Q&A: green progress

Q: What were the key summer announcements?

A: The white paper - the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan - is an important document which doesn’t shy away from the scale of the challenge.

A couple of interesting messages came out at the same time - the way to zero carbon, which is evolving broadly in line with what the Green Building Council task force said last year.

Also, crucially, housing minister John Healey has said that if you list key regulatory burdens [on the sector] in order of priority, carbon emissions would be top of the government’s list.

Q: What in the white paper was especially relevant for housing?

A: There’s been a concentration on new build because it is easier to deal with than existing stock. Within that, all the responsibility has been falling on the developer. Feed-in tariffs [which will pay people for the renewable energy they generate] can share that responsibility - or opportunity - with the homeowner. Showing how people can make money out of this is an important step.

More than 99 per cent of the UK’s homes are existing stock. We know that one of the biggest barriers to improving the energy efficiency of existing homes is the perceived up front cost. The opportunity to remove that barrier through a pay-as-you-save scheme is a breakthrough.

Q: Can pay-as-you-save help the social housing sector?

A: We recently had a working group with the landlord L&Q, one of our sponsors, on how pay-as-you save could work in a social housing context. It may be that the sector provides particular opportunities because of existing programmes.

Q: Where are we now with the zero carbon consultation?

A: The government has made it clear that the UK is going to be setting high standards of energy efficiency. It is exploring how best to express that in forthcoming regulation but it is broadly equivalent to the continental Passivhaus standards.

That basically means setting a high level of energy efficiency for the fabric, then a more realistic figure on the amount of renewable energy produced onsite and, finally, establishing a practical and sensible level to allow offsite without dumbing the policy down. This last one is clearly where the government considers more work needs to be done.

Q: What new policies will there be in the next eight months?

A: In the autumn, more detail is expected on the allowable solutions on zero carbon and the conclusion of the consultation on zero carbon non-domestic buildings.

After that, we will be nearer the general election and a key factor is policy stability. We’ve been having conversations with the Conservative front bench which have been quite encouraging. The industry can cope with a lot more stretch provided it has a more stable policy environment. What we don’t want is political ping pong.

Paul King is chief executive of the UK Green Building Council

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