Homes and offices to be built to new green standards by 2019

Alongside new energy efficiency standards, Healey yesterday pledged an extra £3.2 million to boost long-term research into designing and building energy efficient homes and launched a consultation to gather evidence on how the zero carbon standards could be applied to non-domestic buildings from 2019.

The new standards are the work of a task group set up this summer by the Government. It has recommended an energy efficiency standard based on the amount of energy used to provide space heating and cooling, per square metre of a home.

Healey said new standards were necessary in order for the country to meet its carbon emissions reduction targets – one in three homes will be built between now and 2050, by which time the UK is committed to reducing its carbon emissions by 80 per cent.

Nearly half the UK’s carbon emissions come from the built environment and Healey said he was “determined to see a cut in Britain's carbon emissions.

“Future growth must be green, that's why we're setting standards for new homes and new offices, factories, shops and other buildings,” he told members of the building industry in a speech to the UK Green Building Council.

Healey said that as well as proposals for new commercial buildings to be zero carbon by 2019, he wanted to see new public sector buildings to be zero carbon from 2018. “I want to gather all of the expertise out there so we have the best, practical solutions to do this,” he said.

The proposals outline how non-domestic buildings can reduce their emissions through the new energy efficiency standards, onsite renewables and off site, including through community scale low carbon heat production for district networks. Because of the much wider variation in building types, locations, and uses, which can impact on both potential solutions and costs of non-domestic buildings, the proposals include the principle that new non-domestic buildings should improve through an approach with differentiated targets, to reflect the different potential each type of building has for energy efficiency and for onsite levels of carbon abatement.

The £3.2 million research fund into low carbon homes is coming from the Technology Strategy Board and will be used by a consortium - including Barratt Developments, Crest-Nicholson, Stewart-Milne, H + H Celcon, Oxford Brookes University and the Building Research Establishment (BRE) – to build demonstration homes to the energy and carbon standards of Level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes using energy efficiency measures alone, without on-site renewables.

These homes will be built and sold alongside existing homes, to test how homes will perform with ventilation, warmth and comfort levels.

The zero carbon standard task group has been working on new standard since the summer and has recommended that the energy efficiency standard is 46 kilowatt-hours per square metre per year (kWh/m2/year) for semi-detached and detached homes and 39 kWh/m2/year for all other homes.

David Adams, director of the Zero Carbon Hub and chair of the Task Group described the recommended standard as “ambitious but achievable.

"The Group believes its recommendations propose a sufficiently challenging target which is achievable with a variety of design approaches, enabling innovation and encouraging a high level of performance for the fabric of new homes," he said.

Stewart Baseley, executive chairman of the Home Builders Federation, welcomed the standard, but said the cost implications would need to be closely watched: "The Zero Carbon Hub has done a good job in a short time in considering what a future energy efficiency standard for new homes might look like. Its recommendations are broadly pragmatic: the technology required for delivery already largely exists. The industry will, however, need to assess the merits of specific delivery options and keep a close eye on the cost implications as part of the wider issue of ensuring the zero carbon policy is affordable."

The British Property Federation (BPF), which represents the country’s biggest property developers, meanwhile, has welcomed the Government’s plans to introduce zero carbon commercial buildings from 2018, but has warned that carbon reduction targets will be missed unless existing buildings are tackled.

“We really need clarity now given that the development process can start over a decade in advance of a brick being laid. This is a welcome consultation but the bottom line is that our 2050 target of reducing carbon emissions by 80pc will be missed unless a greater level of attention is given to existing buildings,” said Patrick Brown, assistant director for sustainability At the BPF.

“The consultation prioritises energy efficiency which is a good thing since building regulations are readily understood by developers and the bar is raised over a gradual period of time. But the overwhelming focus on new buildings must be accompanied by a greater level of attention to existing stock. The majority of buildings with us now will still be in use in 50 years’ time and side-stepping the difficult questions will cause us more problems in the long term.”

The new energy efficiency standards will subject to consultation in the forthcoming consultation on the Code for Sustainable Homes.

The consultation on non-domestic buildings will run until February 26 2010.