Wednesday 07 October 2009
An important focus for the design team has been to make sure that the new buildings make appropriate use of energy-efficient technologies. This is intended to make the buildings cheaper to run, and to reduce their predicted carbon emissions, which involves extracting energy from a renewable source instead of from fossil fuels such as gas, coal or oil.
Many people associate renewable technology with bolt on features such as photo-voltaic panels and wind turbines, but these are not the only solutions and are not always the most cost effective. With so many options for renewable energy sources, finding the solution which delivered the right energy savings within the budget available was a challenge for energy consultants Ashmount Consulting Engineers.
After considering the various alternatives, the design team opted for a super-efficient air source heat pump to provide most of the heating to the new sixth form block. This is a system where solar energy stored in the air is transferred into the heating system. Compared to a normal gas heating system this heat pump will save at least 3256 kg of CO2 every year. This equates to a 10.88% reduction of CO2. While a normal gas heating system would operate at an efficiency of 86%, the air source heat pump has an efficiency of 321%. It also allows for a more controllable heating environment.
The local authority requirements are for the building to satisfy a 10% carbon emissions reduction above and beyond building regulations, and so the design meets this requirement. The building is also designed to meet BREEAM 'very good' as required by the Learning Skills Council who are funding the project.
The government’s Renewable Heat Initiative (RHI) will be introduced in 2011, when it is expected that the school will be able to claim feed-in tariffs from the air source renewable system, although this is yet to be confirmed.
