A recurring topic that has kept popping into my consciousness over the past few weeks has been that of financial incentives to encourage of adoption of green technology in buildings.

Firstly, in relation to the incentives that are available in the UK from the government. I’m interested in an air-source heat pump to provide an easier-to-install alternative to a ground-source pump to provide our heating. Whilst the Energy Saving Trust website lists air-source pumps as being covered under the low carbon buildings programme, the Low Carbon Buildings site itself doesn’t! I guess these are the risks of being a (potentially) early adopter of such technologies.

Secondly, when researching my earlier PassivHaus posting, I become rather envious of the seemingly generous financial assistance available in Germany, not only aimed at specific technologies, but at providing cheap mortgages to sustainable self-builders. If only we had similar support here.

Now I read on the BBC website that the a report from The New Local Government Network (whoever they are) says that planning laws should be relaxed and rebates to council tax payments offered to encourage take up of green energy generation technology. A great idea that I thoroughly applaud - to encourage energy saving through positive support rather than the usual negative approach of increasing taxation - but I can’t help but wonder if such support will ever see the light of day. There seems to be a great deal of ingrained negativity in government at all levels - a layer of civil servants hanging on to our money with all their might and at all costs.

I guess there is some support out there if you can navigate your way through the system, but I hope we’ll learn from others, take advice and really do something positive to begin to address the carbon challenge in a holistic, pragmatic manner.

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One of the cornerstones of energy efficient, healthy, sustainable building design, the PassivHaus standard aims to provide comfortable year round living conditions through minimal energy expenditure.

These aims are achieved through:

• An effective passive solar design that will provide the necessary heat gain (heating).
• To manage the heat gain:
• …very highly specified insulation,
• …near complete airtightness.
• Mechanical ventilation coupled with highly efficient heat recovery and ‘backup’ heating systems to manage the internal climate.

No additional heating systems are required.

The PassivHaus standard for buildings in Europe dictates that the building will consume no more energy than:

• Heating & Cooling: 15kWh per m2 floor area per annum.
• Total Primary Energy* Consumption: 120kWh per m2 floor area per annum for all appliances, domestic hot water and heating and cooling.

* Primary Energy is drawn from the national grid which is inherently inefficient, much energy being lost during distribution.

passivhaus.org.uk

Visit the BRE managed PassivHaus site for further details of the specification.

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A term often heard, but of rarely understood, just what does it mean?

Some definitions:

“within ten years every new home will be a zero-carbon home“

Gordon Brown, then Chancellor, in pre-budget report 2006.

When asked for further clarification, a zero-carbon home was defined as one that does not contribute to global warming - hardly a precise definition.

The zero carbon building produces no Carbon Dioxide and by combining all the available innovations can actually export carbon free energy back into the electricity grid.

http://www.applied-energy.com/ definition

Definitions can tend to ignore the CO2 emissions related to the sourcing of materials and the construction of the fabric of a building and in the initial provision of services and supporting infrastructure. A genuinely zero carbon building must be able to payback the carbon invested in its construction through generating and exporting zero carbon energy back into the national grid.

So where does that leave us. Personally, I am happy to use the catch-all zero carbon as an umbrella term incorporating both practical, real world low carbon design and an aspiration toward a truly zero carbon building lifecycle.

A zero carbon house is one that maintains ongoing CO2 emissions as near to zero as possible. The zero is currently aspirational.

Is the negative carbon house somewhere around the corner?

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Despite the various pieces of tinkering and potching that I’ve committed over the past months, I never really felt that we’d made a real start on conversion of the barn. That is until the last couple of weeks when the wall came down.
As dramatic as it sounds, the wall coming down entailed the removal of [...]

One of those frequently occurring eco-building terms, thermal mass is often mentioned but rarely defined.
The thermal mass of a building is an assessment of the ability of its internal fabric to absorb and store thermal energy. Through absorption of heat, the temperature of a material increases - the amount of heat that must be absorbed [...]