Land Securities calls for more action on carbon emissions

Land Securities, the UK’s leading commercial property company, is leading the call for action on reducing carbon emissions with the introduction of Display Energy Certificates across its London office portfolio.

Responding to the problem that the property sector accounts for an estimated 44% of UK emissions, Chief Executive, Francis Salway, sounded a warning on the size of the problem to be addressed during a speech last week for the UK construction industry. 'We can easily forget that in any one year no more than 2% of the national stock of buildings is likely to be renewed - leaving 98% of existing, mainly energy-inefficient buildings. . . Real progress against targets for carbon emission reduction will not be met unless progress is made on the existing building stock.'

During the JCT (Joint Contracts Tribunal) Povey Lecture on 12 November, Salway called on all property owners to help drive behavioural change through their actions and those of their tenants. He also argued that industry action must be complemented with the government showing stronger leadership on sustainability issues.

'We believe that as an industry leader we have to demonstrate that we are willing to take the lead on big issues. Display Energy Certificates in our London office buildings means that instead of certifying the energy a building is designed to consume, we will be showing the much more meaningful measure of energy it actually consumes. We recognise that some of our buildings will score poorly, but it is only through measurement and benchmarking that we will drive improvement,' commented Salway.

Three key steps are necessary to deliver meaningful reductions, Salway said:

1. Behavioural change by companies and individuals
'Significant progress can be made through behavioural change, for example, if we can persuade occupiers of our office buildings to accept an extra 1 degree of centigrade variance in internal temperatures, we can reduce energy consumption by some 10%.'

2. Technological innovation
'I have great confidence that engineers will devise solutions which enable us to construct new buildings with carbon emissions at low levels. Land Securities has been one of the pioneers of the use of energy piles for heating and cooling to create renewable energy sources for our new projects.'

3. Strong government policy and leadership.
'Current market pricing will not stimulate the renewal of older energy inefficient buildings. If the carbon footprint of the existing building stock is to be tackled, we will need government to take a lead. The UK always seems to have a reluctance to use carrot and sticks in the tax system to drive behaviours and redirect capital investment. . .I think the simplest route may be to use the property rates system to reward those who occupy
energy efficient buildings and to penalise those who occupy energy inefficient buildings.'