We must capitalise on a Low-Carbon Future by Norman Baker

David Cameron this week strongly defended onshore wind power, saying that he is determined to seize the economic opportunities in renewable energy supply chains, a position I strongly support.

Last year I launched a white paper on local transport, Creating Growth, Cutting Carbon. As far as I am concerned, they are two sides of the same coin. Yet with increasing concerns about the prospects for the economy, not least with the chill winds blowing from the Eurozone, some are now beginning to argue that the environment is a luxury we can't afford. They couldn't be more wrong.

The way to grow jobs is not by propping up the past, but by investing in the future. At the Department for Transport, we have made it clear that we need to do all we can to decarbonise road transport. Our firm commitment to low-carbon vehicles is beginning to pay off, not simply in lower carbon emissions but in terms of investment in jobs for the future. We will shortly see manufacture of the new electric Nissan Leaf begin in Sunderland, safeguarding 360 jobs and creating 200 more with the production of the new lithium ion battery.

Our ambitious investment in rail, particularly in electrification, is creating jobs today and cutting carbon tomorrow. Our Green Bus Fund, now in its third round, is not just cleaning up our buses, but proving a real boon for British bus manufacturers, both in terms of domestic supply and export potential. And our record spend on local sustainable transport is cleaning up our cities and boosting their economies.

So embracing green is good for jobs. The environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, hit the nail on the head at a Rio+20 Earth summit event recently, when she said: "Being green is integral to sustainable economic growth."

The simple fact is that while much of the economy is struggling, there is a growing demand for green products. Private companies invested £2.5bn in renewable energy projects in the seven months from last April, with 11,619 new jobs being created, often in areas of higher unemployment such as the north-east, an area which has also enthusiastically embraced the move to electric vehicles.

Overall, Britain has the world's sixth largest low-carbon and environmental goods sector, employing over 900,000 people and growing by 4% a year. As a government we are determined to build on this using the British genius for invention and innovation to capitalise on the low-carbon future the world is embracing.

One reason why investment levels have been buoyant in green areas is because industry understands that we have to do things differently in the future.

To take just one example, the growth of the emerging economies, particularly China, has led to a real terms increase in commodity prices of 147% over the past decade. If we want to prosper tomorrow, we cannot simply pull away at yesterday's levers. We need new answers, and ideally ones which are free from price fluctuation or the whims of unstable regimes. And that means reducing our dependency on oil for transport and energy. The result: more energy security, more UK-based jobs, less carbon.

But we also need to ensure that the decisions that individual departments like Transport take are properly joined up across government. We have set ourselves a tough challenge: to be the greenest government ever. It is a challenge that we in government are determined to meet, working across government departments rather than pigeon-holing the environment in only one or two departments of government. Safeguarding our environment has to be a cross-government purpose as important to the Business Department, the Treasury or Communities and local government as it is to Defra or Decc.

Governments can of course only do so much, but one key way to make a difference is to set a clear direction of travel and stick to it. So another reason why green investment has been buoyant is because of the clear buy-in by all three major political parties that tackling climate change is an essential, not just for environmental reasons, but economic ones too. If anyone doubted that, the game-changing Stern report, emanating from the heart of the City, made it very clear that the price of doing nothing was greater than the price of taking action.

That is why creating growth and cutting carbon are twin objectives that we are determined to remain focussed on in government so that we can deliver both a stronger economy and a safer world.

This article first appeared on The Guardians website on Wednesday 22nd 2012

Building a Home the Green Way by Sarah Lonsdale

My husband's Norwegian cousin, Hans Thomas Meinich, lives in a 100-year-old wooden house in Lillehammer, where winter temperatures can drop to -25C (-13F). Despite the cold, he and his wife, Sidsel, get by with one wood-burning stove which heats the whole house beautifully, his little silver birch copse providing all the wood he needs.

When he comes to stay he remarks that English houses are always so cold.

I've been thinking about Hans Thomas and his cosy home this winter, while here the green debate gets mired in a mixture of eco-fatigue and economic uncertainty.

Back in 1915, when Hans Thomas's house was built, nobody had even imagined a world where people measured and traded in carbon emissions and put slivers of silicon on their roofs to convert sunlight into electricity. They just built houses like that because they wanted to keep warm, at a minimum cost.

We've had the know-how to build homes with little or no heating requirements for centuries but a combination of profit-conscious developers, poor building regulations and a lack of public interest has meant we've chosen not to.

Now soaring utility bills and the issue of climate change are finally making people wake up and start demanding homes built to a better standard. Failing that, home owners are either retrofitting their properties or they are giving up on the conventional routes and building their own. It's a small and slow start, but I'm prepared to bet that in 50 years' time the idea of building a house that actually requires central heating will seem ridiculous and laughable, or will even be illegal.

Overall things are moving in the right direction, although there have been setbacks. Remember eco-towns? They have diminished from 15 to four projects, one of which, in Cornwall, has run into legal problems and has been effectively mothballed.

While some of the eco-towns were clearly planned for the wrong, middle-of-nowhere sites, architects' designs for the eco-towns' houses do offer exciting new ideas both in the look and the materials used in new homes.

The Bicester eco-town has planning permission for a 393-home "exemplar" phase and work begins later this year. Gary Young, a partner at Terry Farrell, the architecture practice behind Bicester eco-town, says this represents the largest development of Code Level Five homes in the country.

He says that one of the reasons why the green homes idea has only taken off slowly in this country is that until recently, energy costs were so low that the idea of having a home with low or no running costs did not seem important. "Energy security will be increasingly an issue over time," he says.

According to figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government, just over 28,000 homes to Code Level Three (a measure of energy efficiency) and above were completed in the 12 months to September 2011. This compares to just 13,000 in the previous 12 months.

Although few houses have been built to the very highest Code Levels Five and Six, even homes built at Code Level Three and Four will offer their owners huge savings on utility bills. Since the Code for Sustainable Homes was introduced in 2007, a total of 43,000 low-energy homes have been built.

They are not to everyone's taste, of course. Studies conducted by the NHBC Foundation, an industry research body created to help builders meet the Government's zero-carbon targets for homes, conclude that so far house buyers "aren't ready" for low-energy homes, citing design, particularly, and fears the technology to "run them" will be too complicated. Sales of new eco-homes at the publicly funded Braes of Balvonie eco-village in the Highlands south of Inverness have been sluggish, even with promises of utility bills of under £100 a year.

"This is the first development of its kind in Scotland and the economic situation hasn't helped," admits spokeswoman Pauline Gregory. The architect-designed homes present a challenge to buyers used to conventional-looking homes.

Using cutting-edge materials and clad in copper, zinc, exposed rubber and resin, some are designed to continental "Passivhaus" standards and others completely rethink conventional house design, such as a new "suburban loft" and homes with two front doors. Personally, I think they are exciting and a refreshing change to the grim swathes of red-brick boxes associated with many new estates.

What these and all new eco-homes do is challenge the conventional house-building industry to raise its game. One such house is the extraordinary Balancing Barn in Suffolk, designed by Mole Architects and Dutch firm MVRDV. Even though half of the house sticks out into an abyss and has nothing but 15m of air beneath it, because of the materials used to build it, it achieves energy-efficiency levels 20 per cent higher than current regulations.

Architect Meredith Bowles of Mole says he is currently involved in a social-housing scheme which, as an experiment, is building half the homes to Code Level Four and the other half to Passivhaus standards (see box, right).

"The difference in building costs is around £6,000-£8,000 on a £100,000 house. To me that sounds like a bargain considering the savings the homes' occupants will make.

"Designing to Passivhaus standards should be the norm but regulations don't require it so builders don't do it."
One issue that may be a sticking point is a cultural one, says Keith Hall, editor of Green Building magazine. "Passivhaus is a great concept, but it is not for everybody. A Passivhaus means it has to be airtight; in this country we like to be able to open the windows."

Keith has spent the past few years turning his ancient, earth-floored, completely draughty old farmhouse in the west of Wales into an energy-efficient home which generates 170 per cent of his energy needs with a combination of wind, water and solar power. His advice is to tackle each of the four elements of a home's fabric: roof, walls, floors and windows and doors systematically. "It's not rocket science and it doesn't have to cost the earth," he says. "Mega-insulate the roof and if, like me, you have solid walls either internally or externally, insulate them."

Keith's low-cost solution for his internal walls was polystyrene tiles stuck to walls rendered with lime, then plastered over with bonding.

While we have achieved energy savings on our own Twenties home (see Superhomes for more on retrofitting), I'm tempted to build our own next time. Self-build is increasingly popular, a sign that home owners are dissatisfied with what the house-building industry is currently offering and, with the introduction of kit houses, you no longer need to be a millionaire grand designer to build one.

Trevor Walshe of Svenskhomes, a Swedish kit house firm, says interest in the company's houses has increased significantly since it introduced the structurally insulated panel (Sips) system last summer. "As well as halving the build time, the off-site manufacture means much less can go wrong during the building process."
The homes, and other kit houses which come at better than Code Level Three as a minimum, are one reason why self-builders – 13,000 self-built homes were completed last year – are now the largest section of house builders in the country.

While the Government drags its feet on building regulations and house builders worry about profits, British home owners are busy doing what they do best: getting on with it by themselves.

Low2No, Helsinki, FInland

As a European country with one of the most brutal winters, it was hardly surprising that Finland would invest in low-energy building. “Low2No” or “Airut” is a redevelopment of Helsinki’s former docklands district, consisting of apartments, offices and green spaces for urban farming. The Finns’ beloved individual electric saunas, common in most homes, have been replaced in Low2No with a shared public one, powered with a wood-pellet stove, as the Vikings used of old. Exhaust heat from the sauna will be channelled into heating communal areas.

The 200 apartments will all be built with high insulation levels, low-emissivity glass and photovoltaic panels on upper roofs. The development, to be completed in 2014, will also feature the world’s tallest timber-framed tower block.

Berlin-based architects Sauerbruch Hutton estimate the community, “an international paragon of sustainable urbanism”, will become carbon negative within six years of completion. Residents will have real-time digital displays telling them the size of their carbon footprint and how much energy they are using.

Our Home

Over the past 10 years, we have been, in a rather piecemeal fashion, improving our Twenties house, writes Sarah Lonsdale. It used to be terribly draughty – until last year, the living room door would rattle at the slightest breeze as if some long-dead Brontë heroine were trying to get in.

Although it will never be perfect, we finally feel we have plugged enough gaps to make a difference – and have just received a £200 rebate from our gas company. One of our simplest and cheapest solutions was to remove the letterbox opening from our front door, replacing it with an external wall-mounted one and repanelling the door with extra insulation.

We added cavity wall insulation, increased the roof insulation by 300 per cent, added floorboard insulation to the ground floor and either double glazing or secondarily glazing our windows.

Small Bill

Passivhaus standards require high levels of insulation and airtightness. Passivhaus houses need 15 kWh/m2 to heat compared to 120 kWh/m2 for a conventional house, reducing a £1,000-a-year heating bill to £0-£300 a year.

This article was originally published on the Daily Telegraph's website on 24th January 2012 and was written by Sarah Lonsdale. To see the article please visit http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/greenerliving/9032767/Building-a-home-the-green-way.html

Solar Panel Sharks in Feed-in Frenzy

Is the roof-top solar panel industry nice, green and eco-cuddly – or no better than a bunch of double-glazing sales sharks? This week a colleague received a call from a solar panel company promising that after the industry's court victory against the government, she could now pick up the juicy 43.3p per kWh feed-in tariff for generating electricity. She was told it made installing a system on her south-facing roof a no-brainer, it was money for old rope.

New adverts all over Google say much the same. "The government has lost!" the ads scream. The 43.3p rate is back, and if you rush in now, you can beat the 3 March deadline and earn a guaranteed 43.3p a unit on your surplus electricity for the next 25 years. If that were true it would indeed be a no-brainer. The price of panels has fallen dramatically, and you don't have to be a bright spark to work out that 43.3p a unit makes a lot of financial sense if you have the right sort of roof.

Trouble is, the high court "victory" does not guarantee that someone signing up now (and spending upwards of £10,000) will ever see 43.3p a unit for the electricity they generate. Chris Huhne, energy minister at the time, said the government will appeal to the supreme court. All we know is that someone rushing through an installation now may pick up 43.3p a unit. Or they may not. The only guarantee is that you'll pick up 21p a unit between 3 and 31 March. After that nothing is certain.

Cathy Debenham, who runs the independent YouGen website on which consumers post their experience of installers, says the companies telling consumers they are guaranteed a 43.3p rate are "despicable". The adverts are inaccurate and irresponsible and full of "false facts", she says. At least she's doing something about it; she has persuaded the biggest online sites in the industry to blacklist the cowboy solar companies that are exploiting confusion. "We know there are lots of excellent solar PV installers giving realistic information, and we want to make sure that it is their voices that are heard during this period of uncertainty, not the cowboys'," she says.

Count yourself lucky if you got the 43.3p. By the time the government slashed them, the feed-in tariffs were excessively generous. In effect, the subsidy came from ordinary households passed on to well-off homeowners with nice large roofs. That's partly because the cost of panels dropped faster than expected. The government had every duty to act, even if it went about it in a clunky way.

Does a tariff of 21p kill the industry stone dead? Not really. Debenham sees a future for the industry serving motivated individuals with a long-term view, and who are rather less greedy than the fly-by-night installers demanding super-returns. "I actually think it's a good thing that it's not silly money anymore," she says.
Some subsidy was necessary to the industry in its early stages, but tapering it is also essential.

Guardian Money was at the forefront in telling readers just how financially attractive the feed-in tariffs were. When the fog clears, and we have a better understanding of future tariffs, we will run our analysis again. But one thing is certain – the days of easy money are over.

This article was written by Partick Collinson and was first published on The Guardian's website on 3rd February 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/blog/2012/feb/03/feed-in-tariffs-solar-power

Grass Roots 'green projects' are way to lower carbon

Community-owned green energy projects present the best chance of converting the UK to a low-carbon economy and should receive more government support, civil society groups representing 12 million people said on Wednesday.

Giving local people a stake in energy generation often overcomes planning objections to structures such as wind and solar farms, and dozens of communities across the UK have seized the opportunity to create their own power. But the move has not been fast enough, according to the coalition of community groups, which adds that many places are missing out on the chance to produce their own low-carbon and low-cost energy, supported by government subsidies.

The civil society groups include some of the leading non-governmental organisations in the UK, including the Co-operative, the National Trust, the Church of England and the National Federation of Women's Institutes.

Representatives of all the groups were set to meet Chris Huhne, the energy and climate change secretary, to press their case.

Community energy received a serious setback last year when the government first introduced plans to restrict the subsidies available for solar power to small-scale domestic projects, then slashed solar subsidies across the board in a move the High Court subsequently branded unlawful. Though ministers have had to rethink their plans, the outlook for community solar projects has been dimmed, and the Guardian has uncovered numerous examples of community-scale projects that have been shelved as a result.

The setback came despite pre-election promises from ministers to give people more of a stake in their local energy generation.

The civil society coalition wants ministers to come up with new ways to ensure that community energy is prioritised, for instance by letting local people share in the profits from renewable energy projects.

Patrick Begg, director of rural enterprise at the National Trust, said: "Many other European countries are way ahead of the UK, as we found out when visiting German communities last year. Germany produces over 20% of its electricity from renewable sources, with communities generating about a quarter of this. In the UK, less than 1% is generated by our communities, a figure this [civil society] coalition wants to dramatically increase by 2020. We are asking the government to support us in this."

Ruth Bond, chair of the National Federation of Women's Institutes, said the organisation had a long history of supporting low-carbon energy generation, and that allowing local people greater ownership of energy production would help to overcome the objections to many projects. She said: "The WI has been active on renewable energy since the 1970s. We see community energy as people working together, not having schemes imposed on them. This is a great opportunity for our 7,000 WIs across the UK to tackle climate change and leave a legacy for the next generation."

Their call came as the Co-operative launched its "community energy challenge", a competition under which six communities will be supported to set up their own energy generation, with some of the £1m the Co-operative plans to spend this year on community energy projects.

Paul Monaghan, head of social goals at the Co-operative, said: "We want nothing less than a clean energy revolution, with communities controlling and benefiting from their own renewable energy. Talk of a new dash for [shale] gas, which could see up to 3,000 wells installed across the UK, highlights the choices we face – more and dirtier sources of fossil fuels or clean energy owned and controlled by communities."

This article first appeared on the Guardian's website on Wednesday 1st February 2012 and was written by Fiona Harvey - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/01/community-green-projects-low-carbon-uk?intcmp=122