Entries for May 2008

Public funding of the Carbon Trust’s advisory role should be based on the Trust clearly demonstrating that its role cannot be undertaken by private sector advisory services instead, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says in a new report on the  work of the trust.

Achieving higher BREEAM Schools ratings need not be prohibitively expensive and the main barrier to uptake is perceptions about additional costs, according to the new report from the BRE Trust and Faithful & Gould.

The European Commission announced on 13 May that it would promote the use of ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) to improve energy efficiency throughout the economy, starting with buildings, lighting and electricity networks. These technologies include those commonly associated in the UK with energy management. The Commission says that ICT can enable greener behaviour across the economy and this could massively cut Europe’s carbon footprint.

A study of restaurants’ carbon footprints has revealed that the environmental cost of the imported food they use is much higher than previously thought and those imported from outside the European Union are more than 100 times those domestically produced.

The EU’s climate change and renewable energy goals should be seen as a chance for EU industries to become world leaders in sustainable technologies, says a report adopted by the European Parliament on 22 May. However, it was important to avoid a relocation of European industries to countries with less strict environmental policies “The EU’s environmental goals should not be seen as a threat to industry”, says the report drafted by Slovenian MEP Romana Jordan Cizelj. The EU’s objectives should be regarded “as an opportunity to gain a first mover advantage and make industry in the EU a world leader in environmentally friendly and socially acceptable technologies, products and services,” stressed MEPs in the debate on the report.

The European Commission is launching an annual European Green Capital Award, to be given each year to a city that is leading the way with environmentally friendly urban living. The launch event was held on 22 May when Environment Commissioner Dimas signed a declaration establishing the award scheme together with Paddy Bourke, the Lord Mayor of Dublin and President of the Union of Capital Cities of the European Union. Cities may apply via an online application form to be selected as the European Green Capital for 2010 and 2011.

Criminal sanctions should be employed to punish severe environmental offences and EU legislation in this field should be consistently applied. A European Commission proposal for a directive has now achieved a first-reading agreement between Parliament and the Council of Ministers, which means that it will be fast-tracked to final approval.

An interim European Parliament report on the science of climate change has dismissed “scientifically unsubstantiated efforts” to discredit studies on the effects and causes of climate change, and has called for additional research on the effect of biofuels. It also warns that current policies are not enough to stem global warming in the long-term. The report says existing climate change mitigation policies will be insufficient to reduce global GHG emissions over the next decades.

The House of Commons will resume its scrutiny of the final Parliamentary stages of the Planning Bill, on 2 June, when its returns from the Whitsun recess.

Local authorities calling for greater action on climate change from local stakeholders are likely to be pushing at an open door if an LGA-commissioned public opinion poll published this month is to be believed, with potentially far-reaching implications for planning and sustainable building.

Lib Dem Lord Redesdale said his party was “particularly annoyed about the omission of a renewable heat obligation” from the Energy Bill – calling it  “almost immoral” to leave it out, concluding that “there does not seem to be anything in the Bill which gives us hope that renewable heat will be a government priority.”

The 2002 Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) is currently being revised by the European Commission which is holding a public consultation on the options. The EPBD has been responsible in the UK for substantial increases in building standards and also for energy certification.

Both responses to the disastrous summer 2007 floods and Government plans to tackle flooding have been criticised as inadequate by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report into flooding* and by Council leaders, potentially calling into question many aspects of its crash programme on new housing and eco-towns. The most serious weakness EFRA finds is that “the 2007 floods revealed that, to date, most organisations – including Government – have focussed almost exclusively on river and coastal flooding, and much less so on surface water and groundwater flooding”.

Greenhouse gas reduction is now the third most favoured indicator used when councils set their improvement targets in updated Local Area Agreements (LAAs), according to the Local Government Association.

The Low Carbon Buildings Programme has funded 5,083 “successfully completed installations,” according to energy minister Malcolm Wicks. It funded 805 Phase 1 projects in 2006, 2938 Phase 1 and 387 Phase 2 in 2007, and 724 Phase 1  and 229 Phase 2 in 2008. In 2006/7 the cost of administering the scheme was £2,037,405; and in 2007/8 it was £435,831.