Part L and the Green Police

It seems like just yesterday I was absorbing the 2010 incarnation of Part L. Now 2013 is creeping up on us fast, and the consultation will be closed 4 weeks from today. The plans for zero carbon homes in 2016 and non-dwellings in 2019 are ambitious, and rightly so. But what happens after 2019? It’ll be years before there are enough zero-carbon buildings to really make a dent in UK emissions. In the meantime there are thousands of inefficient buildings that won’t get touched by Part L, because no building work is being done on them. The ever-expanding list of actions that triggers consequential improvements may help – for example making works such as boiler and window replacements trigger further improvements. But there is a danger this will just discourage building owners from doing such works in the first place, or encourage them to hide their activities from the green police.

We need to come up with new ways of bringing the existing building stock up-to-scratch, that don’t involve waiting until someone decides to do some building work. Building MOTs? Mandatory follow-through of recommendations from EPCs, DECs and air conditioning inspections? Fines for excessive energy use? I don’t have all the answers, but what I am pretty sure of is that energy prices are going to keep rising as fossil fuels get scarcer and the world’s population gets bigger. Give it another few years, and businesses won’t need legislation pushing them to manage their energy use better, they’ll have to do it to survive.