|
Box 7 Reasons for Not Retrofitting
Despite many efforts to promote eco-retrofitting, and its established financial benefits, there
has been little interest or uptake so far.
1
Some of the reasons for this are:
•
Lack of means to overcome the belief that ‘retrofitting costs too much’. Mechanisms
need to be devised to offset the initial design costs of the building with the long-term
economic benefits of green design, such as the proposed sustainability standard.
•
Lack of ‘dark green’ retrofitting and demonstration projects that show people how
sustainable design can provide more quality of life with less negative environmental and
social impacts, at no extra ‘inherent’ cost (given ongoing refurbishments).
•
The ‘indirect’ approach of encouraging business and/or the community to reduce impacts
through market-based or regulatory incentives, rather than through direct design
solutions that address whole systems issues (ie ‘ecology’ as well as the ‘environment’).
•
Lack of public awareness of the issues and potential solutions, such as radical forms
of passive solar design, among all sectors that influence the built environment: clients,
builders, government, designers, tenants, etc.
•
Inadequacy of regulations and incentives to encourage new eco-efficient products,
services or processes to counteract the inertia of business as usual; in particular, the lack
of government support for eco-retrofitting programmes.
•
Fragmentation, segregation and adversarial processes that characterize the building
supply chain, and oppositional structural relationships among designers, builders and
owners that often lead to zero sum outcomes and tradeoffs.
•
Slow adoption of
integrated
design, procurement, construction, commissioning and
management processes (such as partnering and quality-based selection), despite
widespread acceptance of the fact that they can lead to better outcomes.
•
Slow uptake of existing financial mechanisms to reduce the initial costs of retrofitting
design, research and development. The focus of planning and environmental management
has been on measuring, monitoring and mitigating after the design is conceived.
•
Lack of procurement systems to ensure building components (products, materials and
equipment) are green and ‘appropriately’ durable. A design or building is only as good as
its weakest link (eg errors that permit mould to grow can destroy a building).
•
The concept of ‘best practice’ being defined by marginal improvements over standard
buildings (ie a small reduction over the standard can still obtain a high ‘star rating’).
Rating tools currently serve to lock in the non-sustainable prototype.
•
The influence of the
modus vivendi
, or the tendency for builders and designers to want to
continue their customary and comfortable ways of doing things, even when they know
capacity-building in retrofitting could lead to increased profits.
•
Cultural attitudes that favour new buildings, and the cultural belief that design itself is an
added luxury when, in fact, it is a miniscule portion of the cost in the total life cycle of
the building. Design is generally devalued, or even regarded with suspicion.
•
Risk aversion and the perceived lack of client demand, which cause builders and
developers to stick to conventional designs. Light green projects are deemed by the
construction industry to be more marketable, but this has not actually been tested.
•
Subsidies that favour non-renewable resources (eg fossil fuels reportedly receive $9
billion in subsidies in Australia), which enable highly
inefficient
new buildings to be built
and old buildings to continue to operate without improvements.
•
The complex, reductionist, prescriptive and retrospective orientation of building codes,
assessment and rating tools, which currently favour new construction over retrofitting,
and the failure of planning to consider the ongoing costs of existing development
generally.
285
Boxes
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
