The mighty triumvirate has received royal assent: the climate change bill (excellent), the energy bill (excellent), and the planning bill (frightening) have now become acts. So now the UK is legally bound to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050 with interim targets along the way. Within a year we’ll see feed in tariffs for distributed energy up to 5MW. And ironically, the planning bill may be used to railroad through airport expansion and new coal fired power – but let’s ignore that for now.
So the bills are passed and the targets are set in stone. Now comes the hard part. Will we see the vast changes that are required in order to hit these targets? With transport and aviation included in the targets, the built environment will have to shoulder even more than its proportionate share of the burden. With Government support, will we actually strip more than 80% of the carbon out of existing buildings?
Or has this just been more talk? This feels like a hugely important moment and although I’m hopeful, part of me is ready to be disappointed.
carbon limited 
What with the other rather large news event happening this appears to have been rather lost. A news in brief item that may come back to haunt us and the Government.
It’s the planning stuff that’s really scary.