The latest on housing and sustainability regulations

This blog is aimed at social landlords with logo’ed work clothes and at suppliers of recycling services (or logo’ed clothes) looking for a new business opportunity.  If you have any suggestions or comments, please comment on this blog below. One of our SHIFT members highlighted the difficulty they had dealing with work clothes after a rebranding exercise.  They wanted to deal with...Read More

A new £6million competition aimed at getting renewable heating kit into the homes of social tenants across Great Britain has been launched by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). This new competition, part of the extended Renewable Heat Premium Payment (RHPP) scheme announced in March this year, will help registered providers of social housing to install heat pumps, solar...Read More

The IMF has recently published a report in which it comes out strongly against fossil fuel subsidies, concluding that they disproportionately benefit the wealthy (who consume more), and are a threat to the environment and national economies, sucking funds away from public spending. The IMF has calculated that around $1.9 trillion worldwide, or a total of 8 percent of Government revenue ...Read More

Sustainable Homes and partners are delighted to announce that Robert Napier CBE, Chairman of the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), will be speaking at the Retrofitting 2013 conference on Wednesday 5 th June. Robert will be speaking on the work of HCA and the empty homes initiative. HCA has been instrumental in taking forward the Coalition Government's Empty Homes initiative and in 2012...Read More

The latest figures released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change show that 7,400 Green Deal assessments were carried out in March, a significant rise on the 1,803 that were carried out in February. This brings the total number of assessments to 9,268 since the Green Deal was launched at the end of January 2013. In addition, 108 GD Assessor Organisations and the 1,003 GD Advisors...Read More

Fuel poverty is projected to impact on one in three homes by 2016 (Camco, February 2012).   Many of our clients are asking for help business planning how to get their homes to low carbon. We thought it might be of use to set out one of these projects as a case study.  Staffordshire Housing Group asked us to evaluate which measures would most cost effectively improve the...Read More

Some of our SHIFT members have been completing really useful case studies. We thought you might find this of use.  Eco homes planned for NW Bicester, the UK’s first eco town, will be designed to cope with more extreme weather such as heat waves, following predictions that the climate in Britain will become more erratic due to global warming.   Evidence shows that in the future heat...Read More

I saw this article recently (in New Scientist, February 2013) and thought it may be of interest and a welcome to hear that reports are predicting that the US is on track to meet its reduction in emissions goal . By 2020, Obama aims to cut US emissions by 17 percent from the 2005 levels.  The failure of Congress to adopt new laws enforcing a reduction in emissions made it seem unlikely...Read More

Viridian Housing Association, a SHIFT member , joined the likes of Sainsbury’s, BT Group and Marks & Spencer, by beating off stiff competition to win the Sustainable City Award for its exceptional work on tackling climate change. The housing association was crowned winner of the Climate Change category and walked away with the prestigious accolade at a glamorous ceremony held at the...Read More

The UK government provided re-assurance to the green building community in announcing in yesterday’s (March 20 th ) 2013 Budget, their commitment to ‘zero-carbon’ homes from 2016 (new-build public buildings and non-domestic buildings must be ‘zero-carbon’ from 2018 and 2019 respectively).   The term ‘zero-carbon’ refers only to the offsetting of emissions (or generation of energy...Read More

One of our key partners has a great idea.  How about millions of us switch off our lights at the same time for an hour. The WWF started Earth Hour in 2007.  Now each year millions of people across the globe turn off their lights. Not only does it save carbon but it also gives a great opportunity to look at the stars without light pollution. This year Earth Hour will be...Read More

At Sustainable Homes we exhibit throughout the year.  It is a useful way to connect with people, and hear their views. There is a good event coming up in May when Greenbuild , the professionals' sustainable refurbishment and building event, returns to Manchester Central. We are sharing stand E18 with a company called Save Water Save Money.  On the stand wewill have our...Read More

What is triple glazing? Triple-glazing is now used instead of double glazing to create more energy-efficient homes. Already popular in Europe, and originally designed for the harsh  winters of Canada and Scandinavia, triple glazing is now increasing in popularity in the UK. Modern windows are made from three panes of glass, providing greater thermal insulation than two panes....Read More