There is a perception that adopting low or zero carbon solutions will always cost more. This is the age-old dilemma of capital costs and operating budgets being considered as unrelated funding streams. As sustainable buildings are still the exception, they are often considered as ‘special’ and therefore riskier. The result is often a cost contingency in the project budget which will get spent but not necessarily on the issues that it was intended for!
Over the past few years, there has been a change in philosophy, developers and customers are increasingly considering a life-cycle approach; talking about the added value and benefits that were not traditionally factored into cashflow forecasts. These benefits of net zero operational carbon building include: lower carbon emissions and energy use, reduced the cost of ownership considerably over many years, resilience to the impacts of our changing climate, conservation of natural resources, use of responsible, low-carbon resources and improvement in people’s health and wellbeing .
