EXTERNAL shading can play a key role in helping new buildings meet UK climate change targets, according to experts.
The Climate Emergency Design Guide outlines a wide range of solutions including a call for external shading to be used on small, medium and large-scale housing projects, as well as in newly built offices and schools.
The guide was created by the London Energy Transformation Initiative which is a network of more than 1,000 ‘built environment experts’ who are working on plans to help London on the way to being zero-carbon.
The aim of the initiative is to develop ideas for the capital city which can then be implemented across the whole of the United Kingdom.
In its new report, which was put together with the help of more than 100 professionals, the group makes the point that 49% of annual carbon emissions come from buildings and argues more thought must be given to how homes and offices are built in order to be more environmentally friendly.
The report (which you can read here) also makes the point that passive measures which reduce energy demands ‘should always take priority in the design process’. Among those measures are cooling peak reduction techniques which design out the need for cooling. Dynamic solar shading is a passive measure and is proven to reduce internal operative temperatures.
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It also examines the ‘performance gap’ which refers to whether or not a building works as it should when people are inside it and the size of the ‘gap’ if it doesn’t. It states that overheating ‘due to sub-optimal environmental design’ can contribute towards that and highlights solar shading as a way of closing the gap.
Image: London Energy Transformation Initiative
