Setting the right example

Sir John Sorrell, chair of CABE, points out that public infrastructure has a greater impact on climate change than homes.

The government's ambitious commitment for all government offices to be carbon neutral by 2012 now looks increasingly unlikely to be fulfilled. The majority of government departments and agencies are failing to meet targets to make their new buildings and major refurbishments sustainable, according to a recent report by the National Audit Office: Building for the Future: Sustainable construction and refurbishment on the government estate.

The report shows that the opportunity for the government's public building programme to make its full contribution to meeting government targets on cutting carbon emissions is being missed - with huge environmental and financial costs.

Where the government should be setting the highest standards and leading by example, it is in fact falling seriously behind. And this despite the comprehensive, practical and cost-effective advice in the Office of Government Commerce's Common Minimum Standards for the procurement of public building. These standards, which include specific recommendations for achieving sustainability, underpin what all public procurement must do - prioritise whole-life value over initial capital costs.

The message that new and existing homes need to be greener is certainly getting across - and housing policy over the past year has greatly contributed to this. We now have the Code for Sustainable Homes and an aspiration for all homes to be zero-carbon by 2016. The government has also launched its 'carbon challenge' to housebuilders to design and build affordable, low-carbon homes and communities.

But if we look at the figures, public infrastructure has a greater impact on climate change than homes. Constructing and running public infrastructure and services account for at least one third of all carbon emissions. The energy performance of public buildings therefore matters as much as - if not more than - homes. The scale of the current public building programme makes a serious response by all government departments to the NAO's findings and recommendations all the more urgent.

The NAO report followed shortly after the official launch of the Prime Minister's Better Public Building Award, where CABE called on the government to ensure all new public buildings make the greatest possible contribution to mitigating and adapting to climate change, both in construction and in use.

Housing Minister Yvette Cooper has also echoed CABE's call for more attention to be paid to the energy performance of public building, insisting that the public sector must do its bit to cut carbon emissions. By April 2008 buildings such as museums, galleries, town halls and government buildings must display their energy ratings publicly.

Schools, too, are a big part of the picture: 3,500 secondary schools will be built or renewed under the government's Buildings Schools for the Future programme. So, the potential for meeting - or missing - targets on carbon emissions is enormous. Schools for the future: design of sustainable schools - case studies published by DfES last year was a good start. Education Secretary Alan Johnson has announced additional funding of £110 million to set new standards of sustainability in the 200 new or refurbished secondary schools to be built over the next three years. If this investment pays off, there could be 2,000 carbon-neutral secondary schools - and a huge reduction in carbon emissions - over the next 10 years.

Climate change presents one of the toughest tests yet of the collective will and creative abilities of the design and construction industries. But it need not actually add to the cost of a project over its whole life - if environmental sustainability is fully integrated into the design process from the start. Sir John Bourn, head of the NAO, has stressed: 'If sustainability is well handled, and addressed at the very beginning of construction projects, it can and should provide value for money in the long term.'

There is another issue to be addressed: designing low-carbon public buildings is one thing; ensuring that they actually match their predicted energy consumption is another. CABE has pointed to this missing link. It is impossible to judge how we are doing if no one knows what our energy performance is. While calling for energy ratings to track progress in cutting carbon emissions, Yvette Cooper has also acknowledged that those who use and operate public buildings have little idea how energy efficient they actually are, nor what can be done to improve them. And this is endorsed by the NAO which identifies the failure to specify expected benefits, and undertake rigorous post-occupancy reviews to evaluate performance against them, as a barrier to progress towards more sustainable government buildings.

The government therefore needs to invest more in assessing the actual performance of public building. Every government building needs to be evaluated as it is being used - so that we understand whole-life value in action. At the moment there are too many gaps between ambition and reality and we need to understand why.

This requires comprehensive post-completion and post-occupancy evaluation. And - crucially - the results of that evaluation should be analysed before clients, developers, architects and designers embark on their next public building. This is the only way to drive the continuous improvement in construction that will ensure that public building really does mitigate and adapt to climate change. Post-occupancy assessment of project success is mandated by the Office of Government Commerce's Common Minimum Standards and yet it is seldom done in practice. It is something that the NAO is calling for: exacting post-occupancy evaluation and robust data to inform the development of new projects.

We know what can be achieved with high levels of commitment to environmental sustainability. The Prime Minister's Better Public Building Award, sponsored jointly by the Office of Government Commerce and CABE, has celebrated some outstanding examples. The ambitions for the Jubilee Library in Brighton, winner of the award in 2005, were fully realised thanks to rigorous initial proposals from the design team: post-occupancy energy assessments indicate emissions 20 per cent lower than the industry norm for a naturally ventilated building. And the Welsh Assembly building, which was shortlisted last year, can convincingly claim to be the most environmentally friendly public building in the UK - with a minimum 100 year life. This year's shortlist - to be announced on 20 June - is also expected to include some first-class designs which will demonstrate new ways of meeting the carbon challenge.

There are lessons to be learned here. With systematic evaluation of the energy performance of all new public buildings we can gauge whether the ambitions of clients and designers have been realised - and, importantly, if not, why not. And from there we can work towards ensuring that the buildings that people use every day set the standard for effectively tackling climate change.