“If we continue to ignore the impacts of climate change there will be severe consequences for the property market and the wider economy” Professor Mark Maslin, Director, UC London’s Environment Institute, launching new report on impact of climate change on property, 2 May

“We are pushing as much as possible for greener homes and greener communities. That is our intention, and it is a key policy… Britain could lead the world, and I believe that the incentive provided by public investment in this sector can help Britain to lead the world in innovative and green products, which we can subsequently export, “Iain Wright, Communities minister, DCLG question time, Hansard, 1 April

A professor at the MIT who designed computer interfaces once told me that people take in five to seven bits of information into short term memory which they can act on.

“More work needs to be done, but one thing is clear: if we’re interested in quick wins to minimise the amount of carbon dioxide we pump out in the next 50 years, we need to place far greater emphasis on reusing the buildings we’ve already got,”
Henry Oliver, policy advisor, Empty Homes Agency,
The Times, 14 March

“No one has ever built a zero-carbon city before. Nor one producing zero waste or fully powered by renewable energy. Masdar City will accomplish all three,” Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of Masdar, the $22 billion eco-city planned for Abu Dhabi, The Times, 11 Feb.

Good news and bad news this month. It emerged that only six households have benefitted from the stamp duty rebate for eco-homes in 2007.

Walt Patterson, a former nuclear physicist published a distillation of some 35 years of thinking and writing about electricity and energy policy.

“Contractors haven’t got the skills to engage in a flourishing market for new environmental technologies. Contractors don’t benchmark so they don’t know their strengths and weaknesses.” Andrew Brister, Electrical Contractor, 31 July

The long-awaited Housing Green Paper was finally unveiled, as large swathes of the West of England and the Midlands were engulfed in the biggest British flood for half a century.