News News in brief


Huhne aims to be greenest Energy Secretary Chris Huhne told last month’s Liberal Democrat annual conference that the coalition government’s ambition was to be ‘the greenest government ever’. He said its ‘Green Deal’, aimed at creating up to 250,000 jobs, would boost the economy.


Refurb research begins A two-year project by the Energy Technologies Institute and its partners to design a supply chain aimed at enabling refurbishments of existing homes on a mass scale has begun. It will identify ways of industrialising the processes of design, supply and implementation, while stimulating demand from householders. www. energytechnologies.co.uk


Funding deadline nears The deadline for applications for the Technology Strategy Board’s £8m Building Performance Evaluation competition closes on 13 October 2010. The competition will enable companies to apply for funding to investigate and monitor building performance, and conduct post- occupancy evaluations. www.ktn.innovateuk.org


Thousands miss CRC hurdle Thousands of companies are feared to have missed the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRC) registration deadline at the end of last month. Research by On365, an energy specialist, found that less than a third of the 5,000 estimated businesses affected had registered at the beginning of September, risking fines up to £45,000. www.on365.co.uk


Homes plan gets go-ahead More than 100 new homes that were under review will now be built under schemes run by the Homes and Communities Agency. The HCA’s funding was reduced in July as part of the government’s spending cuts, but funding for 105 homes has now been cleared under the Kickstart and Local Authority New Build schemes. www. homesandcommunities.co.uk


6 CIBSE Journal October 2010


UK to extend ‘green deal’ for homes to businesses n


The coalition government has confirmed that it intends


to extend its ‘Green Deal’ initiative for retrofitting Britain’s homes to nearly 3m businesses. The Green Deal was originally earmarked as a scheme for homeowners and landlords to implement energy efficiency measures to cut carbon emissions. A spokeswoman for the


Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said the extension of the Green Deal to businesses was likely to be ‘limited to technologies with shorter payback periods to align repayments with the average lease length and the repayment period on key heating and lighting technologies’. There were no plans to cap the


Project to test


Level 6 homes One of the UK’s largest zero carbon developments has been unveiled in Slough, Berkshire. Greenwatt Way has been built to Level 6 of the Code for Sustainable Homes and its energy use will be monitored for the next two years. The development includes an energy centre to test five different types of renewable energy generation, and it incorporates a low- temperature district heat network The project was engineered by AECOM.


Renewable targets ‘must be maintained’


The Renewable Energy Association (REA) has backed calls by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) to maintain government targets for renewable energy. Currently just 3% of energy used


in the UK comes from renewable sources, but the government has stated its aim of increasing this figure to 15% by 2020. The CCC called on the government to ‘provide the right incentives to encourage investment


in renewable projects in the UK’. The REA backed the CCC’s


position, but added that the government should put a greater emphasis on making sure the targets are met. The REA also said that the government should set out a detailed position on the future of the Renewable Heat Incentive, adding that current uncertainty ‘is resulting in projects not progressing’. It also called for more emphasis


on biomass initiatives. Chief executive Gaynor


Hartnell said: ‘We agree with the committee’s headline recommendation of sticking with the 15% target, but putting greater emphasis on ensuring that it is actually delivered. ‘We will be scrutinising the


Committee’s recommendations closely over the coming week and making a full response to government in due course.’


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amount of investment per building, she said.


Ministers are aiming to extend


the scheme to 2.8m businesses operating out of non-domestic properties, according to John Alker, director of policy and communications at the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC). ‘This is something we have campaigned for; the problem of accessing a large amount of money upfront to do refurbishments is not a problem specific to householders.’ The scheme will enable the costs


of energy efficient improvements, like those to heating and lighting, to be paid for upfront, with these costs paid back over time by occupiers’ through savings on energy bills. The most energy inefficient


homes in the UK could save, on average, around £550 per year. All measures paid for through


the scheme, for both domestic and commercial properties, will have to satisfy the government’s ‘golden rule’, which states that savings must outweigh the capital and installation costs.


However, due to the diversity of


the non-domestic building stock, energy saving technologies and improvements in the non-domestic sector may be different and more diverse than those in the domestic sector. Full details are expected to be


revealed around November under the Energy Security and Green Economy Bill, with the scheme going live in late 2012.


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