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Zero carbon by 2016 target still in place |
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31 May 2010, 9:46 AM
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Work has officially started at 'The Triangle' a 42 home, green development in Swindon, which has been spearheaded by Kevin McCloud through Hab Oakus, the joint venture between McCloud’s development company, Hab, and housing group GreenSquare. Rather than the traditional ‘turning of the sod’, the on site ceremony included a demonstration of Tradical Hemcrete, which is being used for the walls of the new homes at The Triangle. The hemp and lime wall thermal walling system absorbs CO2 in its manufacture and so for a typical wall section, the material will have 130kg CO2/m2 less than traditional brick and block.
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The homes will be capable of reaching Code for Sustainable Homes level 5.
Grant Shapps, the coalition housing minister attended the ceremony and took the opportunity to announce that the new government will be taking forward the commitments formed under Labour, for all new build homes to be 'zero carbon' from 2016. There is still no absolute definition of what zero carbon will mean in practice, however.
The UK Green Building Council welcomed Shapps’ announcement. Paul King, speaking for the UK Green Building Council said: “The Coalition Government’s confirmation that from 2016 all new homes will be zero carbon is timely and right. Over the last three years, this target has galvanised the construction sector and led to an unprecedented amount of innovation.
“Zero carbon homes are an appropriate fit with the new government’s agenda. We urgently need to cut carbon emissions while improving peoples’ quality of life. We need to empower neighbourhoods and find community-based solutions to make low carbon, sustainable living easy, affordable and attractive for people. And more than ever, we have to do this in ways that deliver value for money – bearing in mind not just the short-term costs of development, but the long-term costs and benefits for the people who will live in our communities for decades to come".
McClouds design for the development has few parking spaces for private cars , preferring to use the space for a village green and shared vegetable plots, with a car pool to service the residents transport needs. In his blog, McCloud says...
"Housing Associations deliberately seek to minimise shared spaces in a quest to avoid neighbourly dispute. But in banishing awkwardness and mess we lose the very areas where relationships are forged. Making places is about more than increasing the range of goods and services to hand. If a neighbourhood is to have its own centre of gravity, it needs an understanding of ‘community’ that is greater than the sum of the individual households. It needs public space and shared space; places that allow for the possibility of sharing, working together, socializing. Spaces that invite you to amble, linger, chat.
Kitchen gardens, shared vegetable plots, community buildings and car pools offer endless potential for disagreement and abuse, but are also fundamental in transforming discrete family units into a functioning community. As with families, the most successful communities are those that can accommodate, and survive, a healthy dose of argument and chaos".
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