[Committee] Representation received. ID:940

[Cambridge City Council]

Thank you for using our LDF online system to submit your representation,
which we recieved as follows:

Representation Number: 940
Document: Sustainable Design and Construction SPD
Section: 13.2 Submission requirements
Support/Object: Comment

Where can greenhouse gas emissions cuts be achieved?
Energy consumption occurs across all sectors of the society, to roughly 1/3
in each industry, transport and housing, such that all sectors have to
contribute to achieve the climate protection goals. However, in particular
in housing, these reductions are rather easy to achieve, given that most of
its energy requirement is in terms of heat, a low-quality form of energy.
Crucially, impressive improvements in the energy-efficiency of buildings
are possible by the use of passive solar design and rigorous insulation. As
CO2 emissions will ultimately have to be cut by 90% with respect to past
values, and buildings erected today will have to comply with this
requirement throughout the biggest part of their lifetime, such a 90%
reduction should be the target for any new construction.
A possible design approach to highly efficient housing proceeds via the
optimization of the building hull in terms of insulation and air-tightness
to an extent that the remaining heat requirement can be supplied via the
built-in ventilation system. Since these houses can exist without a
separate active heat dispensing system, this has lead to adopt the term of
passive house to describe this form of dwelling \cite{CEPHEUS}.[ CEPHEUS:
Cost Efficient Passive Houses as European Standards (CEPHEUS) 2001 study,
to be obtained at www.enercity.de/unternehmen/passivhaeuser] The heating
and ventilation system of these houses is based on electricity, which can
be supplied by renewable sources much more easily than if gas fired heating
systems are used. In conjunction with the use of energy-efficient household
appliances, this freely available design achieves the required 90% cut in
emissions. Even reaching carbon-neutrality becomes possible by supplying
the remaining energy-requirement of households from renewable sources.
The passive house concept has also proven to be very compelling from an
economic point of view: assuming that energy prices were to remain at the
current level, the initial supplementary investment in energy-efficiency
typically pays for itself through economies in fuel-usage in 20 years – the
average obtained for the 200 passive houses located in Sweden, Germany,
Austria and France that were examined in the CEPHEUS study .Projecting
these savings over the lifetime of the building, the improved efficiency
incurs massive savings for the occupant. In addition, passive houses
feature dramatically improved air quality inside the building via its
built-in ventilation system. Note that the supplementary investment for
energy efficiency averaged to 8% of the total construction cost in this
study, knowing that a large fraction of the final cost of the building is
the price of the land it is built on. Thus, the final market-price will
show an even less pronounced relative increase.
The tried and tested passive house concept proves that a 90% reduction of
the energy requirement in buildings is possible at present market prices.
The CEPHEUS study concludes that the necessary information to design such
buildings is freely accessible and that “every architect in Europe can
access this information and implement passive houses”.


SUMMARY

Reductions in CO2 intensity in housing are relatively easy to acheive. We
advise a target of 10kgCO2/m2/annum, which could be acheived at affordable
cost.



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