Energy performance of Wellcome Trust building revealed

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Am I overly obsessed with the energy performance of buildings designed by Sir Michael Hopkins? Perhaps, given that I've just stumbled on the energy performance of one of his firm's recent buildings for the Wellcome Trust. Keen reader(s) will remember a post I penned on the performance of parliamentary office building Portcullis House back in June. This sparked a very interesting post by Casey Cole at In Picenum who judged it to be a pretty poor performer. I wonder what he'll make of the Gibbs Building?

Here are the numbers quoted on the new offices on Euston Road in the Wellcome Trust's environment report for 2006:

Annual cnsptn kWh/m2	Gas                                                                    Electricity
Econ 19 typical	210	358
Econ 19 best practice	114	234
Gibbs Building predicted	96	213
Gibbs Building measured 2005	108	203
Gibbs Building measured 2006	73	257

This performance is against the Econ 19 air-conditioned prestigious office benchmarks. The higher electricity usage last year was put down to the hot weather last summer. Could do better?

There are some other good examples of work being done by the Trust, such as the South Field Project it carried out in Cambridgeshire which achieved BREEAM excellent rating and involved a green roof, planting 12,000 trees, a grey water system and a pretty decent waste management system.

Comments

[Casey Cole]

Thanks for that Phil. I've posted a response on my blog here:
http://inpicenum.com/2007/08/24/no-such-thing-as-a-green-office/

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