Interesting reports

Never thought a manual would be interesting but there you go…

SBEM technical manual 

The SBEM technical manual is out - woohoo. Finally i can discover why the low carbon buildings are actually low carbon. SBEM is a program you have to run if you have a new building in the UK. A bit like an audit. Problem was - the methodology was hidden and the best way to get past it was to install air conditioning in buildings. Its way harder to get a naturally ventilated building through SBEM than an air conditioned one……

UKGBC low carbon buildings report

Since the green council has taken over the large building side of the UK governments low carbon strategy its interesting to see what they want (report here). Mainly being negative about the present intiatives (though with fixes) and keeping with this silly idea i keep seeing - we should allow off site or near site renewables. This won’t work. Sadly this shows the engineers are not talking to the lawyers. Our electricity and gas industry is really really regulated. Say you install offsite windmills to power a block of flats. As a flat owner if you want to swap supplier of electricity it is easy - unless you deliver so called “private networks” you can’t force soemone who buys a house / buildings to use a certain electricity supplier. They can and will swap. Given that these so called low carbon schemes have payback periods of less than zero then you have a recipe of the electricity generating bit folding within a few years as people who move into flats, etc moving suppliers and the more expensive low carbon electrity being used by no-one. I prefer the google sort of thinking - RE<C.