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October 18, 2007 - Carbon Free Homes

Readers may be interested in an article I wrote for Building Design:

“Compare Germany’s retrofit of its existing stock with our own seriously clunky energy commitment”

Why put a price on the priceless importance of carbon free homes?

Posted on October 18, 2007 11:51 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

November 5, 2007 - Today's housing debate

Today's housing debateThere is something incredibly narrow and reductionist about today’s housing debate, in that it all comes down to crude numbers. How many more houses do we need, by when and where?

Gordon Brown has of course upped the ante by plumping for 3 million new homes, which boils down to 240,000 net additional homes by 2016.

According to CPRE and many others, that’s scary enough. But they will be positively aghast at the new report from the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit (NHPAU) which argues that 240,000 is just for wimps, and what we really need is 270,000 new homes a year by 2016. So do I hear any advance on 270,000?

The NHPAU is a relatively new body which describes itself as “an expert body whose job is to tell decision-makers how they can make housing more affordable”. Fine – and an eminent bunch of people they are too. But CLG’s job (where most of these decision-makers reside) is to facilitate delivery of 3 million homes that are both affordable and sustainable. Not just affordable.

And the NHPAU clearly knows nothing about sustainability, and doesn’t even pretend to. But that makes its report mind-bogglingly inadequate, as it does all its clever sums without any serious reference to sustainability issues whatsoever. (I’m discounting the occasional tokenistic reference to “higher environmental standards” and the like – they are just there to provide the merest green veneer).

So what use is it, I wonder, for all those decision-makers in CLG and for Yvette Cooper herself, Minister for Housing to get a report that may be absolutely brilliant on the affordability side of things (but I’ve got some real reservations about that too, as it happens), but offers literally sod all on the sustainability dimension?

These days, you really can’t do the one without the other, which means that unless advice like this is properly “SD-proofed”, it’s really not of much use.

This lack of basic sd capability is such a huge problem across the whole of government, let alone across its advisory bodies. It’s exactly the same with Treasury’s Sub-National Review of Economic Development and Regeneration, drafted by all sorts of hugely intelligent economic wonks in Treasury who would probably be the first to admit that their only knowledge of sustainable development is their ability to spell the words – on 34 separate, largely meaningless occasions, as it happens (yes, I have counted!).

But I’ll have more to say on the Sub-National Review in a wee while. Meanwhile, I just hope someone is going to take their green pen to the NHPAU’s report.

Posted on November 5, 2007 12:43 PM | | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

March 3, 2008 - Wanted: a code for sustainable buildings

What a treat yesterday (28/3): a visit to the EcoBuild Exhibition at Earls Court. I think this is the fourth or fifth of these exhibitions – and it started out very small and very ‘niche’.

The 2008 Exhibition is big, bold and bullish. With dozens of mainstream industry giants mixing it with innovative start-ups, government departments, industry organisations and so on.

The cumulative impact is very impressive, a powerful statement to politicians and citizens alike that if we want to live in sustainable homes, work in sustainable offices, shop in sustainable retail outlets, work out in sustainable gyms, etc etc, then we really are capable of figuring out exactly how to do it.

We are just in the foothills of the innovation mountain that we now have to climb, but the prospect already looks pretty good.

And for those who are sceptical about this Government’s passion for target-setting, you would have been heartened to see the way in which the 2016 target for zero-carbon housing is now impacting on the entire sector. Lots of doubts from the industry, lots of confusion (what is the difference between zero carbon, low carbon, very low carbon and carbon neutral?), but a gathering focus on what now needs to happen.

All this provides yet another example of the way in which timely and decisive regulation drives innovation. So, what we need next is a Code for Sustainable Buildings (commercial, retail industrial) to match the Code for Sustainable Homes, with the same kind of stepped standards kicking in at different milestones along the way. And given that things have moved a lot since the 2016 target was adopted for houses, in terms of the new consensus about the science of climate change, let’s go for the same target date of 2016 for all buildings, and just squeeze the intervals between the different steps along the way.

Posted on March 3, 2008 9:35 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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