In Conversation with TFT: Decarbonising the Built Environment
Mat Lown, Chief ESG & Knowledge Officer, TFT
Decarbonising the built environment will require collaboration between built environment professionals and the finance industry.
The LMA's Hannah Vanstone met with Mat Lown, Chief ESG & Knowledge Officer at TFT, to discuss his views on the latest developments helping to deliver a more sustainable built environment, and how lenders and investors can help to support the drive towards sustainable real estate.
How are sustainability considerations impacting on developers' decision-making?
"Sustainability considerations are driving more developers and investors to engage sustainability specialists earlier, to understand their carbon position from the outset.
As a result, developers are able to work more closely with engineers and surveyors to appraise existing buildings against their goals, or the goals of an owner or a tenant, and pinpoint the most practical interventions. Existing buildings may carry many unknowns which could have a bearing on their sustainability potential. For example, there may be opportunities to significantly reduce embodied carbon by re-using the existing structure and facade."
What are the latest developments around circular construction that market participants should be aware of?
"High carbon materials such as steel and concrete are under increasing scrutiny, with alternatives emerging - such as the cement-recycling process recently announced by Cambridge University researchers. In tandem with these advances, developers can now do more to understand the value of materials on site, or near site, and how each can be adapted or re-used.
There is a growing market for second-hand materials, particularly for structural steel, which developers should engage with. Supporting the growth of that market into the future means thinking further ahead too, asking: how are building elements designed to support disassembly, reconfiguration and repair (rather than wholesale replacement)? For example, using more mechanical fixings and less adhesive or welded joints will help to prolong the life of each piece of material within a building, and enable dismantling for future reuse.
Two rules of thumb are now relevant to every project:
- Consider the hierarchy of reduce > reuse > recycle, to always look for the lowest embodied carbon solution to begin with.
- Engage with technical skillsets – e.g. architects, engineers, surveyors and sustainability specialists - to make sure that ambitious or novel approaches are incorporated into project design at the earliest possible stages. The sooner this is done, the greater the scope for improvement at the lowest cost."
What are some of the main challenges and opportunities for those looking to retrofit an existing building?
"The first challenge is understanding what already exists and what is feasible for re-use. At a high level: how suitable is a given building for an alternative use and how much of the existing structure, fabric and services can be retained? Often, institutional-grade assets already have reports which account for future expansion or adaptation. But for smaller, older buildings, navigating these unknowns means investigating their potential at an early stage. We must look at the whole building, which includes consideration of both its operational and embodied carbon. This work is significant, and it will shape the strategy and the success of the retrofit or refurbishment project.
Looking further upstream to acquisition, investors or owners must now seek the best available data on a building’s potential for adaptation and decarbonisation as part of their due diligence."
What role do lenders and investors have to play in decarbonising the built environment?
"I think lenders and investors can influence and even drive decarbonisation by challenging developers to reduce embodied carbon arising from new developments and designing in greater scope for future disassembly and material re-use.
We are currently working with a lender for whom we’re undertaking embodied carbon assessments that include opportunities to reduce carbon emissions."
Case study
Photo: Philip Vile
"Holbein Gardens, round the corner from London’s Sloane Square, was transformed from being a tired 1980s office building into a sustainable asset and a pioneering example of a low embodied carbon development. It even exceeds LETI’s pioneer standards for embodied carbon.
Our work on the project began long before the building itself was discussed, because TFT co-created a sustainable development brief with Grosvenor which encompasses themes such as climate resilience, social benefit, connectivity, green spaces, resource use and more. Holbein Gardens became an early test case for that.
This brief was taken forward into the design with a holistic approach, from the building’s blue roof, through its openable windows connected to air quality sensors, the use of lime plaster with low VOCs, and down to the reuse of raised access floors and other materials with high recycled content.
In terms of circularity, there was a focus on retaining existing materials, reusing them either onsite or offsite, and finally recycling the remaining materials. Another Grosvenor site in Bermondsey was identified as a potential location to extract steel from, which was incorporated within the structure of Holbein Gardens.
In turn, there was also some steel in the former roof of Holbein Gardens which went through the same process, finding a new lease of life forming new risers in the building. The remaining Holbein Gardens steel ended up on yet another project, forming the new roof works at Grosvenor’s Fivefields building.
One of the greatest challenges facing re-use is storage. For portfolio owners like Grosvenor, the ambition to reuse significant amounts of steel was made possible by having other sites to provide it. However, there are examples of steel reuse, including FORE Partnership's T.B.C. London, which incorporates salvaged steel from the former House of Fraser store at 318 Oxford Street. For those who don’t have that availability, they might instead need to engage with providers like Cleveland Steel (part of the Holbein Gardens project team) to determine what is available or might soon become available.
More generally, Holbein Gardens has shown us what is possible when the right criteria are considered early on in a project. One benefit is increased awareness among the project team, and embracing the less polished aesthetics which are characteristic of re-used materials. It also demonstrates the ability to carry out due diligence on available materials, and the importance of establishing a supply chain which can carry out measurement, analysis and adaptation of materials in re-use."
Photo: Philip Vile