Green lobby slams watered-down zero carbon homes rules

Watered-down proposals for zero carbon homes represent a missed opportunity to slash energy bills, green industry bodies are arguing ahead of Wednesday’s Queen’s speech.

The Queen is expected to outline next steps to make new homes carbon neutral from 2016, as part of an Infrastructure Bill in the next Parliamentary session.

However, advance briefings suggest the standards for new buildings will be less ambitious than previously set out, with certain exemptions and offsetting options for developers.

The Solar Trade Association estimates a truly zero carbon home will have an annual energy bill of £293. That rises to £802 under the government’s proposals, which allow annual emissions of 32kg carbon dioxide per square metre. Of that, 17kg must be offset by “allowable solutions” – alternative carbon saving measures such as retrofitting existing buildings with low carbon measures such as solid wall insulation.

Liberal Democrats community minister Stephen Williams hailed the package as “the single biggest step towards greener homes that any government has made”.

Nina Skorupska, chief executive of the Renewable Energy Association, disagreed. “It’s one of the worst row-backs on green policy of the whole coalition government,” she said. “The government is so desperate to get lots of houses built quickly that they seem blind to the opportunity to give these new homes super low energy bills.”

The UK Green Building Council, on the other hand, welcomed the allowable solutions policy. However, plans to exempt “small sites” of fewer than 50 homes from the regulations altogether are “deeply worrying”, said chief executive Paul King. “This decision could cause confusion and lead to perverse outcomes, for example the slowing down of housing supply as developers phase the delivery of ‘small sites’ to avoid regulations.”