Zero Carbon House Building

The aim of British Governments is to reduce Carbon emissions from homes, which currently runs at 25% of the total United Kingdom output, to zero by 2016.

This aim has lead to new house building over recent years to incorporate energy lowering, loss reduction methods into new house building programmes.

For many years, efforts by the industry to build more fuel efficient houses in an effort to cut household energy bills has led to the building of a more thermally efficient home.

Incorporation of more efficient insulation of walls, windows, and loft space has reduced the fuel input requirement and the introduction and installing of fuel efficient, condenser boilers, adds to this.

The introduction of lower electricity using refrigerators, washing machines, by the white goods manufacturers, low energy lighting, has helped over the last decade.

However to produce a zero carbon home, more radical fuel saving strategies will be required to produce this. Technology is leading the way by allowing the manufacture of new forms of energy conversion strategies using naturally occurring resources to be turned into power, heating and lighting at reduced cost to the householder and reduce carbon emissions.

Sunlight capture technology, solar panels to heat water, photovoltaic cells producing electricity, has made use of new materials, reducing manufacturing costs, increasing efficiency. To such an extent, by working, even on cloudy days, with no direct sunlight. 

Heat in the ground in the depths of the most extreme winters can be captured by heat pumps buried underground, and air- sourced heat pumps can generate hot water for domestic hot water systems.

Local authorities are changing the planning rules to allow wind turbines where appropriate, to be added, and the national power producers are allowing micro generation of electricity to be streamed into the National Grid and pay the householder for that power by way of Smart Metering systems

Fitting of high efficiency biomass fuelled boilers in individual houses, and incorporation into multi-dwelling developments of communal heating and hot water and power generation biomass fuelled boilers is happening country wide. Recycling centres are being incorporated into large multi-dwelling housing estates, rainwater harvesting into underground water storage systems for gray water usage, toilet flushing, heating systems.

The solutions to meet this target of Zero Carbon homes are available now. The construction industry, house builders and their research organisations, are taking advantage of new technologies, to meet this ambitious programme.

Robin Burn