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Introduction

Do buildings with high sustainability standards necessarily cost more to develop than those that simply comply with building regulations? This publication reports on a study designed to answer that question using real cost information. It presents the actual costs of a range of sustainable building strategies, the additional costs – if any – of achieving different overall levels of sustainability and the payback gained through reduced utility costs.

Taking sustainability into account when designing and constructing buildings is increasingly common practice in the UK, but can still be inhibited by the lingering perception that this increases development costs. In fact, there is strong evidence that a sustainable approach need not add significantly to building costs. Also, where there are additional capital costs, it has been shown that these can be repaid relatively quickly through the reduced costs of operating the building. There is now a growing awareness among the construction industry and its clients of the balance to be struck between the capital costs of enhanced environmental performance and the longer-term benefits, payback and savings. There is also growing evidence of the benefits of sustainability in terms of delivering high-quality buildings that meet the needs of owners and occupiers and provide increased rental values.

Many clients now set sustainability requirements in their project briefs. Sustainability rating standards such as the BRE Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM; www.breeam.com) are often used to help clients and their design/construction teams address the complexities of achieving sustainability goals. BREEAM was used to measure the sustainability performance of the case study buildings investigated in this study. Sweett Group* and BRE^† applied costs from real projects to three case study buildings – an office, a secondary school and a community healthcare centre – and produced authoritative capital and life cycle cost information. This information can help building developers to optimise sustainability and its value.

This report updates and widens the scope of earlier research^[1] by BRE and others to identify the costs associated with sustainable solutions. It provides additional data on life cycle costs and savings to present a more complete picture of the potential economic costs and savings of sustainable buildings.

* Sweett Group is a global business with expertise in property and infrastructure professional services. www.sweettgroup.com.

^† BRE is the UK's leading centre of built environment expertise and research. www.bre.co.uk.