Why mixed-use estates will provide the road to net zero

COMMENT Our understanding of the issues involved to achieve net-zero carbon changes day by day. And so we must leave ourselves room for innovation, creativity and collaboration. In a single building that’s hard to achieve. You’ve got one brief, one budget and one deadline you’re working towards. That is why large multi-building mixed-use schemes provide the ideal test bed. Firstly, the longer timescale involved in creating complex schemes with many buildings and use classes means you can learn and adapt. This is vital from a sustainability perspective – a sphere where the understanding and regulations are changing all the time. A single building can easily be out of date in its ESG credentials by the time it is complete, whereas a wider estate can keep evolving, continuously learning and innovating over time. These kinds of projects allow us active and evolving sustainability strategies that will keep pace with thinking. Shared learning Learning over time is a key way we at Native Land are improving the sustainability of our Bankside Yards project – a £2.5bn, 5.5-acre mixed-use scheme on London’s Bankside, SE1.  We are implementing “intelligent” data-led construction, which learns as it goes. By collecting data throughout the construction process, our engineers are learning how to design more efficient buildings in future phases of the development. The larger scope also provides more room for innovation and creativity – what you learn from one building on the estate can help to make the others more sustainable. At Bankside Yards we are delivering eight new buildings, 14 restored railway arches and 3.5 acres of new greened public realm – giving plenty of scope for shared learning. This creates economies of scale, too. The potential for greater levels of funding can give you more scope to invest in, for example, new lower-carbon materials and methods, which will benefit all buildings and phases across the project. Vitally, multi-building schemes provide opportunities for shared infrastructure, which can make energy usage much more efficient. Bankside Yards will be the first major mixed-use scheme to be net-zero carbon in operation. That is down to the fifth-generation energy network that we are creating on a scale not yet seen in the UK and which will be 100% electric – with all the electricity coming from renewable sources. The network will connect all the buildings. Each will “extract” or “reject” energy into the network depending on demand. This significantly reduces operational energy and allows the buildings to benefit one another. The same system on a stand-alone building cannot achieve the same efficiency and energy savings. It is because of the true mixed-use nature of the scheme and the different energy peak times across the uses that makes the system work to its maximum potential.  For example, the office buildings will reject energy into the network in the evenings when the workspaces are not in use. This energy can then be used by the residential buildings, where people are likely to be at home, cooking dinner or watching television – and in need of the power.  This network, as well as Bankside Yards’ other sustainability features, results in a 50% reduction of CO2, compared with the GLA planning policy target of 35%.  Raising the bar Having a mixed-use scheme with a shared energy network also means you can circumvent issues such as lower levels of interest in sustainability from some parts of the market.  Arbor, Bankside Yards’ first all-electric office, is attracting strong interest from office occupiers seeking greener, smarter and healthier buildings. By contrast, demand from consumers for greener homes is developing more slowly. An estate-wide all-electric energy network means new homes can be more sustainable, without buyers needing to make that conscious choice.   By holding all our new commercial, retail and residential buildings to the same sustainability standards in one mixed-use development, we are raising the bar throughout the markets.  Large mixed-use schemes also can’t exist in a bubble. They feed into and add value to the neighbourhoods, the boroughs and the cities they serve. The bigger and bolder a scheme, the more impact it will have on the wider environment – setting new precedents and inspiring others to follow suit, in a way a single building cannot. Felicity Masefield is development executive and sustainability lead at Native Land