The first to take umbrage was Bill Dunster over at Building magazine:

It seems that some of the people partially responsible for causing the problems in the first place are now trying to reduce the effectiveness of the legislation, possibly in an attempt to maintain the value of their extensive landbanks. The real issue is cost, not the technical challenge of delivering zero carbon.

Building magazine’s forum ran a poll and all respondants (at the time of writing) voted for UK-GBC and tended to disagree with Bill Dunster. One commenter went as far as to say:

It would seem that people are more interested in personal legacy shopping then actually addressing the real issues of achieving significant greenhouse gas emissions, while still providing affordable, high quality buildings in well balanced, well connected, desirable communities. It’s a bit sad really.

It is important to remember that the UK-GBC report is not the last word – it has been produced in order to feed in to a government consultation on the definition of zero carbon due in the summer. The document is still very much a work in progress.

The start point of the document was the fact that zero-carbon as currently defined would be unrealistic. Over to Robert Kyriakides for more on this:

Trying to work backwards – have a definition first and try to figure out what it means – may work in politics, philosophy or even economics but in science it leads to some hilarious outcomes. This is what has happened with the modelling that has been done in an effort to discover what Ms Cooper meant by a Zero Carbon Home – we cannot of course ask her because she doesn’t know.

And from Roger Humber (of the House Builders Association – more from him in a minute):

Neither Yvette Cooper nor the industry’s leaders had the remotest idea what they meant when they first signed up to delivering zero carbon by 2016.

From Brian Berry of the federation of Master Builders:

It is almost like politicians plucked the objectives out of the air and said ‘this is what we will go for’. If they had spoken to the industry we would have more realistic targets.

What we have here is a problem of vocabulary. Zero carbon as a phrase has captured imaginations. It is a very black and white statement – ZERO CARBON – not “very low carbon” or “significantly less than we used to have carbon”.

There were three options available to the UK-GBC:

1. deliver fewer homes that meet the current definition of ‘zero carbon’

2. reduce the requirement for carbon savings from new buildings

3. find a suitable mechanism for allowing off-site solutions where on- and near-site installations are not practicable or are prohibitively expensive.

The final was the one the UK-GBC chose to promote. This keeps the intent of zero-carbon. The alternative would have been to ditch the phrase, which would have been egg on faces all round, given the penetration of the phrase into the public vocabulary.

Paul King (of UK-GBC) was fairly swift in responding to criticism of the report and in defending zero carbon as a goal:

We believe zero-carbon is the right policy so, for those who fear this is some sort of cop out, I’ll reiterate. We believe that in many cases it is possible and desirable to achieve net zero-carbon in homes using on and near-site renewable energy. In all cases, we believe the minimum requirement for on or near-site carbon mitigation should be high.

However, we need a definition that can be used for regulatory purposes, one that can be applied to 100% of homes, including those that face constraints against the use of on-site renewables. Hence a degree of flexibility is needed.

The approach we have recommended should encourage developers to opt for on or near-site solutions wherever possible. The price of paying into our proposed “community energy fund” will mean developers will only do so if there is no alternative. That price could create a benchmark to incentivise the micro-renewables industry to offer developers better, lower-cost solutions.

To those who think we should have opened the floodgates to allow unlimited use of off-site renewables, I say that it is essential that we optimise use of all the UK’s renewable energy resources. The future is undoubtedly one of increased demand and competition for large-scale on or off-shore technologies, with other sectors such as transport almost certainly prepared to pay a higher price for energy.

There is more work to be done, but I think we’re a step closer to removing a major obstacle en route to 2016.

So on one side we have the ‘dark’ greens, such as Bill, saying things are not going far enough. In the middle are the UK-GBC taking a ‘light’ green, more pragmatic approach. And at the opposite end of the spectrum are what are fondly referred to as ‘hairy arsed builders’ with a more ‘brown’ view. From Roger Humber (again) of the House Builders Association (the voice of the non-volume house builder):

“The government should use the credit crunch to say we have over-egged it all, timetables are not feasible and that there will be a moratorium on changes to the Code for Sustainable Homes.”

To be fair to Mr Humber, I can’t find his actual statement, just how it’s been reported in Contract Journal. It is clear, however, that there is a potential disconnect between theory and delivery which needs to be addressed immediately. The government and the UK-GBC need to use this opportunity to open up dialogue and avoid any future roadblocks, which might be caused by industry apathy and complicity (the “I told you it was going to fail” mentality).

I’m keen for the non-volume builders to have their voice heard and to feel inclusion. Barratt were one of the companies involved in the report. From 2006, some research I undertook for my MBA dissertation points to why this might be unsettling to the non-volume house builders:

Kotler’s rule of thumb is that a bigger market share can lead to a bigger profit for a company up to a ceiling of 40%. Companies with market shares of less than 10% have little influence on price changes, new services and promotional intensity. The top 4 (soon to be 3) companies account for almost 50% of the market in 2006 (48%), each being between 10% and 13.5%, meaning a true oligopoly. The 4 in question are Persimmon (already on the FTSE100 – PSN), Barratt (BDEV – FTSE 250) and the potential Taylor Wimpey (Taylor Woodrow – TWOD – FTSE 250) (Wimpey – WMPY – FTSE 250). However, even with Taylor Wimpey combined, total market share will be 25% – no individual company would be near the ‘danger’ mark of 40%.

The UK house building market is overshadowed by an effective oligopoly and if zero-carbon further compromises market choice by forcing out non-volume house builders, we must find a way to prevent this happening.

So what did I think of the report? Two main points stood out to me:

• by extending the renewables beyond the new build site and into the community, there will be a benefit to the existing stock
• those houses which do meet the original target will have the opportunity to differentiate themselves from the bulk of the market

But what really interests me has been the interaction in the press between all the stakeholders involved – the government, the UK-GBC, the volume house builders, the activist designers and the non-volume builders. But let’s not forget the public – they’re the ones who are going to drive sales eventually. As far as I can ascertain, the report itself was not picked up by the national press. Let’s get our house in order before the customers get wind of any dissent in the industry.