Published by TREND-MONITOR

March 2015

Green Building 6 Key Trends from Ecobuild 2015

Published by TREND-MONITOR |March 2015

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Green Building 6 Trends from Ecobuild 2015

Contents

The Green Building Market 3 Uk and Globally

Trend No.1 4 Green Building as Big Business

Trend No.2 5 Multi-Comfort Homes

Trend No.3 6

Greening Existing Buildings

Trend No.4 7

Incorporating Green Infrastructure

Trend No.5 8

The Smart Home

Trend No.6 9

Buildings as Power Stations

Sources 10

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Green Building 6 Trends from Ecobuild 2015

Green building is no longer a niche area of

construction and globally it is estimated that

94% of architects, engineers and contractors are

involved at some level in green building

The Green Building Market, UK and Globally

The market for green building is showing strong growth across the globe, leading the way

as the construction industry starts to pick up after the global recession. 28% of all

architects, engineers, contractors, building owners and building consultants around the

world report that they are focussing their work on sustainable design and construction by

doing at least 60% of their projects green. This is double the figure for 2009, where only

13% of building professionals had comparative high levels of green projects.

Given its long history in green building, the UK is now considered to be an established

green building market. Along with its high share of green activity, the UK has amongst the

most dedicated green building professionals with over 45% of the UK’s architects,

engineers and contractors reporting high levels (ie over 60%) of green building work in

2012, and this figure is expected to have grown by 51% by the end of 2015.

Source: World Green Building Trends, Smart Market Report 2013

What is Ecobuild?

Ecobuild is the world’s biggest event for sustainable design,

construction and the built environment and the UK’s largest

construction event.

Located at London’s Excel, it offers the biggest showcase of

sustainable construction products anywhere.

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Green Building 6 Trends from Ecobuild 2015

Gone are the days when the words ‘sustainable technology’ were only used

by a handful of well-meaning individuals. Big business has now recognised

the advantages to be gained from presenting their green credentials to the

world.

Ecobuild’s official Innovation Product Partner for 2015 was the retail giant

M&S, who played host to the final of The Big Innovation Pitch scrutinising

exhibitor solutions, looking for “retrofitable, scaleable sustainable

technologies that represented a good return on investment” and were able to

be applied to their existing stock of retail shops.

Given that two of the key drivers for the growth of the green building market

are lower operating costs and branding/PR opportunities, it is not surprising

that companies such as M&S are wanting to get involved.

And they are not the only ones.

In their book ‘Eco-Business A Big-Brand Takeover of Sustainability’, Peter

Dauvergne and Jane Lister present a comprehensive overview of the wide

ranging efforts of global brands such as Walmart, Ikea, McDonalds and Coca-

Cola to improve their environmental performance, citing control and business

growth as some of the many reasons global firms have decided that acting

more sustainably can improve their competitive position.

Trend No. 1: Green Building is Big Business

“retrofitable, scaleable, sustainable technologies

that represent a good return on investment”

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Green Building 6 Trends from Ecobuild 2015

Trend No. 2: Multi-Comfort Homes

Backed by strong evidence from all sectors of society, it is clear that buildings have a

significant impact on our health and wellbeing. With this in mind, Saint-Gobain has

introduced the concept of a Multi-Comfort building.

Moving away from the perception that ‘being green’ has to somehow be slightly uncomfortable

in order to be valid; wellbeing is placed firmly as the central role. Designed to deliver comfort

for everyone, in any type of building, whilst conforming to the principles of the Passive House

(Passivhaus) Standard, the Multi-Comfort building concept outlines five basic principles of a

comfortable home;

- Thermal comfort: determined by air temperature, humidity, draughts, etc

- Audio comfort: determined by parameters such as noise from outdoors, vibrations,

clarity of hearing, intelligibility of speech, etc.

- Visual comfort: determined by factors such as view, light quality, luminosity, glare, etc.

- Economic comfort: determined by the affordability of constructing, running and

maintaining the building

- Indoor air comfort: determined by indoor air quality parameters such as fresh air supply,

pollutants, odours, etc.

The correct balance of these combined factors gives comfort within a building which is a

pleasure to occupy, where occupants can function efficiently, are healthy and have a high level

of wellbeing.

“Green building used to be about ‘doing the right thing’.

Today’s green build is more likely to be triggered by a

requirement for the improved comfort of the occupants”

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Green Building 6 Trends from Ecobuild 2015

Trend No.3: Greening Existing Buildings

The focus of the green building industry is shifting from designing new buildings to

‘greening’ existing buildings and this is particularly valid for the UK market with its older

building stock.

“Refurb and Retrofit” was a key phrase at Ecobuild 2015, with a strong line up of seminars

and workshops focussing on the requirement to improve existing buildings’ performance in

terms of comfort and energy efficiencies.

Recent allegations that new build homes are falling short of housebuilders claims regarding

cost efficiencies has raised concerns about the ‘performance gap’ between the way the

houses are designed on the architects drawing board and the reality of their construction on

site. Plus studies have shown that the embodied carbon in new build housing can mean that

the total emissions from a new-build home could be typically no less than from a properly

insulated Victorian house.

‘Retrofit for the Future’, a study conducted by the Energy Saving Trust, concluded that

households could reduce their energy consumption by up to 80% with the right insulation,

heating and lighting systems. However, fitting everything into a standard two-up-two-down

brick terraced house can be fiddly and expensive, and government incentives such as The

Green Deal have had a low take-up rate, resulting in calls from green building professionals

for a more cohesive approach from the government.

‘Greening’ existing buildings is

particularly valid for the UK market

with its older building stock

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Green Building 6 Trends from Ecobuild 2015

Trend No.4: Incorporating Green Infrastructure

As cities continue to grow and people live closer together, improving the environment and

quality of life in our cities is a constant challenge and whilst governments, businesses and many

construction companies have been committed to sustainable development, supporting

biodiversity in the form of green infrastructure (GI) has often been seen as an unnecessary cost.

However GI is starting to receive increased support on both a national and European level and

there is a now strategy set in place by the UK government with it’s mission by 2020 ‘to halt overall

biodiversity loss, support healthy well-functioning ecosystems and establish coherent ecological

networks, with more and better places for nature for the benefit of wildlife and people.’

Green infrastructure (GI) is described as “the network of natural and semi-natural features within

and between our villages, towns and cities – reaching out into the wider countryside. GI features

range in scale, from street trees, green roofs and private gardens through to parks, rivers and

woodlands, and at the larger scale, wetlands, forests and agricultural land.

The UK Green Building Council sets out a strong business case for GI in its recent report

‘Demystifying Green Infrastructure, Feb 2015’ siting a number of business opportunities in terms

of cost and time savings, enhanced performance and overall market advantage. They also point

out the business risks associated with failure to incorporate GI into planning, design, construction

and operation, such as delayed planning permissions, flooding, higher maintenance costs, etc.

Image courtesy of UK Green Building Council

Improving the environment and quality of life in

our cities is a constant challenge

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Green Building 6 Trends from Ecobuild 2015

Cloud-based applications are

transforming how homes use energy

Trend No.5: The Smart House

With an interactive smart thermostat and an internet connection, consumers can

operate their heating system via cloud-based analytics software using any mobile

device.

By processing massive amounts of data, including physical household characteristics,

family comfort preferences and schedules, plus external data such as the weather,

energy saving algorithms are used to automate the thermostat settings in the home to

improve energy efficiency and reduce energy bills, as well as maintaining consumer

comfort.

Customising the system or manual adjustments can be made at anytime via a mobile

app.

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Green Building 6 Trends from Ecobuild 2015

Trend No.6: Buildings as Power Stations

As the green building industry looks for ways to reduce energy useage and

running costs, there has been growing interest in buildings that can generate,

store and release their own energy.

Although there have been plenty of scientists and academics researching

renewable energy sources, less than 10% of ideas successfully make it through to

the commercial market. This is according to SPECIFIC, an academic and industrial

consortium led by Swansea University with Tata Steel, NSG Pilkington and BASF as

strategic partners. Since 2011 SPECIFIC has been working to help green

innovations make the leap from ideas through to commercial production.

SPECIFIC has said its products will "revolutionise the construction sector - with the

strategic ambition to generate over one third of the UK's total target renewable

energy by 2020; reducing CO2 output by six million tonnes per year; and creating

new jobs in high value manufacturing"

Their first complete “Building as a power station” has been constructed in Baglan,

South Wales, as an “off-grid”, self-sufficient building concept that only uses energy

generated by the sun. Amongst the technologies that have been implemented at

the house are coated steel roof sheeting with integrated thin film photovoltaic

panels, battery storage to store the electricity generated by the photovoltaics, a

glazed solar air collector providing the majority of space heating for the building

and heated floor tiles, which supplement the solar air heating system.

“Buildings as Power Stations” is the new vision for

the built industry and refers to buildings that can

generate, store and release their own energy

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Green Building 6 Trends from Ecobuild 2015

Sources:

1. Ecobuild 2015.

2. World Green Building Trends, Smart Market Report 2013

3. Eco-Business, A Big-Brand Takeover of Sustainability, Peter Dauvergne & Jane Lister

4. Saint Gobain Multi-Comfort Buildings

5. Passive House Standard (Passivhaus)

6. Retrofit for the Future, Energy Saving Trust

7. Demystifying Green Infrastructure, UK Green Building Council 2015

8. SPECIFIC

About TREND-MONITOR

TREND-MONITOR is an online resource for business professionals, delivering important and timely insights into trends which affect the home improvement industry.

Combining a number of different resources including in-market research, data gathering, industry events, consumer surveys, social media and interviews, TREND-MONITOR identifies emerging consumer, industry and macro trends and assesses the impact these trends will have on home improvement product categories.

TREND-MONITOR is owned and operated by J M Blake Associates