EDITORIAL
Breaking ranks, moving forward
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Editorial advisory panel George Adams, engineering director, Spie Matthew Hall Laurence Aston, director, Buro Happold
Annabel Clasby, mechanical building services engineer, Atkins
Patrick Conaghan, partner, Hoare Lea Consulting Engineers Rowan Crowley, director, einside track
David Hughes, building services consultant, MTT Consulting Philip King, director, Hilson Moran
Chani Leahong, senior associate, Fulcrum Consulting Nick Mead, group technical director, Imtech Technical Services
Christopher Pountney, graduate engineer, AECOM John Rene, engineer/acoustician, Max Fordham Alan Tulla, independent lighting consultant
Ged Tyrrell, managing director, Tyrrell Systems Ant Wilson, director, AECOM Terry Wyatt, consultant to Hoare Lea
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B
ritain’s coalition government has put on a fair show of unity over major policy areas, particularly the economy. So it is refreshing to see some outspoken dissent emerge, at long
The onus is firmly on the construction sector to show that it can go that extra mile to produce genuinely low carbon homes in operation
last, on a key aspect of the government’s green-buildings agenda. Addressing his party at the Liberal Democrat annual conference, Andrew Stunell, the minister in charge of the Building Regulations, made a non-too-veiled attack on the construction sector for making such a hash of ‘low carbon’ homes: in particular, the poor quality of the building fabric (News, page 8). Of course, Stunell did not present this as a diversion from the coalition’s script on environmental policy. But the government has faced a barrage of criticism from environmentalists for kow-towing to the major builders over the quality of supposedly zero carbon dwellings. Stunell did not make any reference to this criticism, but he did point to some important recent research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation – highlighted in the Journal last year (December 2010, pages 7 and 23) – which found that ‘exemplar’ projects were not performing as they should. This puts the onus firmly on the construction sector to show that it can go that extra mile to produce genuinely low carbon homes in operation. Stunell did, however, miss an opportunity to explain why the Energy Bill, which has
completed its passage through the House of Commons, has not incorporated proposals to extend mandatory Display Energy Certificates (DECs) to commercial buildings (see this issue, page 16). This is despite almost-universal support for this change across the built environment. In response to lobbying from builders, the government was prepared to mount a virtual U-turn on its proposals for defining ‘zero carbon homes’, effectively watering down the policy. Surely Lib Dem politicians in government – including Stunell and the Energy Secretary Chris Huhne – can persuade their coalition partners that the wider roll-out of DECs is so important to the success of creating a low carbon built environment, it is worth a U-turn in the Energy Bill. Without such an about- face, the whole government’s green credentials will remain open to question.
Bob Cervi, Editor
bcervi@cibsejournal.com
www.cibsejournal.com
October 2011 CIBSE Journal
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