Zero-carbon report could backfire

| Sourced From |

To most of us the financial crisis has been a reality check, not pleasant but necessary. But for environmentalists the penny is taking longer to drop .This is because they believe their cause is more important than anything else.

Hang a £163 billion deficit and rising unemployment we’ve got a planet to save!

Meanwhile, the big question is who’ll pay for the green economy? The government won’t say, but it’s safe to assume it won’t be consumers, which leaves developers with a problem on their hands. More and more planners demand microgeneration which is hugely expensive and wildly inefficient. It doesn’t matter if you’re a housebuilder forking out an extra £35,000 a unit to provide green gizmos, or the client of a small barn conversion in Lincolnshire who has had to spend £75,000 to win planning (see Works in this Friday’s paper) — microgeneration is neither sustainable nor fair.

We have to wait until the autumn for the government’s latest thoughts on this. Meanwhile The Centre for Alternative Technology’s new report on how to achieve zero carbon by 2030 takes several steps back in its belief that this holy grail is achievable if we all just get back to the land.

The 400-page report has many failings, not simply its Middle Earth sentiments. It turns its back on nuclear power, arguing that renewables and a change in lifestyle — what we eat and where we take our holidays — will allow us to hit tougher targets than the ones we’re currently struggling with.

There’s a lot of economic make believe too, yet one of report’s authors Pat Borer knows exactly how hard it is to make zero carbon buildings stack up financially. Along with David Lee he has designed CAT’s new headquarters using hemcrete, a technology that remains prohibitively expensive for mainstream construction, and is impractical in cities because of the thickness of the walls.

Renewable materials have a role to play but why is there no mention of low carbon concrete of the sort being pioneered by the London 2012 Olympics? Presumably because concrete is beyond the pale, although it would be safe to assume that the schools, hospitals and homes of the future, are rather more likely to be built in a new kind of concrete than they are in willow and straw.

Selling the benefits of a green economy remains important but we need to find a different message: one that counters cynicism and the feeling that environmentalists maximise the dangers of global warming while minimising the cost of dealing with it, and that this is another expensive mess the government has got us into. This report makes the case for zero carbon harder to sell not easier, and a green economy even shakier than the one we’re battling to save.

Posted on June 22, 2010 · in UK

Tagged as: Carbon Reduction • U. K. Carbon • zero carbon buildings