Portcullis House's energy performance revealed

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Without proper post-occupancy evaluations we will be nowhere near to tackling the built environment's impact on the environment. A bit of a no-brainer but how much of it is actually taking place?

This blog has now moved. Please visit Zerochampion.com and update your bookmarks

This is a topic I'm going to be delving deeper into, both in this blog and in a more ambitious website I'm looking to create (more on that in future posts). So I decided to take a high profile building and find out how it was performing some years after completion, namely the MPs office opposite the Houses of Parliament, Portcullis House. I put a Freedom of Information request in a few weeks ago and received a pretty swift reply that pointed me to a recent parliamentary answer (see below). It shows a gradually reducing C02 usage, from 652 tonnes in 2003-2004 to 537 tonnes for the last year.

An article in Building Services Journal put the target energy use at 750 tonnes a year so there appears a marked improvement, namely a 28% drop in carbon dioxide usage in six years. I'm not quite sure how impressive such a performance is for a 23,000 square metre building (that's gross floor area). Any views on this?

Here's the question and answer in full:

Chris Huhne: To ask the hon. Member for North Devon, representing the House of Commons Commission, how often Portcullis House has been assessed for its (a) energy efficiency and (b) carbon emissions; what the trends in performance were; what plans the Commission has to assess Portcullis House in this way; and if he will make a statement. [134645]

Nick Harvey: Portcullis House is assessed on a regular basis both for energy efficiency and carbon emissions. There is a reducing trend for both as can be seen from the following table:

	kWh	kWh/m2	C tonnes
2003-04	7,493,419	361.7	652.8
2004-05	7,102,707	342.9	623.8
2005-06	7,230,601	349.1	630.2
2006-07	6,882,342	332.2	537.4

All electricity consumed on the parliamentary estate has come from renewable sources since 1 February 2007, therefore there will be no carbon emissions resulting from electricity consumption in future. This has contributed to the reduction in carbon emissions for the year 2006-07.

The Board of Management will consider again next month whether the House should seek to achieve ISO14001 and then eco-management and audit scheme accreditation (EMAS).

Comments

[Casey]

I've posted an entry on my blog on how the Portcullis House performance relates to other standards. It's pretty poor.

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