Climate Emergency Design Guide

The London Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI) is a network of built environment professionals working together to put the UK on the path to zero carbon. In January 2020, LETI published Climate Emergency Design Guide: How new buildings can meet UK climate change targets in response to the growing climate emergency.

The guide outlines requirements for new buildings to ensure climate change targets are met. It sets out a journey towards a net zero carbon future and is aimed at developers, landowners, designers, policy makers and the supply chain.

It covers 5 key areas:

• Operational energy.
• Embodied carbon.
• The future of heat.
• Demand response.
• Data disclosure.

It includes requirements for four key building types:

• Small-scale residential.
• Medium/large scale residential.
• Commercial offices.
• Schools.

The guide will evolve over time, reflecting changes in carbon budgets, technologies and the capability of industry. Design teams will be able to register their projects as LETI pioneer projects and share their knowledge with other design teams.

Peter Clegg, Senior Partner at Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios said: “Following the recent declarations of climate and biodiversity crises, a new sense of urgency has emerged within the environmental movement in architecture. It is characterised by an awareness of embodied as well as operational energy. It is focused on cradle to cradle lifecycle assessment of our buildings, and it is driven by the passion and enthusiasm of a new generation of architects and engineers who are determined to make change happen. The London Energy Transformation Initiative sits at the heart of this movement and their guide provides an inspirational ‘call to action’ for everyone in the built environment.”

Hywel Davies, Technical Director at CIBSE said: “Delivering zero carbon buildings is a huge challenge. LETI has taken a major step to help the industry to work out how this is to be done for new buildings.”

You can download the guide at: https://www.leti.london/cedg

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