CIBSE Technical Director Anastasia Mylona explains how industry can drive delivery, using the Net Zero Carbon Building Standard to align clients, consultants and policy, while tackling human behaviour, “two costs” (price vs resources) and the messy collaboration needed to retrofit at scale.
We already know how to decarbonise buildings; the real gap is between short-term politics and long-term outcomes. Close that gap and net zero stops being a slogan and starts shaping every brief.
Anastasia’s message: success needs long-term direction, shared definitions, and tools that survive political cycles. Industry must organise around outcomes, not headlines, backed by credible targets, retrofit-first thinking and public-friendly storytelling.
“When you’re tackling climate change, there isn’t the short term. You need long-term policies and the incentives to achieve them.” - Anastasia Mylona
Build briefs around outcomes (comfort, health, resilience), not just capital cost and defend them through design.
Retrofit beats rebuild for most assets; plan for overheating and future weather, not just today’s compliance.
Use “two costs” in client conversations: the price you pay and the resources you consume.
Make it human: translate metrics into energy bills, sleep, productivity and local comfort, not just EPC letters.
A shared, industry-written roadmap that defines what “net zero” means for different building types and life-cycle stages, and sets measurable targets for both operational and embodied carbon. It turns ambition into comparable numbers the whole team can work to.
The Net Zero Carbon Building Standard sits alongside LETI definitions and CIBSE guidance, offering common targets while drawing on methods like CIBSE TM65 for MEP embodied-carbon accounting. It’s the reference point project teams can rally around.
Bake it into the brief and employer’s requirements. Set targets per asset type, require design-stage evidence and in-use verification, and align contracts and fees so teams are paid to deliver outcomes, not just drawings and kit.
It sets expectations and methods, then points to evolving datasets (e.g., TM65 addenda) so numbers get better over time. The standard won’t magically fill missing EPDs, but it does make embodied carbon visible, accountable and comparable.
Use the Net Zero Carbon Building Standard as the floor for voluntary action while you advocate for policy (e.g., overheating moving from London Plan to Part O). Prove value locally, then scale. Policy often follows success.
Anchor decisions in lived experience: energy bills, summer sleep quality, quiet rooms, daylight that nourishes, maintenance that actually happens. The Net Zero Carbon Building Standard provides the factual spine; storytelling supplies the motive power.
Right at the brief: model future climates, design for passive survivability, and value external shading and controls as comfort assets ,not “nice-to-haves” ripe for value engineering.
We translate ambition into specification and delivery. Brief writing, target setting, TM65 workflows, overheating risk, and post-occupancy checks. This is the kind of work we support at Darren Evans Ltd. If this resonates with your challenges, let’s talk.
Long-term problems demand long-term choices; the sooner we brief that future in, the sooner it arrives.
