I am a little apprehensive with regard to renewable energy technologies, the first step in housing design surely is to: a) reduce the need for energy and b) to use energy more efficiently in the building; before energy is to be supplied from renewable sources.

Cyril Sweett's 'Cost Review of the Code for Sustainable Homes' tells us that CSH minimum performance standard for energy efficiency at Level 3 is achievable [under certain dwelling types] without the need to integrate renewable energy technology into house design. However there is the need to integrate WHMVS into the design.

Assume a property were to be built which would not be affected by the Merton Rule or FALP, etc... and therefore would not require renewable energy technologies to displace a % of the dwellings CO2 emission rating.

Is it practical to expect a building to meet CSH Level 3 energy efficiency standard without the need to integrate renewable energy technologies into the building design? What U-values [walls, floor, roof and windows] and level of air tightness would be required in order to achieve this?

And is achieving CSH Level 3 energy efficiency standard without renewables a cost effective option? Or should we forget thermal efficiency and install oversized boimass boiler's in every house to meet these Code requirements?

It's old thinking - that the task is to find alternative means of heating the building stock. Forget the energy source, fossil or renewable. Go straight to buildings that need no heating, and do that trick by fundamental design of layout and fabric that makes the whole building collect and store 'free' energy. Machinery like solar panels, heat pumps, renewable energy equipment in general, being secondary. It's now just about becoming feasible - both by newbuild and by major adaptation of existing buildings, including Listed Buildings - as always, it's building-by-building individual solutions, and design quality is what finds sometimes surprising solutions that work.

Jon, several of your statements could be easily dismissed, especially if they originate with the IAEA. Does '...300 of coal' mean we have 300 years worth left? In which case that could be easily dismissed. I don't quite understand what you mean by '2500 years+ might be enough to allow us to develop fission in which case the resources available dwalf current nuclear technologies.'

Happy with the ZJ, but estimates of coal are likely to be way too high.

Following sentence? All of it! Sorry I'm not very bright.

Posted By: alexcselling the house in 20 years will be more straightforward if its ready for a world where Energy costs more

and worth a great deal more than the ones that aren't, which may become unsaleable at any price, except as a redevelopment site.

Posted By: Chris Wardlerun the world economy on a perpetual growth model

That needn't necessarily mean growth of fuel use, CO2 production, resource consumption, pollution etc. We can, and do, get cleverer at producing more and more goodies using less and less material, energy input etc. So it it really just a belief that 'goodies' are fundamentally immoral, so much healthier to live like a peasant?

It's good when large sections of a society attain wealth and comfort that would have been only for the privileged, a few generations back. Because then the game's finally over - after millenia in which all focus was on getting ahead, or just getting, wealth and comfort is finally experienced as empty. So what next? That's the stage we're at, in the west, while the east continues to devote all energy to the old game of scrabbling up the slippery slope. That's the real privilege of being alive right now, as a westerner - not the wealth and comfort we live in, but the unprecedented realisation that the wealth and comfort is empty, that we're looking for something else. So no need to volunteer to forswear 'growth' - it's dropping away from us because we finally know it's not all it was cracked up to be. Lucky us - and good luck to the east, to discover the same asap. If the 'something else' is something spiritual, then that makes the wealthy west the world's spiritual centre, not the benighted east.

fostertom

>>and worth a great deal more than the ones that aren't, which may become unsaleable at any price...<<

It is relatively easy to argue that the current value of any property, particulalrly in the South and South East, is largely based on the right to occupy land for a particular use rather than the residual value of the property that has been built. In some places, the residual value of the residential propery is almost incidental. Even if energy costs went up to Nuclear levels, the cost of maintaining that house with nuclear supply might only be less than double current electricity supply prices.

Some would say that the argument above is therefore wholly reliant on house prices returning to historical norms of residual 'bricks and mortar' value versus the right to occupy. In order to return to historical norms, a wholesale review of planning would be required to allow supply to be increased. At the moment, there is little sign that this is occurring: The codes that have been proposed for 2016 appear to me to be technologically biased towards high density construction indicating a political wish not to tackle planning.

Rgds, Jon

fostertom, I am not aware of any instances of paradigm changes occuring in democracies without either majority support or a change of system of government. I would therefore respectfully disagree.

rgds, jon

Surely all of the aboie examples are supported inventions that arrived and gained popular support because a majority wished it to be so? Quantum physics arrived, one can easily argue, largely through government supported grants enabling the work at CERN and in the US. The internet arrived almost entirely due to military support. The only unsupported paradigm example that I can think of under a, sort of, modern government, was the Initial Special Theory of Relativity.

Rgds, jon

Posted By: fostertomthe internet arrived without majority support or government decision

Without majority support, initially that was true. But the government was fully involved through DARPA in the US (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Of course, now the internet has been hived over to commercial interests, one could argue that it's big business that supports it, but without customers this would not be the case. I'm not sure if there is a majority of the population in the UK that has true broadband connections (i.e. >2 megabits per second - 256k is not really broadband).

Paul in Montreal.

I do not know whether they knew what they were doing. They certainly made a concious decision to fund in the examples given and an after-the-discovery decision to fund in a few special examples. I am not sure where this is going.. where is it going? Do you believe that the majority will accept the framework proposed (foreswearing growth) as a result of work by a critical mass of people on this type of forum?

Posted By: jonDo you believe that the majority will accept the framework proposed (foreswearing growth) as a result of work by a critical mass of people on this type of forum?

Lao Tzu, he say: “The best way to run the world is to let it take its course – and to get yourself out of the way of it!”

Posted By: joneasy to argue that the current value of any property ...... is largely based on the right to occupy land for a particular use rather than the residual value of the property that has been built.

It's probably a bit of both the above, plus a third future possibility - that its value will be a measure of its efficiency in avoiding crippling fuel costs.

Posted By: jonEven if energy costs went up to Nuclear levels, the cost of maintaining that house with nuclear supply might only be less than double current electricity supply prices.

I'm expecting tenfold increase within ten years. Cost of production of nuclear or any other options won't come into it - it'll just be demand versus supply of energy in general (good news for woodland owners and growers of elephant grass!). Wishful thinkers hope that governments will 'continue' to hold fuel prices down regardless - but heating oils has risen 2.8-fold in the last 8yrs, 2.5-fold in the last 4yrs - and most of that was before China really got cooking, and before Russia acquired her present stranglehold on western fuel prices, which Mr Putin just hasn't chosen to exercise yet.

Crippling fuel price rises seem a cert - but regard that not as a problem but a bankable source of no-brainer finance, to embrace the change and to invest soonish to make your buildings low-, zero- or negative-energy. That way,
a) you avoid those costs that will be ruining everyone else,
b) your buildings' capital value will appreciate ever-faster compared with the general market, especially in case of an economic downturn; and
c) in the process, your building can have been simplified, beautified and functionalised, compared with the dog's dinner that everyone else continues to put up with -
all those three for the price of one, if done well. Financiers will be eager to throw money at such a scenario, once it becomes conventional wisdom.

Why France - it's scheduled to become a desert (the south anyway), while lucky old UK will become an agricultural paradise, with everyone else's warming mitigated by the slowing of the gulf stream (Met Office models make it extremely unlikely to stop altogether). Climate of the Algarve by 2050.
We're all guessing, Jon. 5-fold, 10-fold, 20-fold? Not just 2-fold, anyway.