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Archive for January, 2008

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

Posted in climate change, Code for Sustainable Homes, energy, house, london, renewable energy, sustainability, uncategorized on January 21, 2008| 2 Comments »

I’ll keep this short to ensure that it does get posted, but I suspect that I could rant on this till closing time on Friday night. For a recent renewable energy assessment for a client I finally took the time to review the potential for air source heat pumps to deliver carbon reductions and I don’t like what I found. (more…)

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Off-site Renewables Update

Posted in Code for Sustainable Homes, energy, renewable energy, stamp duty exemption, sustainability on January 21, 2008| 1 Comment »

I posted extensively last year about the no off-site renewables issues enforced by the Treasury. There is little to report on this as yet, except that as a direct result of the blogging and discussions with Paul King by myself and Julian Brooks we were invited to join the Green Building Council Task Force to review the issues and report to Government.

Can’t say anything about progress, but it’s exciting stuff and we are pleased to be involved.

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new coal? you’re joking

Posted in climate change, energy, engineering, london, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities, tagged , , , on January 4, 2008| 2 Comments »

If the government backs up Medway Council’s inane decision to allow a new coal fired power station in Kent, I’m going to pack it in. The superfluous runway at Heathrow is bad enough, but new coal? The squabbling we all do over saving a tonne of CO2 here and a tonne of CO2 there – and Gordon Brown is going to give us the first new coal plant in 30 years?

Seriously, I’m going to put my feet up, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe, and join the national guard. Who knows, I might even become the next prime minister.

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without action, the plan for zero carbon homes by 2016 will fail

Posted in architecture, chp, climate change, Code for Sustainable Homes, energy, engineering, micro chp, renewable energy, stamp duty exemption, sustainability, utilities, tagged , , on January 3, 2008| 5 Comments »

The requirement for all homes to be zero carbon by 2016 is going to fail unless we take action now. In particular, a set of interim requirements under the Code for Sustainable Homes must be imposed on private housebuilders. In addition, the Code must allow more flexibility in how zero carbon is achieved.

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