It has been at least two decades since the need to incorporate energy efficiency and sustainability measures to buildings became evident. Different initiatives have been launched since then, including standards, regulations, voluntary certifications, frameworks… But none of them has delivered the real-life change we need, at the scale we need it. And we are anywhere near where we should be at this point.
In this article, I go through the 5 main challenges that, in my view, are remaining. Very significant challenges that nobody seems to want to see or talk about.
Nazgul from LOTR – The Fellowship of the Ring
5️⃣ Lack of clarity
Standards and regulations change often (probably too often), and their enforcement can be rather loose. Requirements also vary regionally, locally, and even between projects! All this lack of clarity about the real requirements in each project can be quite frustrating for all parties. But especially for detail-oriented professionals, who are needed to tackle the technical challenges.
4️⃣ Morale is down
The matter is complex, the knowledge is spread without consensus on how to apply it, and there is little collaboration from other disciplines. Then, juniors get lost and seniors give up on quality. They often even move from technical positions altogether after years of frustrations. This also becomes a difficult challenge for directors, who see the market opportunities but then face a very complex management puzzle.
3️⃣ Lack of direction
Projects involving the collaboration of several disciplines would need the figure of a technical project director. Someone responsible for leading the Integrated Building Design (as defined by ASHRAE), directing the interaction among all building disciplines, from earliest concept development throughout the building lifecycle, to achieve the established goal. Otherwise, each stakeholder ends up following their own interest, and performance and sustainability usually bear the brunt.
2️⃣ Construction costs
The costs of construction have gone to the roof and investing substantially in performance and sustainability becomes an even bigger challenge. The benefits of high performance and sustainability are achieved mainly in the long term, but the economic viability of projects is assessed in the short term. Then, trying to enforce strong measures can be seen as an atack to the viability of necessary projects.
1️⃣ Business rules it all
It’s no secret that in the Western world everything is business-led. And facilitating business can have a big influence on legislation (or even bypass it). Therefore, in building performance and sustainability, the main focus has been on selling them more than on enforcing real-life results. In the hope that the market will ever value them properly. But, again, there is a time-frame mismatch between business-led decisions (short term) and performance-led ones (long term). And the short term usually prevails in business.
The abundance of climate change deniers or sceptics in all levels of society doesn’t help either, but I won’t open that can of worms here…
In my view, the construction sector needs a REVOLUTION to truly achieve energy performance and sustainability targets at the scale needed, rather than a comfortable transition. But I don’t see enough incentives anywhere.
We definitely need some heroes to show up 🙂