by Brianna Crandall — August 27, 2014—New research challenges the perception that sustainable buildings are necessarily more costly to construct, by presenting the actual costs and savings associated with a wide range of sustainable building strategies.
The research team from Sweett Group and built environment consultancy BRE (Building Research Establishment) applied cost data from real construction projects to three case study buildings — an office, secondary school and community healthcare centre — to produce detailed capital and operational cost information.
Sweett Group is a global provider of professional services for the construction and management of building and infrastructure projects, and BRE is the provider of BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method), the widely used environmental assessment method for buildings and communities.
Their report, Delivering Sustainable Buildings: Savings and Payback, presents the actual costs of a range of individual sustainability strategies, and the additional costs (if any) of achieving various levels of overall building sustainability. In addition it reveals the associated payback to be gained from reduced utility costs. The study investigated:
- Capital costs of measures to improve sustainability, including readily usable no- or low-cost measures, along with those that must be built into the project early on to minimize their costs;
- Capital costs of achieving overall levels of building sustainability, using the costs associated with gaining Pass, Good, Very Good and Excellent ratings under the BREEAM sustainability rating program;
- Life cycle costs of operating buildings, focusing on energy and water consumption — the study found that specifying sustainability measures during the design and procurement stages can bring cost savings without adding significantly, or at all, to upfront costs.
The researchers concluded that achieving the lower BREEAM ratings can incur little or no additional cost. Targeting the higher BREEAM ratings, and so more challenging levels of sustainability, incurs some additional cost, but this is typically less than two percent, according to the report. The investigation of life cycle operational costs showed that any additional cost can be paid back within two to five years through utility savings.
Delivering Sustainable Buildings: Savings and Payback (Ref FB63) is available through the BRE Bookshop, in either hard copy format or as a downloadable PDF file.
