That’s now changing. The building standards for new buildings in China are as demanding as any in Europe, and infinitely more ambitious than in the United States. They’ve developed their own version of LEED, and few doubt that these new standards will be enforced with a much greater sense of purpose than has been the case up until now. This is crucial, as the projected volume of new build in China over the next 20 years is mind-boggling. But that still doesn’t get them out of the retrofit challenge.


This is something we now understand only too well here in the UK. The Labour Government never got it, obsessing about new build to the exclusion of all else, despite being reminded time after time that between 75 and 80% of the buildings that will be in use in 2050 already exist today. Ministers frittered away an entire decade.


Happily, the incoming Coalition Government would appear to have learnt that lesson and in early December launched its plans for the so-called Green Deal:


“The Green Deal is the Government’s new and radical way of making energy efficiency available to all, whether people own or rent their property. We want Britain to say goodbye forever to leaky lofts and chilly draughts. It’s also a massive economic and job opportunity which could help Britain’s economy turn the corner.”


For once, the rhetoric is just about justified. The Green Deal could indeed be a very big deal; the ambition level (covering all 27 million existing homes in the UK) is startling, and the basic principle (that the upfront capital cost of the retrofit will be funded via a charge on that household’s energy bills) is sound. It means that the many different reasons people have not to invest


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in warmer, less leaky homes are, for the most part, removed.


There’s many a slip between plans and practice, and there are some hugely complex issues still


to be worked through, both on the mechanics of funding and on operational detail. But the example of Birmingham City Council (with its Energy Savers scheme) and a small number of other


initiatives has already started to show the way. At the same time, the British Gas Green Deal has


allowed one of the UK’s ‘Big Six’ energy companies to steal a march on its competitors.


Of greatest importance to the Government is British Gas’s commitment to employ up to 3,700 on retrofit work over the next two or three years. Ministers are excitedly talking up the prospect of up to 100,000 ‘green collar jobs’ of this kind. They desperately need these jobs; even though the ‘green economy’ will create many new jobs over the years, there are few opportunities to do thousands of jobs rather than hundreds.


So the Green Deal could just be the game-changer for the whole built environment agenda. Once people start to realise how mind-bogglingly inefficient most of our buildings are, the practice of sustainable construction should become mainstream rather than the preserve of a few passionate architects and developers, represented by a few dozen ‘iconic’ buildings.


That’s certainly the thrust of the 2010 Report from the Low Carbon Construction Innovation and Growth Team:


“Over the next forty years, the transition to low carbon can almost be read as a business plan for construction, bringing opportunities for growth at every scale. The construction industry’s pivotal role in any carbon reduction program creates the opportunity, almost the obligation, for it to take up a position of leadership”.


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