Again, the buildings hit the current GLA benchmark, albeit the façade performance is higher than the GLA expects.
They refine five different types of precious metal.The precious metals are obtained in raw form from many sources, but most come from catalytic converters in car exhausts.
The metals, once purified, don’t look like much – a grey powder – but they are hugely expensive..They take a product like a catalytic converter, and the first process is to smelt it.They start with just 0.3% of valuable metal by volume and after smelting, it's still a very small quantity of metal, but it’s at a size that they can put it in the back of a truck to be taken to the refinery where the valuable metals are extracted.. Their present refinery was built in 1965, and is in need of replacement.
Our first job was to look at all sorts of options about where they might build a new refinery, from the UK to Europe to Asia.For a number of reasons, the UK was the best option.
Then of course we had to find a suitable location in the UK and masterplan the site.
The conclusion we came to was to knock down a series of existing buildings close to the current facility.The production of WLCA is required by BREEAM and the GLA.
In a BREEAM NC 2018 assessment, it is possible to achieve up to 7 credits by doing a WLCA, so for developments that aspire to Excellent or Outstanding ratings the analysis of embodied carbon has become very important.The GLA requires the preparation of a WLCA pre-planning and at post-construction and requires the analysis of the results both with the current carbon factors and a decarbonised scenario.. Additionally, bodies such as the London Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI), RIBA, GLA and UKGBC, have developed guidance documents on embodied carbon, which include specific targets and roadmaps to zero carbon prior 2050.
Whilst these four bodies have been essential in pushing the agenda for low carbon, there has been some confusion across the industry due to the misalignment of targets and WLCA scopes between them as demonstrated in Figure 3.LETI has been working in collaboration with other bodies and industry groups to resolve these inconsistencies and have published the ‘Embodied carbon target alignment document’.. Based on this document and the comparison of the current targets defined by LETI, RIBA and GLA, an average performance for non-domestic commercial building performance (A-C) would be to achieve an embodied carbon around 1400kgCO.