Newsblast
Yesterday the House of Lords (HoL) held a short debate on Energy Performance Certificates, prompted by a question from Lord Redesdale who wanted:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when they will transfer responsibility for energy performance certificates from Communities and Local Government to the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
Answer: No plans at present.
There follows some tit-for-tat including a few digs at Home Information Packs.
Five minute newsblast
Commercial Energy Assessors’ forum
Just a quick (long overdue) shout-out to Marie Baldwin who runs the Commercial Energy Assessors’ forum and to highlight the pitfalls of spammers ruining “social media”.
EPCs on all non-domestic buildings by 2017
Published in October 2009, the progress report to the Parliament Committee on Climate Change urges Government to use EPCs to gather data from which it can devise informed policy decisions – if we don’t know what the problem is, how we can solve it? Something I have called for since this website was conceived; and one of the reasons why EPCs should be freed from the constraints of HIPs.
On page 103 the report calls on the Govt. to decide, by Oct 2010, whether:
- All non-residential buildings should have an EPC by 2017;
- All non-residential buildings should have a minimum EPC rating of F or higher by 2020; and
- the roll out of DECs to non-public buildings by 2017 (the Govt wants to, or is, consulting on this).
Meeting Carbon Budgets – the need for a step change
The house that costs £60 a year to heat
Finally, in the Telegraph:
[Mike Hillard] built his £400,000 home with very well insulated walls made from lightweight concrete blocks and a big cavity filled with fibre, a roof that was made absolutely airtight and double-glazed windows that were tightly sealed (surprisingly the house is not in the slightest bit claustrophobic).
Attached to the house is the huge heat-holding solar room with its dense concrete floor that works like a massive storage heater, and powers the radiators and underfloor heating in the main house.
The solar panels on the roof, along with his numerous additional systems, keep the domestic water hot for most of the year and mean the boiler doesn’t normally fire between early March and mid-November, and not often through the winter. Beneath the solar room is a 16,400-litre rainwater tank, with another 8,000-litre tank under the kitchen. When full, they provide a seven-month supply of water.
Green property: the house that costs £60 a year to heat - Telegraph
