The government’s new regime for funding small scale renewables has come in dribs and drabs – meanwhile the renewables community has been waiting for feed-in tariffs (FITs) to start. Finally they have arrived; the final details to the UK feed-in tariffs’ scheme were released on the 1st February 2010. Here Gavin Harper presents a summary and breakdown of the salient points.

A new low energy house in the Edwardian suburbs of Cambridge. Having been occupied for a year, the energy readings provisionally suggest that its performance achieves Passivhaus standards of overall energy usage and the home uses a heat pump to deliver the very small amount of energy required. The ground source heat pump (GSHP) was a specification change from the gas boiler during the construction period, a decision prompted by a momentary leap in gas prices.

By definition, low energy should equal low carbon. Certainly, lower running costs will encourage a wider interest, particularly among the public and commercial sector, but enhanced, not reduced, comfort levels are what John Williamson of JPW believes will be a large factor in the adoption of the PassivHaus standard in the UK until legislation potentially forces the construction industry to adopt a UK derivative.

A tranche of twenty-first century timber hi-rise projects are emerging across Europe, aimed at squaring the compact city hi-density circle with the demands of zero energy housing. Oliver Lowenstein looks at WaughThistleton’s ground-breaking Murray Grove in London, along with further projects in Germany, Norway and Sweden, in the first of this two-part series. Several countries in Europe are in the midst of building medium, to hi-rise buildings. Unsurprisingly, this is a building aspiration which is unlikely to disappear. While not on the level of the hyper hi-rise buildings found across the planet, from Shanghai to Dubai to New York, timber hi-rise’s emergence signals how change is afoot.

This issue includes yet more articles on pioneering designers and builders who are keen to achieve very low energy buildings and have decided that the best route for achieving this would be the Passivhaus or the AECB’s Gold/Silver standards.