BEDZED LONDON

BedZED (Beddington Zero Energy Development) is the UK's first and largest carbon-neutral eco-community and is located in Sutton, a residential town 40 minutes South East from London. It was designed by the architect Bill Dunster, who was looking for a more sustainable way of building housing in urban areas. The project was a partnership among BioRegional, Bill Dunster Architects the Peabody Trust, Arup and the cost consultants Gardiner and Theobald. The 99 homes, and 1,405 square metres of work space were built in 2000 2002. The project was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize in 2003. BedZED consists of 82 residential homes with a mixture of tenures 34 for outright sale, 23 for shared ownership, 10 for key workers and 15 at affordable rent for social housing and 1'600 square metres of work space, an onsite shop, caf, sport facilities, health centre and childcare facilities with a further 14 galleried apartments for outright sale. Residents have been living at BedZED since March 2002 and currently BedZed is home to 220 residents. The BedZED design concept was driven by the desire to create a net 'zero fossil energy development', one that will produce at least as much energy from renewable sources as it consumes. Only energy from renewable sources is used to meet the energy needs of BedZED the development is therefore a carbon neutral development - resulting in no net addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The project aims and objectives are: No use of fossil fuels 50% reduction of the energies used for transport 60% reduction of the domestic energy compared to the average British households 90% reduction of the heating needs Usage of renewable energies 30% reduction of water consumption Reduce waste and encourage recycling Use construction materials from local providers (located whithin less than a 60 km radius) Development of local resources (farmer network for local food) Develop biodiversity in the natural areas

Technology/Design Principles of BedZED Zero energyThe project is designed to use only energy from renewable sources generated on site. There are 777 m of solar panels. Tree waste fuels the development's cogeneration plant (downdraft gasifier) to provide district heating and electricity. The gasifier is not being used, because of technical implementation problems, though the technology has been and is being used successfully at other sites. High qualityThe apartments are finished to a high standard to attract the urban professional. Energy efficientThe houses face south to take advantage of solar gain, are triple glazed, and have high thermal insulation. Water efficientMost rain water falling on the site is collected and reused. Appliances are chosen to be water-efficient and use recycled water when possible. A "Living Machine" system of recycling waste water was installed, but is not operating. Low-impact materialsBuilding materials were selected from renewable or recycled sources within 35 miles of the site, to minimize the energy required for transportation. Waste recyclingRefuse-collection facilities are designed to support recycling.

 TransportThe development works in partnership with the United Kingdom's leading car-sharing operator, City Car Club. Residents are encouraged to use this environmentally friendly alternative to car ownership; an on-site selection of vehicles is available for use. Encourage eco-friendly transportElectric and liquefied-petroleum-gas cars have priority over cars that burn petrol and diesel, and electricity is provided in parking spaces for charging electric cars.
BEDZED SUSTAINABILITY - TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE

(2) Financial effectiveness mixed tenure, home type, and occupiers living and working community activity urban density community critical mass proximity to wider community facilities private open space for homes sunlight and daylight amenity air quality and comfort reduced need for car local car pool community-led management community internet individual choice for carbon-free lifestyle housing association build costs affordable / key worker accommodation high demand for private sale elements commands margin over market value planning gain to add development value live / work to assist business start-ups links improve public transport viability addresses fuel poverty low energy running bills Internet links: community / local businesses / service

(3) Reduced environmental impact zero fossil fuel 100% renewable energy use zero heating homes passive solar heating PV power for 40 electric vehicles 50% reduced potable water on-site ecological water treatment wind-powered ventilation systems low embodied energy materials recycled timber reused structural steel urban tree waste bio-fuelled CHP improved site ecological value land as a finite resource bike facilities recycling facilities

Performance Monitoring conducted in 2003 found that BedZED had achieved these reductions in comparison to UK averages: Space -heating requirements were 88% less Hot -water consumption was 57% less The electrical power used, at 3 kilowatt hours per person per day, was 25% less than the UK average; 11% of this was produced by solar panels. The remainder normally would be produced by a combined heat-and-power plant fueled by wood chips, but the installation company's financial problems have delayed use of the plant. Mains -water consumption has been reduced by 50%, or 67% compared to a power-shower household. The residents' car mileage is 65% less.

The context Realization is dawning that to attain a more harmonious equilibrium with our planet, our consumption of virgin natural resources, with its waste and effluent, needs to reduce by 80-90% over the next 100 or so years. Much of the built environment we are creating will within its lifetime be expected to adapt to this agenda. Incorporating the ability to respond may well be incremental for many projects, with them successively taking larger steps toward sustainability. BedZED, by contrast, sets out to demonstrate what is possible by taking big steps now. Buildings are key to generating social advancement and prosperity, yet are one of the largest consumers of natural resources and generators of pollution and waste. It is often quoted that about 50% of atmospheric carbon emissions is from buildings - a considerable underestimate if you include the need to travel to and from them. This emphasizes the challenge ahead: the built environment is the largest consumer of natural raw materials and the largest single generator of landfill waste. Addressing environmental impact requires a whole-life approach, involving for any one material its sourcing from nature, its processing, transport, in-use by-products, recycling and reuse ability, and avoiding its final waste disposal. For fossil fuels, the current dominant issue is in-use by-product or waste, ie global carbon emissions. Stabilising the increasing atmospheric CO2 levels is expected to need around 60% emissions reduction by 2050 - well within the life of many buildings we are constructing now. This is but the first part of the scenario. With the world population expected almost to double by 2100 before stabilising at about 1 0bn, that same consumption level spread more thinly means a reduction of almost 90% by the developed world by 2100! For many areas of natural resources similar effects and scale of reductions are anticipated. This suggests that we should build with only 10% of the virgin materials we currently use; and intriguingly, on closer inspection this is not as difficult as it first seems. The 20% of materials delivered to site that end up as waste could be eradicated, and there is probably a similar level of waste in the materials sourcing and component manufacturing processes. And if we design buildings for double the useful life, at a stroke we begin to halve the amount of material needed in whole life terms for the social benefit gained from that site. Added to this, there is much material already taken from nature in circulation and in our buildings. If we could develop processes for recycling this as high quality secondary materials, then it appears quite possible to reduce our overall demand for new natural raw material by 90% in almost all fields of human activity. This sets our future agenda for designing the built environment.

Why BedZED? BedZEDs new-build development of 83 mixed tenure homes (social, key worker, and for sale), plus some 3000m2 of live/work, workspaces, retail, and leisure uses, occupies an urban brownfield site in South London. Its chosen high build-density reflects the importance of using limited land resources to the full, being based on the density needed for accommodating all the UKs projected new homes needs entirely on available brownfield sites, to avoid sacrificing any more limited greenfield amenity. Such high density helps build coherent communities and provides critical mass for facilities like public transport, but still allows the massing and orientation needed for good passive solar and daylight access. Making the roof areas green helps increase the sites ecological value and its carbon absorbing ability, as well as giving the occupants private gardens. BedZED was conceived to show that in large-scale construction a high level of sustainability can be practical and cost-effective. If the sustainability concept is to have any sort of meaningful overall effect on the environment, it must move into the volume mainstream, satisfy economic and social objectives, and benefit all stakeholders. A fundamental shift in financial approach was needed. Normally, sustainability and its technologies are seen as add-ons, ie additional cost unwelcome to most building funders. Often, heat recovery w ill be added to

conventional mechanical plant to save energy, yet with diminishing carbon-emission returns and more capital cost. Likewise, simply adding solar thermal collectors still requires a full conventional boiler back-up. Instead, the approach for BedZED was to identify materials and engineering systems whose need was often marginal, and design them out. Advanced analytical techniques explored how passive systems could be enhanced enough to allow active systems to be completely omitted. This yields direct cost and resource reductions at several levels: in capital costs for engineering systems, in control complexity to likewise reduce capital costs, in plant maintenance costs, and in energy cost.

Energy grading For BedZED, Arup developed a technique to evaluate and match renewable energies to energy demands. Until all energy sources have their full environmental cost factored into their retail price, making renewable energies cost-effective is quite a challenge. The technique is energy grading: ranking the full range of possible renewable sources against end-use energy needs, to generate a checklist of building design priorities. The key issue is to match the lowest possible grade of source against the grade of the end demand. This process also involves mapping demand and availability, given that most renewable energies tend to be more finite and need coupling via energy storage to allow this demand/availability match. Designing the building concept around these principles allows the most cost-effective use of renewables. Covering a building in photovoltaic (PV) solar electric collectors may show environmental awareness and highlight new energy technologies, but in energy grading terms, PVs modest output and current high cost suggest there may be more pragmatic ways to provide renewable energy. Energy grading highlights interesting issues, like the inherent inefficiency of many conventional systems that consume high-grade energy and deliver only low-grade energy to building users. Should we be using so much high-grade electricity to drive pumps and fans for what is in effect low-grade energy for room comfort needs? Likewise, are the high-grade electrical energy needs of heat-pumps appropriate for delivering heating and cooling? It emphasizes the significant cost benefits of passive solar heating and passive cooling for room comfort, and the cost-effectiveness of designing buildings for reduced energy demand in the first place. Buildings are constructed from thermally massive materials that store heat during warm conditions and release heat at cooler times. BedZED houses are arranged in south facing terraces to maximise heat gain from the sun, known as passive solar gain. 777 square meters are covered with solar panels. Each terrace is backed by north facing offices, where minimal solar gain reduces the tendency to overheat and the need for air conditioning. BedZED homes and offices are fitted with low energy lighting and energy efficient appliances to reduce electricity requirements. BedZED receives power from a small-scale combined heat and power plant (CHP). The heat from the CHP provides hot water, which is distributed around the site via a district heating system of super-insulated pipes. To enable residents and workers to keep track of their heat and electricity use, meters are mounted in each home and office kitchen. BedZED, or Beddington Zero (Fossil) Energy Development, was designed to be carbon neutral, to generate as much or more renewable energy on-site than was used in the buildings for heating, hot water and electrical appliances. Energy use has been reduced considerably and the remaining demand was designed to be met by a CHP plant fed by locally-produced waste wood. However, this is not currently in operation and so hot water is produced by an eficient gas condensing boiler. Most of the electricity is supplied from the national grid with a proportion of renewable electricity being generated on-site by photovoltaic panels. Government figures show that the UK was responsible for 560.7m tonnes of UK CO2 in 20051 (This figure excludes international aviation, shipping and Britons impact abroad (foreign holidays for example). If these sectors are included the estimated total emissions increase to 602.9m tonnes of CO2).

Energy use in the domestic sector accounts for approximately 27% of the total CO2e and although this figure does include embodied energy, the majority is from household energy consumption for appliances, lighting, cooking, heating and hot water. Household energy consumption is increasing by 1.5% per year and will need to fall by 2.4% per year to deliver the UKs target of an 80% reduction in emissions by 20504. Defra also reports that although energy eficiency has historically improved by 1% per year, over the next decade household energy consumption is expected to increase by 2% per year resulting in no net reduction in emissions. The UKs Climate Change Act sets a legally binding target to reduce CO2e emissions by 80%, compared to 1990 levels, by 2050. As it is impossible to achieve this reduction in all sections of our COfootprint transport for example we need to go much further with our housing stock and should be aiming for all existing and new buildings to be zero carbon. Electricity consumption BedZED Aim - reduced electrical demand: Homes fitted with energy eficient appliances: - 20 watt compact fluorescent light bulb - A-rated fridge/ freezer and washing machine Visible meters (Photo 5) to make residents more aware of consumption Good daylight design reducing the need for electric lighting Passive ventilation removing the need for electric ventilation or fans Aerated showers, removing need for power showers

Electricity consumption / person / day Consumption ranges from: 1.1 kWh/ person/ day (a family of five in a 4-bed) to 10.9 kWh/ person/ day (a single person living in a converted workspace which is on the north side of a terrace, who sometimes works from home). This compares to monitored electricity consumption for 72 BedZED dwellings in 20031 of 3.0 kWh/ person/ day. However, in 2003 the electricity consumption was taken from the meter readings and then estimated to exclude the use of temporary space heaters and immersion heaters (this was included in the figures for heat consumption). This was because of delayed commissioning of the CHP which meant that residents were using some electricity for space and water heating. The 2007 results are for all metered electricity which does include some use of electric space heating (see the chapter on Thermal Demand) and emergency use of the immersion when the district heating system was out of action. Therefore the results are not directly comparable. The average electricity consumption at the meter point per customer in Sutton is 4,652 kWh/ year2, with an average of 2.3 people per dwelling in Sutton3, this equates to 5.5 kWh/ person/ day. So the BedZED average of 3.4 kWh/ person/ day for 2007 is 38% lower than the Sutton average. Electricity consumption / dwelling / year In 2007 at BedZED, consumption ranged from 721 kWh (a single person living in 1-bed flat) to 5790 kWh (a family of three living in a 4-bed house). Even the highest electricity consumer is lower than Arups predicted worst-case scenario of 6137 kWh4. The BedZED average of 2,579 kWh/ dwelling/ year at the meter point compares to a Sutton average of 4,652 kWh/ dwelling/ year5, a decrease of 45%. However, the average number of people per dwelling at BedZED is also slightly lower than the Sutton average. The UK average is 4,457 kWh.

Thermal Demand BedZED aim reduced thermal demand:

Passive solar gain; dwellings face south with triple-storey conservatories (sun spaces) Super insulation; 300mm insulation jacket around each terrace 2 skins of double-glazing to south elevation and triple-glazing for all other elevations

Thermal mass provided by dense concrete blockwork and concrete floor slabs and exposed radiant surfaces to aid heat absorption Passive ventilation with heat recovery Reduced flow taps and showers Visible hot water meter

Ecological footprint of housing This includes the energy used in a home as well as the area it occupies and a share of construction, maintenance, rentals and estate agency services. BedZED residents use an average of 0.77 global hectares (16% of total ecological footprint) for housing compared to a Sutton average of 1.33 global hectares (25% of total ecological footprint) and this reflects lower energy consumption. It is likely that BedZED residents ecological footprint for housing is even lower than this but it was not possible to account accurately for a smaller land area per dwelling at BedZED compared to the baseline using the REAP tool. Thermal comfort and air quality BedZED homes should not fall below 18oC while they are occupied, as suficient heat is provided by passive solar gain, human activity and appliances, and residual heat from the hot water cylinder and heated towel rail. If a home is unoccupied the temperature may drop below 18oC, in which case a trickle heat source is automatically activated. Additional heating and cooling Results from the questionnaire indicate that 39% of households do use electric fans, on occasion for between one and two months of the year. 42% use some additional electric heating, on average during the coldest two months of the year. This does not imply that residents are using fans/ heaters consistently during that time it could be only for an hour or two on the very hottest/ coldest days of the year. Furthermore, the low electricity consumption indicates that this is not happening to anygreat extent. Internal temperature We asked the residents to rate the temperature of their homes in summer and winter from 1 (too cold) to 7 (too hot). Responses show that the majority of homes have a comfortable temperature in the winter, with 84% of households giving a rating of 3, 4 or 5 and 44% say it is just right.

Zero-heating homes One result of applying energy grading at BedZED was to question the need for conventional room space heating, in which a system is simply sized to provide comfort, with regulation minimum thermal insulation. Yet many buildings have internal heat gains from people and their activities. So why not size the insulation, with thermal mass heat storage, so that this heat is sufficient to provide space heating through day and night, thus avoiding the need for any conventional heating? As the UK Building Regulations have increased thermal insulation minimum standards, so the proportion of the year when heating is needed has shortened. Yet the system cost does not reduce in proportion. So - what level of insulation will completely eliminate the heating system and hence reap a capital cost dividend?

Building physics The design aim was to reap these cost and energy dividends by fully exploiting the building envelope and fabric as primary modifiers of the indoor climate, to the point where complete mechanical systems could be omitted. For UK mainstream housing this early design analysis time is rare because the industry tends to work to rigid perceptions of market expectations. At BedZED the project team was committed to demonstrate the viability of the principles even before land purchase. As is often the case, much complex analysis was needed to demonstrate that such a simple solution is achievable. In thermal analysis terms the availability of heat from occupants, appliances, cooking, washing, and solar heat is highly variable both in timing and quantity. There are other parameters, too, like the extent of glazing: at times it can contribute useful solar heat, yet be the largest heat loss component. Also, steady-state building energy flows do not necessarily represent reality. Low-grade heat will take time to pass through a thick wall during which external influencing conditions will change, often to the extent that the heat may not pass through at all, but instead reverse its flow. Adjusting the thermal capacity and thermal insulation characteristics of materials and energy transfer mechanisms can significantly affect what happens to the energy and whether it can then be reused. Many of the construction industrys usual materials, with their significant thermal inertia, can give significantly different results from steady-state theory. Dynamic thermal analytical and simulation tools, plus real weather data sequences, established the material performance and building massing needed for the zero-heating homes: the first time, it is believed, that such advanced computer tools - developed over the past 10 years for analysing passive cooling techniques in office buildings - have been used on a major housing project. For BedZED, these were the tools needed to show that normal home heating might be omitted. Super-insulated homes with extensive areas of exposed high thermal capacity materials could thus match heating needs against naturally occurring passive internal and solar heat gains. The analyses revealed several different design worst cases. The very coldest outdoor air temperatures usually relate to clear night skies, which in turn most often relate to daytime solar heat gain. Extended periods of overcast skies are critical, although they normally relate to higher outdoor air temperatures. Different occupant lifestyles are also factors; for example, how much top-up heating makes for the comfort of a newborn child? Then there is the prolonged absence of occupants from home, with their consequent lack of contribution to heat gains. Ensuring room temperatures do not fall when this happens is another critical design case, given the absence of a large heating system to recover temperatures when the occupants return. Terraced blocks work well for reduced overall heat loss, as long as large temperature differences in adjacent homes are avoided. Building envelope airtightness is particularly critical. For the north-facing workspaces they could have lower machine heat gains than a typical office, ie if used as live-work studios, and thus need some supplementary background heating. Computer analysis and simulation can explore solutions to all possible scenarios, allowing the design to pursue the simplicity of passive heating in a robust solution. Sustainable Transport

The Green Transport Plan at BedZED has three strands; to reduce the need to travel, to promote public transport and to ofer alternatives to private car travel. Our aim was to reduce private fossil fuel car mileage to 50% of what would have been expected on a 'conventional' build on the same site. The local average for the London Borough of Sutton was 6,000 miles per person per year.

Transport accounts for 13% of Suttons ecological footprint or 66 global hectares per capita. Despite achieving significant reductions in car journeys at BedZED there is an overall 13% increase to 0.75 global hectares or 16% of the ecological footprint. This is due to air travel which is higher at BedZED than for Sutton as a whole. Car ownership The 2001 census shows that 71% of Sutton households own at least one car, and in Hackbridge (the area around BedZED), our own research2 indicates that 84% of households are car owners. At BedZED it is significantly lower at 59%. This may be partially explained by the diferent proportion of tenure at BedZED compared to Sutton as a whole. At BedZED 83% of owner-occupied households own a car compared to 47% for social housing, 43% for shared ownership and 0% for households that are privately renting. It is likely that tenure is a more important influence on car ownership than any environmental imperative. Of the 71 households we questioned, four households own two cars, 38 own one car and 29 do not own a car. Average car ownership is 0.6 vehicles per household, significantly lower than the Sutton average of 1.6 cars per household. The average for owner occupiers is 0.9, still far lower than the norm, and the average for social housing tenants is 0.5. The 2003 monitoring also indicated average car ownership of 0.6 vehicles per household. The role social housing plays in reducing car ownership was recognised in the Green Transport Plan At least 15 homes at BedZED will be allocated for social housing. Car ownership amongst social housing residents is 50% lower than the average levels in Sutton. The standard allocation of 19.5 spaces for the social housing units can therefore be reduced by 50% to ten spaces.3 Car ownership by type of vehicle (as that households main vehicle) is as follows: Average UK petrol 31 households Average UK diesel nine households Ultra-eficient petrol one household 4x4 one household Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) no households Electric no households

It is significant that none of the households surveyed owned an electric vehicle despite the provision of free green electricity from the photovoltaic panels essentially free fuel and reduced car parking costs. At BedZED, residents pay 220 per year (2007) for a car parking space. The charge was intended to make car ownership less attractive but it is very unpopular with residents, as are the clampers in operation. Some residents choose to park for free on the streets surrounding BedZED, which in turn is unpopular with the residents of those streets. Distance travelled by car

Residents found it dificult to estimate car mileage and so the results may be inaccurate. From the questionnaire we have estimated that on average, BedZED households travel 3,708 kilometres (2,304 miles) per year by car. We did not ask how many passengers were in the car for each journey and so it is dificult to compare the findings to other studies, many of which look at vehicle kilometres per passenger. Furthermore, we are not convinced that passenger kilometres are as significant as car ownership and vehicle kilometres; by the former method, if a car transports two people rather than one then the emissions per person are halved, even if the passenger would otherwise have travelled by train, or not travelled at all! However, national car occupancy is estimated to be 1.6 people per vehicle and if we assume the same, this equates to 2,318 vehicle km/ person at BedZED, 64% lower than the national average of 6,344 km1/ year. However, we do not know how much of this reduction can be attributed to location and tenure, and how much to resident eforts to live sustainably. Simon Corbeys 2004 monitoring indicated vehicle mileage to be 3,665 miles (5,898 km) per year but this figure includes business travel which we did not account for in our 2007 monitoring (because it is not included in the personal transport category of the REAP ecological footprint). The 2003 monitoring returned a result of 2,061 miles (3,318 km)/ person/ year. Travel to work Only 17% of BedZED residents travel to work by car (or any motor vehicle), significantly lower than the Sutton average of 49%2 and the Hackbridge average of 43%3. Car club BedZED hosted Londons first car club which is provided by City Car Club. Car club members share the use of a locally based fleet of vehicles. Use of the vehicles is charged on a pay-as-you-drive basis, so members avoid the high overhead costs which encourage car owners to use their car as a default option. Car club members typically halve their annual car mileage, transferring trips to public transport, walking and cycling. Experience shows that one car club vehicle replaces four to six privately owned vehicles. Nine of the 71 households surveyed have car-club membership. Of those nine, only two households owned a car, far lower car ownership than for BedZED as a whole. This indicates that car clubs do help to reduce car ownership. Three car-share vehicles at BedZED are provided by City Car Club and currently each car is used for about four hours per day on average (based on a seven day week), sometimes more. There are 31 members with an SM6 postcode (Hackbridge). 25 are in BedZED and six near by. Bicycles Bicycle ownership and storage 49% of the residents we interviewed owned a bi-cycle. Although BedZED homes are designed with space to store a bicycle indoors and have Shefield stands and metal rings on the outdoor walls to lock bicycles to, there is clearly a need for more secure bike storage (this was a frequent comment in Peabodys 2004 Resident Satisfaction Survey1). The 2007 questionnaire shows that residents do not use the Shefield stands and only one person uses the metal rings in the walkway. 80% of bicycle owners at BedZED use their sunspace or flat for bicycle storage. Peabody has committed to consulting residents about cycle storage options. Air travel

This was relatively easy to calculate and should be accurate. We asked the residents to list the start and end points of all the plane trips they had taken (excluding work travel) and then calculated the distances. We found that BedZED residents travel more by air than the average UK resident, though this is not surprising as this is true of Londoners generally. In one year the average BedZED resident flew 10,063 kilometres, roughly a return flight to New York, or three return flights to Spain each. While 27 households didnt fly at all over the year, 44 households totalled 714,504 kilometres, a massive 16,239 kilometres each.

The owner-occupiers flew the most and the social housing tenants the least. But even the social tenants at 3,567 kilometres/ person/ year, are a little over the Sutton average (REAP) of 3,321 km/ year. We estimate that the average of 10,063 kilometres/ year equates to 1.9 tonnes of CO2 2. However, the actual global warming potential is likely to be much worse, as the actual climate change impact of the flights could be 2.5-4 times larger than this due to the emission of water vapour and the altitudes at which gases are emitted. If we aim for an 80% reduction in CO2 globally by 2050, and split our global allowance equitably among the global population, that gives us 1.1 ton nes of CO each. The CO emitted by BedZED residents for flights already exceeds this.

A green transport plan promotes walking, cycling and use of public transport. BedZED has good public transport links, including two railway stations, two bus routes and a tramlink. BedZED was the first low car development in the UK to incorporate a car club. A 'pedestrian first' policy with good lighting, drop kerbs for prams and wheelchairs and a road layout that keeps vehicles to walking speed. The BedZED project introduced the first legally binding Green Transport Plan as a condition of planning permission. On-site charging points for electric cars are available in Sutton town centre. BedZED is accessible from the east side of London Road (A237), opposite New Road, approximately 500 metres north of Hackbridge station. Because of BedZED's low-energy-emission concept, cars are discouraged; the project encourages public transport, cycling, and walking, and has limited parking space. The development is within about five minutes walk of Hackbridge station, which services trains from London Victoria and St Pancras International via London Blackfriars. There is a Tramlink service from Croydon or Wimbledon to Mitcham Junction station, which is within 15 minutes walk of BedZED. BedZED is serviced by the 127 bus on the PurleyTooting route, via Wallington railway station and Hackbridge. Building massing and orientation One analysis result was to recommend distinctly different orientations for the varying building uses of homes and workspaces. The latter have potentially high occupancy levels and office machine heat gains which, added to solar gain, can at times give too high a room temperature and prompt a need for summer supplementary mechanical cooling. These spaces are thus best orientated north; maximising natural daylight, reducing the need for daytime artificial lighting, and avoiding excess solar heat gain. The high thermal inertia room surfaces mean that workspaces can easily accept institutional standards of office equipment heat gain, and maintain peak summer comfort conditions using only passive cooling plus cool night natural ventilation. Homes, on the

other hand, have less occupancy density and less internal heat gains, so by facing south, gain useful benefit from supplementary solar heat gain. The thermal inertia coupled with cool night ventilation also keep summer room temperatures low enough when otherwise well-insulated homes would need mechanical cooling to avoid overheating. Bio-fuelled combined heat and power (CHP). Renewable energy Wood-fuelled combined heat & power (CHP) The energy demands of BedZED are dramatically reduced compared to an equivalent conventional development. This reduction should make it realistic to consider small-scale, on-site energy generation. At BedZED, the chosen solution was a biomass CHP plant designed, installed and operated by Exus Energy Ltd (formerly B9 Energy Biomass Ltd). This decision was partly influenced by BioRegionals intention to set up a local operation for processing urban tree surgery waste. The technology is based on downdraft gasification; the process is detailed in the next paragraph. When the CHP is working, woodchips are fed automatically from a storage area into the drier, which uses waste heat from the engine. Chips are then fed into the gasifier where they are heated in a restricted flow of air, which converts them into a combustible gas (gasification). This wood gas contains hydrogen, carbon monoxide and methane as well as non-combustible COand nitrogen. The gas is then cleaned, cooled, mixed with air and fed into a spark ignition engine. The engine shaft is coupled to a generator, which produces electricity. When fully operational the CHP is designed to provide 100% of the net electrical load for BedZEDs buildings. Waste heat from the engine jacket and exhaust is tapped by heat exchangers and aims to provide all the hot water and heating needs for BedZED. BedZEDs design reduces space heating by 88% (2003 monitoring), so the CHP mainly supplies hot water for washing, for which daily total demand is relatively constant throughout the year. However, across each day the hot water demand fluctuates greatly, so heat storage of some form is needed. This is provided in a simple cost-efective way by large domestic hot water cylinders in each dwelling and workspace so that the CHP can continuously trickle-charge them. The demand fluctuations are again smoothed out by the sites mixed use from homes and ofices. The peak site hot water demand is designed to match the peak CHP heat output, so avoiding the cost of a peak load boiler plant. The CHP heat distribution pipework is sized to need low pumping energy. Hot water cylinder immersion heaters provide a hot water standby facility. BedZEDs prototype CHP unit was designed to be fully automated, with un-manned start up and shut down and strict, automatically controlled operating parameters. The plant is designed to run 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, although at BedZED it ran for 18 hours per day due to noise restrictions of 37dBA at 20m. To reduce noise the engine was enclosed in an acoustic room with silencers on the exhaust and other connections. The acoustic design was tailored to the particular frequency bands that the plant emits. However, on paper it was not possible to meet the stricter noise level requirement that applies between 01.00 am and 04.00 am, so the BedZED CHP was designed to automatically switch of at these times. In practice, noise from the CHP is very low and there have been no complaints. The plant is equipped with automatic de-ashing. Ideally, weekly attendances are required for receiving woodchip deliveries, checking and filling oil and water levels, and scheduled maintenance should be carried out on a quarterly basis. However, in practice the BedZED CHP required full time manning with frequent downtime for equipment modifications. The main technical problems with the CHP were as follows: the design of new, untested equipment such as the automatic ash removal, reliability of some equipment that needed to operate continuously, such as the woodchip grabber and slide valves, tar condensing from the wood gas, exacerbated by cooling of the plant when shut of at night.

In addition to the technical issues Exus Energy, who operated the CHP on a turn-key contract, ceased trading and the future of the company is uncertain. BedZED helped to pioneer small-scale biomass gasifying CHP in the UK. However the operating costs of these systems still remain high, and have played a part in the BedZED CHP being decommissioned. Peabody is now working with BioRegional, BDa ZEDfactory, Energy Savings Trust and Building Research Establishment to identify a replacement to the CHP unit. There have been advancements in this technology and Peabody is keen to replace this system with a tried and tested system that will maintain the commitment to a zero carbon development. The earliest concepts for BedZED centred on the idea of home energy autonomy, with each dwelling operating solely on the ambient energy it could harvest from its own site. This led to the energyconsuming systems in the dwelling being reduced enough to match the energy harvested from solar via PV, thermal collectors, and a small wind turbine. However, in cost terms this was not viable within current cost yardsticks and so the thinking turned to wider local community autonomy, eventually identifying bio-fuelled CHP as a potential solution. A key element of sustainability and its resource productivity is finding waste streams and using them as raw materials. An existing local community waste stream was identified in the form of urban tree waste. Tree prunings had previously been consigned to landfill by the local authority, but the increasing landfill tax made them an ideal alternative low cost energy source. Its origin from trees also gave renewable credentials to this waste, with the carbon emitted from combustion being re-absorbed by the continued tree growth. A proprietary gasifier system converts woodchip into a wood-gas suitable for fuelling the CHPs spark ignition engine. Establishing capital cost viability for small-scale CHP is at best difficult, but for a prototype bio-fuelled version is even more challenging because the gasifier fuel treatment system all but doubles its cost until such time as it can be mass-produced. Consequently, the aim was to roughly halve the buildings energy demand, so reducing the plant size needed and making bio-fuelled CHP viable. The mix of building uses with their diversified overall demand peaks also helped. Likewise, the elimination of fans and pumps, and the use of EU A rated domestic appliances, low -energy compact fluorescent luminaries, and meters visible to the consumers, were all aspects of reducing electrical energy demand. The design identified other capital costs to help fund the CHP. As well the 100 or so gas-fired boilers normal for a project of this size, also omitted were radiator systems in the dwellings and the piped mains gas connections. Similarly the passive building design for non-domestic uses helped reduce mechanical and electrical fitout costs. The need for the boilers normally provided alongside CHP to cope with peaks of winter heating demand was also eliminated by reducing these peaks enough for heat demand to match the CHP peak heat output. The Grid electricity import/export connection is used as a cost-effective alternative to conventional standby boiler plant. Thus, the total heat and domestic hot water demand is met by a CHP unit sized to match the annual BedZED electricity demand.

Heat recovery wind cowls The wind cowl ventilation system illustrates the application of energy-grading. Conventionally, much highgrade fan and pump electricity is consumed to deliver low-grade energy for room comfort temperature control and ventilation. This tends to be significant because these systems run for extended operating periods. Nonetheless, as building envelopes become more airtight to reduce uncontrolled heat-loss, then provision of controlled minimum ventilation becomes particularly important. Fresh air provision is needed plus removal of condensation moisture from kitchens and bathrooms, toilet smells, and kitchen fumes. The UK Building Regulations permit ventilation fans to be eliminated if trickle ventilators and passive stack extract vents are provided. However, introducing unheated winter fresh air via window trickle vents would require heating to be reinstated in each room. At BedZED the wind cowl system was developed to deliver preheated fresh air to each home and extract its vitiated air, complete with heat recovery from the extracted ventilation air. The BedZED wind cowls crown some 10 years of Arup development work on harnessing low velocity wind, and are the first to introduce heat recovery using wind power, with both positive and negative wind pressure used to deliver supply air and extract vitiated air. They also generate enough pressure for the air to be ducted down into the building, delivering their preheated air to each living room and bedroom, and extracting air from each kitchen, bathroom, and toilet. The cowl was designed from first principles, tested, and then refined in a wind tunnel at full scale. A specialist test method was developed to permit the ventilation airflow and pressure characteristics to be quantified. This allowed the cowl to achieve a certifiable ventilation and heat recovery performance, and hence the omission of all ventilation fans, trickle vents, electrics, controls, and fresh air heating in the homes, thus providing a system using only renewable energy. Photovoltaics At BedZED there are 777m2 of photovoltaic panels, made up of 1,138 laminates, on the roof tops and in south facing second floor windows. They were originally intended to power 40 electric vehicles (the ten year target). However, uptake of electric vehicles is much slower than hoped and there are only two electric vehicles onsite, belonging to BDa ZEDfactory, BedZEDs architects. Currently the electricity they produce is used by the site as a whole, with any surplus supplied to the grid. The total size of the array is 108kWp and BP Solar estimated that they would provide 88,000 kWh of electricity per annum. BP Solars estimate accounts for 30% of the whole site consumption (estimated at 297,000 kWh2). As previous readings of the PV display use have been lower than this, and because the output display board is no longer working, for the CO calculations we have assumed a 20% contribution from PV. More monitoring is needed of the eficiency of solar power at BedZED. For six months in 2006, metering company Pilot Systems monitored import and export electricity for BedZED, shown in table 8. As the CHP was not in use at this time, the exported electricity is all from PV. From this we can estimate annual net grid electricity consumption at 235,703 kWh although it is not possible to estimate PV output as the proportion used on-site, prior to the surplus being exported, is not measured. For the same reason we can not estimate net site consumption of grid and PV electricity. However, if we do assume total consumption at 297,000 kWh, then the PV electricity can be estimated at 20%. However, the readings in table 8 below are from the sunniest half of the year and so the 12 month equivalent figure is likely to be lower, but conversely, there were periods when the PV were not exporting at all, due to a technical fault, and so the 6 month total could, in the future, be much higher. PV for powering the buildings was originally discarded because its capital cost is too high to recover through savings in relatively cheap mains electricity. Nonetheless, the buildings were still future-proofed to accept solar collectors on their southern faades in anticipation of when PV costs reduce. Subsequently the opportunity of EU demonstration grants arose. Given that the buildings were already carbon neutral with the bio-fuelled CHP, this prompted detailed study of BedZED occupants likely lifestyle eco -footprint, and from that the significant carbon emissions due to transport fossil fuel. Further investigations confirmed the significant higher cost per

kWh of UK petrol compared to grid electricity, together with the inherent higher efficiency of electric vehicles, giving clear running cost benefits from electric cars. With 95% of all urban journeys less than 40km - well within the range of electric cars - this presented the opportunity for building-mounted PV to power electric zero carbon emissions urban-use cars. Whereas PV providing electrical power to buildings had a payback of around 75 years, using it instead of the high-taxed petrol reduced this to approximately 13 years. With EU/UK grants equating to 50% of capital cost, the theoretical payback period went down to just 6.5 years. 1 07kWp of PV has been integrated into the south-facing BedZED faades, sufficient for 40 electric cars. Charging points have been installed and occupants can have free parking and charging if they use electric cars. Now BedZED is occupied, environmental consultant BioRegional Developments has started a car hire scheme, with plans to expand with electric cars (which also are exempt from the new central London Congestion Charge). The use of solar power for electric cars effectively changes BedZED from being just carbon-neutral into a net exporter of renewable energy. Perhaps this is the future for our buildings. Water Clean water is increasingly seen as a finite natural resource even in the UK climate. Increasing demand highlights the large resource needed to deliver clean water without waste and then transport and treat the resulting discharges. BedZED seeks to reduce treated potable water demand by more than 50% and then treat the effluent on site with less resources used and the water available for recycling. Various good practice measures have been incorporated, including restrictors to prevent excess flows, mains pressure showers to avoid power-showers, meters visible to consumers, EU A grade water -consuming appliances, and very low/dual flush toilets. Rainwater is collected from roof surfaces and stored in underground tanks for irrigation and toilet flushing. An ecological on-site foul water treatment system was added to the development after a statutory water authority agreed that it would adopt and operate the completed system. This uses vegetation as a cleaning agent in the secondary and tertiary treatment stages, partly because of its low energy consumption. The system treats the water to a high enough standard for it to feed recycled green water as a supplementary feed into the rainwater storage tanks. Surface water runoff is handled using SuDS (sustainable drainage system) principles for surfaces where there may be slight contamination by cars, animals, or garden treatments. Use of permeable hard surfaces, foundation filter media for cleaning any contamination, and site water holding features avoids draining surface water into the local sewers. Instead the rainwater slowly soaks into the ground and local water-courses, as would be the case had there been no buildings on the site. BedZED Aim - reduced mains-water demand: Homes fitted with water-saving appliances: - Dual flush 2/4 litre flush toilet - Reduced flow taps and shower head (basin taps: 3 litres/ minute and shower 11 litres/ minute1) Visible meters to make residents more aware of consumption. Water treatment systems BedZEDs Green Water Treatment Plant GWTP (Photo 8) was designed to clean all of the sites wastewater so that the resulting Green Water efluent could be reused to flush toilets and irrigate gardens, reducing mains water demand. This combined with rain water harvesting has saved another 15 litres of mains water per person per day. Rainwater harvesting has worked well, but the costs associated with operating and maintaining the GWTP could not justify its continued operation on a commercial basis. The plant also uses more energy than conventional sewerage and sewage treatment services. For these reasons, the plant is no longer in use, though it has been useful for research purposes. BedZED Wastewater Reclamation Plant BedZED is again using recycled water and now hosts the UKs first membrane bioreactor (MBR) for recycling waste water for non-potable domestic use (toilet flushing and irrigation). This has been introduced by Thames

Water and Peabody as a three year research project to look into options for using on-site treatment to augment water supply for London, and in part to ascertain if the running and energy costs of on-site water treatment systems can be reduced. The MBR started operating in June 2008, and now processes wastewater from all of the buildings on-site. Thames Water will be chlorinating the output of their MBR plant which is collected in storage tanks below the BedZED blocks before it is pumped to flush toilets. Although the rainwater is not currently being re-used onsite, it is reverting to the groundwater via soakaway, and this is far better than entering the sewerage system for unnecessary cleaning which is what could happen on a conventional development. Future for on-site water treatment at BedZED Currently on-site water treatment is not environ-mentally or financially sustainable. Level six of the Code for Sustainable Homes demands no more than 80 litres of mains water/ resident/ day and this is very dificult to achieve with water eficiency alone some augmentation of mains water supply is also needed to meet Level six. The original treatment plant at BedZED used more energy than conventional sewerage and so the environmental benefit is compromised. We do not yet know what the energy use of the MBR will be. Currently, the law only allows water companies to recycle sewage at a local level if it is chemically treated. It would be preferable to find an environmentally safe way that does not resort to chemicals. On-site water treatment is not currently cost efective (though again, the MBR may prove otherwise). The current price of water generates insuficient income to meet the cost of sewage treatment in small-scale plants and is unsustainable on grounds of energy consumption even before the capital cost is considered. There is no dispensation for making emergency only use of the existing infrastructure, and so there is no cost saving for developers using on-site treatment systems. As water scarcity increases, we will be forced to use more energy intensive methods to recover water. Ironically, the impacts of climate change on water availability may force us to increase the energy consumption of our water systems. As our monitoring shows an average total water consumption of 87 litres/ person/ day, it does seem like an unnecessary expenditure of money and energy to use water treatment systems to get down to the 80 litres required for Level six of the Code for Sustainable Homes. However, where rainwater harvesting is practical, and the risk of ecoli manageable, this does seem like a sensible option. A real success here at BedZED is that by fitting fairly standard, afordable water-saving fittings and with minimal behavioural change, BedZED residents have reduced consumption to 87 litres/ person/ day. Replacing Appliances Much of the water and energy savings at BedZED can be attributed to eficient appliances, so it is important that residents choose eficient replacements as appliances wear out. 13% of households have replaced appliances or fittings including white goods, taps and light fittings, and of those only one household said they did not specifically choose a water/ energy eficient replacement. Waste BedZED aim 60% recycling rate by weight of waste (including green waste). In theory 70% of the current waste stream is recyclable or compostable so a 60% rate of diversion from landfill should be possible at BedZED using the existing infrastructure. Waste Strategy at BedZED The aim was to have a kerbside waste and recycling service but the London Borough of Sutton could not ofer this. Instead BedZED has bins for diferent materials around the perimeter of the site as follows (provided by Sutton Council unless otherwise stated): Mixed dry recyclables (paper, card, steel and aluminium cans) Glass (separate bins for green, clear and brown glass) Waste White paper recycling bin (provided by Loop Recycling and BioRegional) Compost bins (provided by the residents association)

As kitchen and garden waste is bulky and comprises 42% of the waste stream by weight in the UK, it is desirable that it is treated on-site rather than being collected by the local authority.This would save energy in transportation and reduce the volume of material to be processed by the councils waste contractors. Resident volunteers turn the compost and add dry matter such as shredded paper when necessary. They bag it up when it is ready and distribute it back to the residents for use in their gardens or on the communal allotment site. BedZED kitchens come equipped with divided bins, allowing residents to easily separate and dispose of waste. The BedZED Residents Manual, Section E, provides contacts for recycling or reusing other items that are not collected regularly by the council such as bulky household items, paint, engine oil and foil. Additionally the Residents Association has regularly provided guidance on what can or cannot be recycled, through its e-newsletter and through leaflets distributed door to door. Materials Sourcing materials is where the construction industry still has most progress to make to reduce its environmental impact, requiring co-operation and working practice changes right along the supply and procurement chain. This is the area most difficult for designers to influence, as they are expected to take and use the products already available on the market. Locating reused and secondary material sources, establishing their provenance, and guaranteeing their performance is currently difficult, requiring significant manpower resources. On previous projects with Dunster, almost 80% use of secondary materials had been achieved, but limited time and cost meant more modest levels at BedZED. Nonetheless, there was considerable success. Most existing site material was retained there, whilst much of the heavier building materials was sourced within a 55km radius to reduce transport impact and allow source checking. Reused structural steel was used in the workspace framing structure, and reclaimed timber for internal partition studwork. Materials with a recognized environmental standard, like Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified wood, was used extensively. Kitchens units are of plywood from a checked source, instead of the normal chipboard. Waste was addressed both at construction and for the buildings in-use. Building waste was segregated on site and sent for recycling. For the homes, a domestic segregation strategy was agreed with the local authority, with segregation bins provided in all kitchens and around the site for local authority collection. There is on-site processing of green waste. Identifying and recording the full extent of the building materials environmental impact and the amount of consumer waste recycled forms part of an on-going research programme. Information and communications technology (ICT) BedZED was designed to take full advantage of ICT. The ability to access knowledge and communicate it will define future successful communities, with the Internet starting to become the primary means to identify services, and gain community information. Access to Broadband is available to all BedZED occupants, giving them the potential of almost instantaneous Internet access as well as the option of being permanently on-line. This complements BedZEDs live/work objectives, as well as allowing the growth of community -related services providers. The ICT cable routes are intended to be fully rewireable so they can respond to future changing requirements. A clear distinction has been made between ICT for occupants use and for the general operation of the buildings. ICT by its nature is rapidly developing, and equipment procured today can be expected to be obsolete within five years. This is completely at odds with buildings, which are intended to function and last with minimum maintenance and renewal for many decades. In addition, occupants tend to prefer buildings that are simple and easy to operate, without needing to understand computer protocols or requiring sophisticated technical backup. Thus in almost all day-to-day use of their buildings, occupants are in manual control, ie opening windows, without any computerized automatic controls. Not only does this complement

the passive building design, but also it is highly cost-effective. For selected site central management functions, however, a computer-based system allows such functions as remote reading and billing of electricity, heat, and water meters, etc. Feedback A demonstration project should be a source of useful feedback and BedZED is already providing much, a good deal of it to be published. Peabody is overseeing more than 20 BedZED-related research projects, so a significant amount of information is expected over the next few years. Much of this is related to lifestyles, and monitoring how the occupants settle in, use and develop the facilities provided. The first period of monitoring has already shown that compared with current UK benchmarks: Hot water heating is about 45% less. Electricity for lighting, cooking, and all appliances is 55% less. Water consumption is about 60% less. During construction a constant challenge was to achieve a consistently high build quality. The results are considerably better than current UK benchmarks, and demonstrate that general industry improvement is achievable. They highlighted that specific effort is needed in certain areas, notably site supervision and training for the many smaller sub-contractors upon which the industry depends. The nature and structure of the industry means that explaining the thinking behind innovation is difficult to pass down the supply chain. The need to achieve high levels of building envelope airtightness is a particularly important example of this. The implications of potential remedial works costs and supplementary energy use far exceed the small effort needed to get it right at the appropriate stage of the construction process. It is interesting that since BedZED, the UK Building Regulations have been revised in an attempt to start to address this airtightness issue for first time. The availability of skilled site staff for construction, and particularly housing, is another wider issue for the UK industry. There has been low take-up of local labour training initiatives; perceptions of construction are at odds with the aspirations of our younger generations. Much of this points towards a future of off-site manufacturing where skills and training, materials and waste handling, and efficiency can be better provided. This is an area where Arup is now deeply involved with Peabody, with the development of factory prefabrication, volumetric housing, and the manufacture of completed building sections ready for simple finally assembly on site. The BedZED tendered build costs were based on Peabodys budget for good quality social housing on brownfield sites in London. On top of the basic build price there were costs related to extra project staff training, management, supervision, and quality control. There were also one-off innovation costs related to design research, materials sourcing and establishing their environmental impact, establishing quality control methods for recycled materials and non-standard components, obtaining the associated statutory approvals, and the added programming time this needed. On site, particular care and effort were needed to ensure that the complete construction sequence was fully thought through in advance. All the sub-contractors needed proper briefing on the work methods needed to avoid substandard workmanship, thereby attracting high remedial costs. Demand for the BedZED homes has been exceptional. The level of early enquiries was so high that Peabody felt confident enough to hold back until purchasers could see the finished buildings, instead of selling from the drawings. This interest has continued to increase so that the homes command a significant premium above market rates. There is a long waiting list for people wanting a BedZED-type home with supply being largely constrained by the difficulty of securing new sites. The most frequent reason given for wanting to live at BedZED is the modern green lifestyle (63% of occupant survey respondees), with innovative design coming a close second (61%). Popular design features include the sunspace, the gardens, and the sense of space in the homes. The wider interest and response to BedZED to date has been very positive with:

 weekly organized guided site tours over-subscribed, reflecting high interest from other building professionals and building procurers extensive media coverage growing demand from building clients and building procurers to explore the poten tial of sustainability for them local authority planners seeking help in understanding what practical sustainability benchmarks they can request more widely as part of the building planning permission process. Planners already have a Local Agenda 21 obligation to progress sustainability on behalf of the local community. key developers beginning to recognize the edge that offering sustainability gives them when purchasing land to build on and in assisting with planning approvals. Conclusion BedZED seeks to offer its occupants the opportunity to live and work with a completely carbon-neutral lifestyle, making this choice attractive, cost-effective, and appropriate to modern living. It offers solutions to many sustainability lifestyle issues in a practical and replicable way. One key reason for embarking on the BedZED project was to demonstrate to a sceptical industry how sustainability is possible and can be cost-effective, and how we can really make a difference for society and its future. There is inherently considerable industry inertia to change and improvement. It is through delivering successfully examples like BedZED and proving there is market demand for this kind of product that mainstream developers and construction participants will feel they can seriously take steps towards a more sustainable world. It requires innovation, a strong belief, considerable time input, and the dedication of the complete project team to show how this can be achieved.

References: [1] http://www.oneplanetcommunities.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/BedZED-seven-years-on-low-res-final.pdf [2] http://www.arup.com/_assets/_download/download68.pdf [3] http://www.energy-cities.eu/IMG/pdf/Sustainable_Districts_ADEME1_BedZed.pdf [4] http://www.hkip.org.hk/plcc/download/UK.pdf