This post is by Julie Hirigoyen, chief executive of the UK Green Buildings Council (UK-GBC).
Buildings are responsible for around a third of our greenhouse gas emissions, and have by far the most potential for achieving cost effective greenhouse gas reductions compared to other sectors.
This post first appeared as a Huffington Post Blog.
It was George Osborne who, festooned with hard hat and high vis, proclaimed that ‘we are the builders.’ He looked a bit silly, but his message was serious. Building things is what real people do; it’s where real economic growth happens; and it’s a real investment in our shared future. Osborne invented the line, but it is Theresa May who is doing the building. As the BBC’s business editor put it, “from beating ourselves up for not being able to build anything, the UK is suddenly building everything.” Well, almost everything. Read more
Forget the cuts to the RHI. Ignore halving ECO. The biggest change to the UK’s energy strategy didn’t appear in yesterday’s autumn statement. Instead, a two line note snuck out an hour or so after George Osborne finished his speech confirmed that carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the UK is effectively dead. Read more
George Osborne will have my sympathy when he sets out his response to the latest projections in his Autumn Statement. Like his predecessors, he will be painfully aware of the inherent unreliability of these forecasts. A year ago there was talk of a triple dip recession, but now we have had a few quarters of decent growth. Yet, despite the recent positive statistics, there remains a huge gulf in perception between the optimists, who see the emergence of a robust recovery, and the pessimists who see a lack of firm foundations for anything beyond a short lived pick up. Read more
