News

Mayor announces start of a groundbreaking programme to green London's public buildings

February 28, 2008

The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, today announced the start of a groundbreaking programme to cut carbon emissions from London's buildings. World leading energy service companies Dalkia and Honeywell have been selected to help cut energy use in Greater London Authority buildings by 25 per cent and the Mayor will now launch a procurement process to let every public sector organisation in London benefit from the same deal.

London is the first city in the world to have completed the municipal tender process and appointed a company following a deal developed by the Clinton Climate Initiative for the C40 group of cities at the New York Large Cities Climate Summit in May 2007. The Mayor will also be working with the Clinton Climate Initiative to sign up private sector businesses to green their buildings.

The innovative programme sees energy service companies guarantee a set level of energy savings - and therefore also financial saving - over a period of years, creating a guaranteed future income stream to fund investment in improvements such as insulation, energy efficient building management technology, and low carbon heating and cooling equipment. This will help to address the fact that much of London's and other major cities public building stock is poorly insulated and uses older, energy inefficient technology to heat and cool them.

Unlike traditional public building improvement programmes, under the C40 scheme a whole group of buildings are offered up for retrofitting in one go, allowing energy services companies to achieve economies of scale and invest in more expensive, long-term infrastructure, such as decentralised energy supply, out of the savings from cheaper, quicker measures. As part of the Clinton Climate Initiative, London is also working with the C40 cities to help progress the wider introduction of new technologies whilst reducing the cost of current low energy and carbon technology by buying in bulk through joint procurement.

Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, said: ‘Today marks the start of the transformation of London’s buildings from the major source of carbon emissions in the city, to a beacon of modern, low-carbon efficiency.

‘As nearly three quarters of damaging carbon emissions come from energy use in buildings, improving energy efficiency is probably the single most important thing that we can do to cut carbon emissions.

'The Greater London Authority Group is taking the lead, but we want all London’s public buildings to benefit from this programme. That is why I will now ask my officers to plan the creation of a Low Carbon Building Unit, to provided on-going support to other public authorities. One million tonnes of carbon emissions, and millions of pounds, could be saved each year if London's municipal buildings and schools, universities and hospitals were to do this.

‘If commercial building owners will also join us, these carbon emission savings could rise to 3.6 million tonnes each year – about eight per cent of the capital's total emissions. That is why I am delighted that Canary Wharf has announced their support for this programme and will start the ball rolling with some of their iconic buildings.

‘Dalkia and Honeywell are acknowledged world leaders in their field and I am pleased to be working with them to deliver this exciting low carbon building programme.'

President Clinton, said: ‘Climate change is a global issue that we must address immediately if we are to reverse its catastrophic effects. I am very pleased that cities like London are taking a leadership role and working with my Foundation to help building owners save money while having a measurable impact on greenhouse gas emissions.’

Dalkia and Honeywell have a proven track record in the field of energy efficiency measures and will provide a range of services in order to achieve a 25 per cent cut in emissions from across 42 of London’s public buildings. The work will include surveying and auditing the buildings to assess potential carbon savings, and then planning and implementing the energy efficiency measures that the building requires in order to meet the agreed guaranteed energy savings targets. Savings from energy bills of an estimated £1 million annually are expected by retrofitting these 42 buildings using this approach.

Auditing of the 42 sites is expected to start next month. Dalkia will take forward work on 20 buildings owned by the Metropolitan Police Authority and the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (London’s fire brigade), with Honeywell taking forward work on 22 Transport for London buildings.

Today's announcement is the latest initiative to come out of the Mayor’s London Climate Change Action Plan, which also includes the recently announced CO2 charge on gas-guzzling cars, a record investment to transform cycling and walking, a Green Homes Advice Service, and the Green 500 low-carbon business programme. The Mayor has also launched the London Low Emission Zone to cut air pollution from lorries, coaches and buses across the whole of the city.

Luis Pais Correia, Chief Executive Officer of North Atlantic Zone at Dalkia, said: ‘Dalkia has a proven record of providing fully integrated services that are tailor-made to meet the energy requirements of our customers. Our activity, vision and service accurately reflected the requirements needed for the Greater London Authority Group’s energy contract to deliver an effective carbon management programme. We have the experience and knowledge with our customers’ operations to guarantee the carbon targets set in the contract to generate substantial savings.’

Joe Puishys, president of Honeywell Building Solutions, said: ‘Leveraging energy-efficient technologies has an obvious environmental benefit, but it can have positive financial drivers as well. Working with Mayor Livingstone and the Greater London Authority Group, we will identify the green technology that will address the city’s climate commitments and provide the greatest return on investment. We’re excited to be part of this landmark programme.’

The work programme will include buildings across London such as Transport for London’s headquarters at Windsor House, Transport for London’s Broadway – a listed building, and police and fire stations.

Peter Hendy, Commissioner for London Transport, said: ‘Transport for London has a key role to play in addressing climate change in the Capital. Our ongoing investment in technology such as hybrid and hydrogen buses, encouraging the uptake of low-carbon vehicles and fuels, reducing power consumption on the Underground and Overground, and our investment in walking and cycling are all helping us to tackle transport related CO2 emissions across London.

’However, TfL has environmental responsibilities beyond our role as London's transport authority. As one of the capital's largest employers, we operate more than 50 office buildings and 264 Underground stations and other operational property such as bus stations and garages, so we have a major part to play in working to reduce carbon emissions from buildings as well. Our involvement with the C40 and the Clinton Climate Initiative will help us continue our work to make our buildings more energy efficient, and will clearly be a step closer to a cleaner, more environmentally friendly capital.’

Nadim Moge, London Fire Brigade’s Head of Property Services, said: ‘We are committed to the principles of the C40/Clinton Climate Initiative and to cutting carbon emissions. As a GLA member, we are delighted to be part of such a groundbreaking scheme and look forward to working closely with Dalkia to find energy efficient solutions for ten more of our fire stations, adding to an already extensive green programme across our estate.’

Aneeta Prem, member of the Metropolitan Police Authority leading on police estate issues, said: ‘The Metropolitan Police Authority is delighted to work with the C40 and the Climate Clinton Initiative. We have selected 10 buildings to pilot the programme, an innovative model for guaranteeing carbon emission reductions that could potentially save 25 per cent of the buildings carbon emissions, which would result in an annual saving of 2,500 tonnes per annum. This initiative is in full accord with our Environment Strategy - we take our responsibility to the climate change agenda seriously and have committed to a Climate Change Action Plan to reduce our carbon footprint by 10 per cent by 2010, and 30 per cent by 2025.’

A spokesman for Canary Wharf Group, said: ‘This proposal is a very exciting prospect for both the public and private sectors. We will work with the Mayor and with the Clinton Climate Initiative to see if their interesting ideas can support Canary Wharf's own work to reduce the carbon footprint of new buildings and to retrofit existing buildings with the latest environmental technology."

‘KPMG's new headquarters building at Canary Wharf, which was topped out earlier this month, is already setting the standard for environmental and sustainability features."

‘We would also like to announce today that we are joining the Mayor's Better Building Partnership of leading London developers and property companies working towards sustainable new development.’

In November 2007, the Mayor launched the Better Buildings Partnership (part of the Green Organisations programme), a collaboration between London's leading commercial landlords to improve the carbon efficiency of existing commercial property in the capital. A founding member of this group, Keith Bugden, Director Development, Hermes Investment Management Ltd, said today: ‘We are very supportive of any scheme which seeks to improve the energy efficiency of and reduce carbon emissions from London’s building stock and we therefore welcome this important initiative.’

Ends

Notes to Editors

• The model of procurement behind today's announcement is unique as it combines all the usual stages of planning, tendering and implementing improvements (such as assessing which buildings to improve, understanding the changes required, producing specifications, then undertaking various procurement activities) into a single procurement process.  This significantly simplifies the approach for both suppliers and the Greater London Authority. The GLA has set CO2 reduction and financial targets that must be achieved which will encourage the suppliers to maximise energy reductions whilst ensuring a financial payback for the project. This approach considerably reduces the financial risk for the Greater London Authority or for future customers. If targets cannot be achieved on a particular building there is no cost for the initial auditing work, and where work does progress, suppliers are incentivised to deliver the energy savings and the financial payback is guaranteed.
• In May 2007, the Mayor joined with President Clinton and mayors from major cities across the world to announce the creation of the global Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Programme. The C40/ Clinton Climate Initiative programme brought together four of the world's largest Energy Service Companies five of the world's largest banks and sixteen of the world's largest cities. The programme offers building owners a package with three elements: (1) an energy audit to quantify current energy use and emissions from a building and recommendations on a full range of measures to reduce them, (2) a comprehensive, discounted offer of goods and services guaranteed to deliver the identified reductions, and (3) optional financing element to pay for the works, paid back through the guaranteed energy savings. The Clinton CIimate Initiative Energy Efficiency Retrofit Programme is the first of many programmes that will be released by the Clinton CIimate Initiative on behalf of the C40 Large Cities Leadership Group. These programmes are designed to enable cities to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions 
• For more information on the C40 go to: www.london.gov.uk/mayor/environment/climate-change/c40.jsp or go to www.c40cities.org 
• London's commercial and public sector buildings alone produce around 15 million tonnes of CO2 per year and accounts for 33 per cent of total London emissions. The premises which are part of the Greater London Authority Group produce 0.18 million tonnes of CO2 each year, which is one per cent of London's commercial sector emissions
• Buildings included in the programme: 1) Honeywell - 22 TfL head office buildings including: 55 Broadway, Windsor House, Griffith House, Ashfield House, 200 Buckingham Palace Rd, London Transport Museum Collection Centre, 172 Buckingham Palace Rd, 13 Allsop Place, Pelham Street, Wing-Over-Station, Victoria Station House, Faith Lawson House, 100 Petty France, 20 Cranbourn Street, Townsend House, Lost Property Office, Selbie House, Western House, 15-17Allsop Place, 210-212 Baker Street, 216 Baker Street, Baker Street: Revenue Control. 2) Dalkia: 10 LFEPA (London Fire Brigade) Fire Stations including: Finchley Fire Station, Heston Fire Station, Holloway Fire Station, Homerton Fire Station, Kentish Town Fire Station, Kingsland Fire Station, Mill Hill Fire Station, North Kensington Fire Station, Surbiton Fire Station, Westminster Fire Station – and 10 Metropolitan Police station buildings including:  Forest Gate Police Station, Southwark Park Police Station, Islington Police Station, Bexleyheath Police Station, Edmonton Police Station, Wembley Police Station, Chadwell Heath Traffic Unit, Tintagel House (office building), Hertford House (office building), Edinburgh House (office building). 
• The Better Buildings Partnership (part of the Green Organisations programme launched in November 2007) is a collaboration between London's leading commercial landlords to improve the carbon efficiency of existing commercial property in the capital. Members of the scheme will commit to setting and achieving benchmark carbon levels for their property portfolios and finding solutions to remove barriers currently preventing the widespread take-up of sustainable building improvements - such as the fact that current rental values rarely take into account the energy efficiency of a building. The Partnership will be managed by its members with the support of the London Climate Change Agency and the London Development Agency and will include links with professional organisations.
• KPMG's new office, which is scheduled for occupation by the end of 2010, aims to be a leader in terms of its environmental and sustainability features. KPMG and Canary Wharf Group are working towards some ambitious targets for the building, including:
  • 50% CO2 cut against the 2006 Building Regulations, where the legal requirement is for a 28% cut
  • 90% of construction waste diverted away from landfill
  • 20% of materials used by value to have recycled content
  • A Green Travel Plan, including providing around 200 cycle spaces, to encourage green travel to work