The case for Centres of Excellence in sustainable building design

• a weighting greater than one indicates assessment of costs or benefits higher
than the McKinsey prediction;
• a negative weighting indicates the reverse of the McKinsey prediction, i.e. a
cost rather than the benefit or vice versa.
The sum of the weighted potentials is the total potential available for graduates in a
year. The average abatement cost is the sum of the weighted costs multiplied by the
weighted potentials, which is then divided by the sum of the weighted potential.
The marginal abatement cost for a building engineering physics graduate is the
average marginal abatement cost for the current practitioners minus the average
marginal abatement cost for the building engineering physics graduates.
Whilst the weightings may be open to discussion, they provide a more
transparent way of estimating the benefit of a building engineering physics
graduate compared with a current practitioner.
The marginal abatement cost for carbon saved by graduates from Centres of
Excellence is derived from combining the total abatement potential and 2010
cost of abatement for each of the techniques indicated in Table 3 and applying
the weightings from Table 4. The results are shown in table 5.
Table 5: Weighted potentials and costs for BAU practitioners and graduates from
Centres of Excellence.
BAU current practitioners
COE graduates
Weighted Weighted cost Weighted Weighted cost
abatement of abatement abatement of abatement
potential
potential
MtCO2 pa 2010 real £/tCO2 MtCO2 pa 2010 real £/tCO2
Building envelopes 5 -126 10 -126
Lighting 8 -101 9.6 -101
Cavity wall Insulation 5 -65 5 -65
Condensing boilers 5 -40 5 -40
Zero-carbon homes 8 20 8 -2
Solid wall Insulation 10 35 1 3.5
Floor insulation 4 40 0 40
Solar water heating 5 603 0.05 603
Weighted £31/tCO2 Weighted -£71/tCO2
average
average
abatement
abatement
cost
cost
The marginal abatement cost for the work of graduates from Centres of
Excellence over the work of current practitioners is -£102/tCO2.
Conservative assumptions
In order to avoid overestimating the benefit of the Centres of Excellence, the
study has erred on the side of caution in the assumptions. These conservative
assessments are as follows:
• the MAC has been based on the earlier UK-specific McKinsey curves, rather
than on the more recent global curve, even though the use of the UK-specific
curve results in a lower saving potential;
• It is possible that the McKinsey MAC curve already accounts for persistence
factors, but nevertheless the carbon trust persistence factors have been
applied to the abatement potential;
58 The Royal Academy of Engineering