Carbon neutral on new builds

[Mgrant]

Any one know when and if they are still bringing it in were new build homes have to be carbon neutral? Does this mean no gas boilers?

 

[Worcester]

The Government cancelled the Code for Sustainable Homes on 25th March this year. (2015)

HOWEVER, what they did do was also remove the vagaries of different local authorities applying their own rules for carbon reduction, and set a current minimum level equivalent to what was Code 4.

From the date the Deregulation Bill 2015 is given Royal Assent, local planning authorities and qualifying bodies preparing neighbourhood plans should not set in their emerging Local Plans, neighbourhood plans, or supplementary planning documents, any additional local technical standards or requirements relating to the construction, internal layout or performance of new dwellings. This includes any policy requiring any level of the Code for Sustainable Homes to be achieved by new development; the government has now withdrawn the code, aside from the management of legacy cases.

This is expected to happen alongside the introduction of zero carbon homes policy in late 2016.

So the answer is that they are too busy scrapping schemes and cutting FiT and RHI and sitting in the corner saying "how good am I" to have actually done anything about it.

Bear in mind also how much large business (think the big house builders) influence the government. The government wants large numbers of houses built so it's streamlining planning, the builders will say your making it too expensive to build these houses, so they make lots of noise about other things and completely ignore doing anything about energy efficiency.

See also my post about the government big plan for "6.8 million heat pumps by 2030" - it's completely un deliverable as we don't have the electricity generation infrastructure to deliver it.

In short zero carbon will be put back to 2020+