ROOF Blog

Roof-mounted wind turbines and solar panels are ‘eco-bling’ that allow their owners to flaunt their green credentials but contribute very little towards meeting Britain’s carbon reduction targets, according to the Royal Academy of Engineering. Developers will waste millions of pounds installing such micro-generation devices unless the Government revises its building regulations on carbon-neutral homes and offices. Doug King, professor of building engineering at the University of Bath and the author of a report on low carbon buildings, said that far greater savings could be made by installing better insulation and methods of trapping the sun’s rays. He proposed that the government target for all new homes to be carbon-neutral by 2016 should be relaxed in return for developers making equivalent contributions to wind farms and other large-scale renewable energy projects.

In a speech to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary Hilary Benn is expected to call for a greater focus on adapting, or ‘retrofitting’ houses.

The Government has set a target for all new homes to be carbon neutral by 2020, in a bid to cut down on households’ carbon emissions. However, of the 25 million houses in the UK‚ new builds account for less than one per cent of the housing stock.

By 2050, the vast majority of the housing stock is expected to be buildings that have already been constructed.

Mr Benn, ahead of the speech, said: ‘Architecture must take account of carbon and adaptation to create climate resilient buildings, infrastructure and places’.

So-called retrofitting is considered by architects to be a far more ecologically friendly way to improve the quality of the housing stock, rather than rip down poor-quality buildings and replace them with carbon-neutral new builds.

However, a report published this week said that it could cost an average of £10,000 per home to fit the necessary insulation and other energy efficiency measures.