To
CarbonBuzz Consortium Partners
Cc
From
Anna Gagliano, Aedas R&D Coordinator
Date
02 February 2010
Subject
CarbonBuzz – Press release
CarbonBuzz awarded three-year grant from the Technology Strategy Board
CarbonBuzz, the architectural and building services engineering community’s carbon
management scheme that provides an online platform to benchmark and track project energy
use from design to operation, has been awarded a three-year match funding grant from the
Technology Strategy Board under the Design & Decision tools competition. The £750,000 total
project cost will cover the development of the platform into an ‘authoritative’ database for CO2
emissions of buildings in the UK and abroad.
Project partners funding over 50% of the project include the RIBA, CIBSE, BRE, Aedas, FCB
Studios, AECOM, Davis Langdon, Autodesk and XCO2 Energy. The academic partner,
University College London Energy Institute, will be auditing the database and revising the data
structure. Aedas, the originators of CarbonBuzz, will be coordinating the input of the partners as
well as client and operator steering groups. The project is supported by CABE, the Carbon Trust
and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).
UK buildings represent some 45% of the UK’s total CO2 emissions. Lack of real world data is a
major barrier to carbon reduction. In hosting such data and communicating trends in the
database, CarbonBuzz will provide much needed evidence to support policy as well as design
and portfolio decisions.
Judit Kimpian, Aedas’ Head of Sustainability and Advanced Modelling and CarbonBuzz’s
Project Leader, said:
“With the introduction of multiple readings and capturing actions that lead to changes in energy
use over time, users will be able to track changes in a building’s energy consumption against
contributing factors from acquisition all the way to end of life. Future updates will allow design
predictions to be uploaded directly from mainstream analysis software and organisations will be
able to benchmark their portfolios interactively and manage CO2 savings online. An improved
user interface will highlight discrepancies between forecast and actual CO 2 emissions and the
scale of occupant impact on energy use.”
CarbonBuzz will provide anonymised case studies, documented to industry standards, along
with reports on real life trends in the energy consumption of buildings for all major building
sectors. It also enables a practice to publish their successes as part of the RIBA’s Carbon
Conscious Practice Scheme, the first incentive to promote the value of attributable data in the
public domain. The scheme will recognise those electing to publish energy use data through the
CarbonBuzz site as a ‘Carbon Conscious Practice’.
-ends-
www.carbonbuzz.org
info@carbonbuzz.org
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Notes to Editors
1. For further information and images contact Anna Gagliano at Aedas R&D on 020 7520 8871
or info@carbonbuzz.org
2.
Background
CarbonBuzz is the result of joined-up thinking between architects, engineers, professional
bodies, policy makers and academics to improve the awareness of CO2 emissions from
buildings amongst those who play a major role in their design, refurbishment and construction.
www.carbonbuzz.org currently enables users to benchmark and track project energy use from
design to operation, for major construction sectors, through a visually engaging online interface.
It encourages users to share emissions data in the public domain and compare forecast and
actual energy use against CIBSE benchmarks as well as live data from projects entered
anonymously.
Research by consortium partners in 2008 found that over 90% of architects, engineers and
portfolio managers questioned had no awareness of the scale of CO2 emissions attributed to
different building types, nor the key contributing factors to these emissions or the actual
effectiveness of design measures employed. Since the launch of the alpha version of the
platform last year, CarbonBuzz has attracted over 180 member organisations and over 150
projects from architectural and engineering practices of all sizes.
CarbonBuzz provides a robust foundation for comparing energy use and CO2 emissions from
different measurement and reporting standards spanning from acquisition to operation: Part L,
Energy Performance Certificates (DECs), Display Energy Certificates (DECs), CRC Energy
Efficiency Scheme, Carbon Trust Standard. The launch of UK CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme
will present yet another carbon-saving calculation standard alongside Energy Performance
Certificates, Part L, the ‘Merton Rule’ and Display Energy Certificates.Yet CarbonBuzz will
remain the only platform that bridges the gap between these reporting standards and allows the
comparison of forecast and actual energy use side by side. From April 2011, around 20,000
large public and private sector organisations will be involved at some level in Carbon Reporting
through the UK CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme. The existence of benchmark data via
CarbonBuzz will contribute to the evaluation of carbon reduction efforts not just as % savings
but in real terms.
3.
CarbonBuzz Consortium Partners
Aedas Architects, the originators of the CarbonBuzz concept, are one of the world’s largest
architectural practices and are the project leaders/managers of CarbonBuzz, nominated for the
last three years for major sustainability awards (Architects’ Journal/AJ100, UK Green Building
Council).
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is the professional body for the UK architectural
profession. RIBA will provide the dissemination and promotion across the architectural
profession as well as the Carbon Conscious Practice framework and recognition.
The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) is the UK institution for
building services engineering, setting the criteria for best practice in the profession. CIBSE
provides the project with benchmarks and expertise, as well as the link to the CIBSE Low
Carbon Consultant Scheme.
Building Research Establishment (BRE) is the UK’s leading Research and Technology
Organisation (RTO) for the built environment in its broadest context with extensive experience in
construction materials, energy and life cycle assessment models, low impact building design
and construction. BRE provides the physical database and software for the project and are
responsible for carrying out the technical maintenance and hosting of the CarbonBuzz website.
www.carbonbuzz.org
info@carbonbuzz.org
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University College London (UCL) Energy Institute has a particular focus on the area of energydemand reduction, designed to speed the transition to a low-energy, low-carbon economy. UCL
will be acting as the auditor of the project providing regulatory and quality assurance functions
and ensuring robustness of data.
XCO2 Energy is a specialist low-carbon consultancy for the built environment working in the UK
and internationally.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCB Studios) is an architectural practice with a reputation for
sustainable design and innovation, underpinned by rigorous research.
AECOM provides technical professional services within the infrastructure, environmental, and
facilities markets.
XCO2 Energy, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and AECOM will provide sustainability expertise
to the project.
Davis Langdon are global construction consultants and will be providing support to Aedas in the
financial management and programming of the project.
Autodesk is a world leader in design and engineering software and will develop with BRE the
generic software API that will allow Autodesk and other analysis and portfolio management
packages and smart meters to link directly to CarbonBuzz.
4.
The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led executive non-departmental public body,
established by the government. Its role is to promote and support research into, and
development and exploitation of, technology and innovation for the benefit of UK business, in
order to increase economic growth and improve the quality of life. It is sponsored by the
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). For further information please visit
www.innovateuk.org
www.carbonbuzz.org
info@carbonbuzz.org
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