The Government has published for consultation a document outlining options for zero carbon new non-domestic buildings legislation.

Housing minister John Healey launched the CLG consultation and also confirmed that from 2016 all new UK homes will be required to achieve zero carbon standards.

“New homes are 40 per cent more energy efficient now compared to 2002, but we must and can do more. The green movement is growing from the grand designs of a few, to a national movement,” Mr Healey said, in a speech to the UK Green Building Council.

“But communities and towns are made up of more than just homes, so today I have launched proposals for all new public sector buildings to be zero carbon from 2018 and all new commercial buildings from 2019. I want to gather all of the expertise out there so we have the best, practical solutions to do this.”

The consultation emphasises that the public sector should act as pioneers by achieving zero carbon new non-domestic buildings a year ahead of the private sector. It says the public sector will:
• Develop exemplar new buildings
• Explore the scope to trial ‘allowable solutions’
• Develop possible financial mechanisms to support capital costs
• Ensure central monitoring and reporting of progress of steps towards zero carbon.

The consultation says that the zero carbon standard for new non-domestic buildings should be as consistent as possible with the zero carbon homes standards, while recognising the differences in building types. The zero carbon assessment will not include embodied carbon emissions and will be made when a new building is signed off, through calculating the expected emissions for its first year of use.

Like the zero carbon homes set up (SB, January 2009), zero carbon non-domestic standards will use a hierarchy of energy efficiency, carbon compliance (on-site or linked low carbon or renewable energy technologies), and allowable solutions (off-site methods to counter any remaining carbon emissions, such as investment in low or zero carbon community heat infrastructure).

It is envisaged that buildings will either be ‘off-site rich’, with a larger role in supporting
community networks, ‘balancing on-and off-site’ or ‘on-site rich’.

The consultation closes on 26 February 2010.

http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/planningandbuilding/newnondomesticconsult