developers’ problem. Struck by difference between corporate and personal social responsibility. Like embracing best value in the home with builders.

12. Management – you can only manage that which you count. If you can’t assess the energy performance of a building we feel we do not have to bother. Domestic energy labelling running in Canberra for last 3-4 years. Results – you get more money back from energy back than you have actually invested. Deemed to be an advantage. What are the things are necessary to change the rules to get these things taken into account. If they lack knowledge, what is the knowledge we need to provide? Are the certification proposals for non-domestic buildings going far enough? Bed Zed started off as zero development but after post implementation review, majority of zero achievements came from life style changes

13. Certification: conjunction between the building and the use of the building. Effect of regulation – we look to avoid it. More emphasis on the carrot. Govt to offer more incentives, eg reduction on rateable value. Reward good behaviour. Essence of sustainable, you go without today to leave more for tomorrow. People are not like that.

14. Tory environment plan. Committed to consult Reduced stamp duty for sustainability. Three parties may start competing with each other on green issues. Should up the ante. ODPM, DTI and Defra creating sustainable task group. Halifax and Cabe survey on interest of house owners on matters environment. More than people thought, prepared to spend 2% more. A flicker. Is it only thing driving it or many? It is a real development started by the works of activists. It started when rankings were introduced. Sent shock waves out from low performing companies. Mixture of the stakeholders esp. pension funds, saying what is happening (Pension funds have to make clear statements of what is happening). SRI equity analysts not picked up. Equity fund managers probably ahead of property fund managers.

15. Risk: difficulty in foretelling it. On the radar but don’t know the metrics. But you can manage a risk you cannot foresee. This is a task for us. We know where we are going with carbon reductions. We can work backwards and can incentives for going above the minimum now.

16. Building energy rating different from Clarkson MPG figure. When buildings consume more energy than class warrants it is usually a crap building. Will the actual marks give a second order of understanding about the buildings? More in the indicator that one or two % of turnover. When this begins to feed into the performance of buildings, crap buildings and crap building investment performance.

17. Politics: leadership, politicians, professions and the leadership. Bed Zed set leadership and has entered the general consciousness. Need more leadership. If best architects persuaded to only work on the best buildings may begin to change things.

18. Opportunity in 2005. PM talking on climate change. Possibility that it will be a key component of G8 conference next year. We have a role in providing information for this

19. Proposal: CIBSE dinner, prize for carbon 60 group. Perhaps what we need, the other members of the Edge – ICE, RIBA and RICS also have a competition to reduce footprint. Are we prepared to destroy Easy Jet’s market

20. Crap buildings. Certificate is about trying to find out way. Difference between asset and operational ratings. About trying to find out how they are used. Poor management. Proposal: Putting information in the right hands and get it feed through the system in the right way. Log books forward from the design team to the building operators. How do you get the operational ratings back to the design team so they can learn? Feedback mechanisms. Some property companies are saying, if we are getting evaluated, this is not all that we are providing. Also means that the design team engage with the building operators (soft landings). Need formal feedback routes.

21. Politics- contrast between domestic and global records. Important to keep targets up to date. Do we make more haste and less speed. Spend more time on getting the right data.

22. Good enough parent. Prevent perfection. Carbon footprint of No.10

23. Challenge to professional institutions. Perverse incentives in fee structures. No positive incentives to design in passive systems. Reward sharing experiments in the US. PFI ought to deliver this.

24. Stick is not good enough, encourages meeting minimum standards

25. Stick is big enough, (1) to tell you whether you have bought yourself a dog or (2) you have bought yourself a turkey

26. Not big enough. Need rewards in system for better practice, esp. planning system, little interest in sustainability, still grappling with car use. Needs to allow more better buildings to be built

27. The stick has the potential to be big enough but we ought to be making more use of it. We can correlate with existing data between good buildings and energy use.

28. Integrity and leadership. Do a Dave Hampton and assess the carbon footprint of your home. Leadership will eclipse stick and carrot.