Sustainability Focus
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Features
What digital solutions are there for a water industry under pressure?
Water companies will have to adopt a ‘one-water’ strategy if they are to overcome the complex challenges of water quality and availability, and data will be at the core
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Features
What the government’s commercial non-domestic EPC B pledge means for real estate
Ministers want all commercial non-domestic buildings to meet EPC B by 2030. But what work might be required and how much could it cost?
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Features
Sustainability: Estate decarbonisation
In decarbonising their portfolios, estate owners must strike a careful balance between making sound investments and driving efficiencies
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Features
How do we protect our homes from surface water flooding?
More than three million homes are at risk from surface water flooding - how can we mitigate the risk?
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Features
Sustainability: Calculating social value
Alinea and Social Value Portal explore how social value can be deliver and calculated, with examples of how it can work in practice
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Features
Are you making the most of your data?
How are materials suppliers using data to drive transformation and provide better services for customers? Building, together with leading AI company Peak, asked some industry experts
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Features
Collective housing and the low carbon heating challenge
With building regulations on energy use set to change very soon to accommodate government ambitions on slashing emissions, Building and Daikin gathered together some construction industry experts to discuss the impact of the likely changes on heating systems
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Features
Cost model: Garden communities
Low-density rural housing schemes offer an opportunity for true net zero carbon development: from site-wide renewable energy strategies to low-carbon homes delivered through modern methods of construction. Aecom’s Richard Green, Miles Attenborough, Rob Mills and Paul Wilcock explore the benefits and costs
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Features
Sustainability: Net zero carbon
Net zero carbon no longer refers only to a building’s operational use, as the construction stage can account for half or more of all carbon emissions. So, how is whole life carbon measured, and how can office developments reach the goal of net zero?
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Features
Sustainability: The WELL Standard
The WELL Building Standard, focusing on human wellbeing and updated last year, can transform occupier fit-outs
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Features
Sustainability: How EPC requirements could leave buildings at stranding risk
With EPC rating requirements set to be raised, many buildings will become ‘stranded’ and their value will plummet
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Features
Sustainability: Emissions regulations
The regulations around greenhouse gas emissions come from a variety of international, European and UK sources and are constantly changing
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Features
Plastic waste in construction - is the sector doing enough?
Oceans of plastic waste are created each year by the construction industry, and the public is calling for action. So what are construction firms doing to reduce their discarded plastic, and what more could be done?
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Features
Sustainability: energy storage
Efficient energy storage to meet varying demand could be the key to delivering sustainable energy to buildings as the UK works to reduce its carbon emissions
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Features
Why aren't we building more zero-bills homes?
Building caught up with Bill Dunster to chat about the ideas in his new book, Zed Life: How to Build a Low-Carbon Society Today
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Features
Nuclear energy: Gone with the wind
The National Infrastructure Commission’s landmark report this month seemed to sound the death knell for nuclear energy new-build, calling for a large-scale shift to renewables by 2050 – and for only one more nuclear power station approval by 2025. But are we really likely to get 90% of Britain’s electricity ...
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Features
The Active Office - an energy-positive building
The UK’s first energy-positive office, which generates more solar energy than it consumes, opened today at Swansea University
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Features
Sustainability: modular construction
How can developers get the most from modular construction while effectively managing its risks?
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Features
Interserve: Waste not, want not
Interserve’s energy-from-waste crisis has prompted fears of another Carillion-style collapse, as the company takes drastic action to rebalance the books
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Features
Sustainability: The London Plan
Clara Bagenal George of Elementa Consulting and Adam Mactavish of Currie Brown review the energy policies in the draft new London Plan and assess their implications for new development