Parliamentarians from the Liberal Democrats, Green Party and the Labour Party have backed the Green Buildings Campaign organised by 100percentrenewableuk. 100percentrenewableuk is campaigning for solar pv to be made mandatory on suitable new buildings and also that fossil fuel heating should be banned in them. Tim Farron, the ex-leader of the Liberal Democrats, and MP for Westmoreland and Lonsdale, is seeking to organise an Adjournment Debate on the subject in the House of Commons.
100percentrenewableuk have started the Campaign with a petition, which has so far attracted over 1000 signatures, and are calling for action in Parliament to support solar pv and low carbon heating in new buildings.
The Green Party’s Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb agreed to promote the campaign. Sharon Hodgson, Labour MP for Washington and Sunderland West has written to the Housing Minister Stuart Andrew to look into making solar panels mandatory ion new buildings. The Liberal Democrats, according to Farron, ‘would require all new homes and non-domestic buildings to be built to a zero-carbon standard (whereby much energy is generated on-site, through renewable sources, as is used) rising to a more ambitious ‘Passivhaus’ standard by 2025’.
Marrianne Birkby said: ‘Radiation Free Lakeland are delighted that our MP Tim Farron is planning to initiate adjournment debates in order to make sure that the Green Building Campaign is successful. We are mindful that one of the biggest fossil fuel users in Cumbria is the nuclear industry who are building a gas plant right now on the Sellafield site due to be completed in 2023. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority have said: “Using Greenhouse Gas Protocol methodology, the total NDA group carbon footprint for 2019/20 is 1,046,950 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) ” The majority of this is emitted by Sellafield.
David Toke, Director of 100percentrenewableuk said ‘We desperately need action from MPs in all parties to push the Government to translate a lot of words about net zero policies into firm action. We know that installing solar pv and heat pumps is going to be especially cheap in new buildings, and doing so should be automatic, with very few exceptions.
Please write to your MP asking that they support the campaign for mandatory solar pv on suitable new buildings and also banning of fossil fuels in new buildings. The Government claim that they will ensure buildings have 75% lower carbon footprints in 2025 than today, but they have not ensured that the legislation is in place to do this. So why should we believe them?
You can see a recording of our green buildings webinar HERE. This featured Jonathon Porritt, Lucy Pedlar, a green buildings expert, Beccy Smart the countryside environmental campaigner and David Toke.
Sign the petition at the 100percentrenewableuk website at https://100percentrenewableuk.org/make-solar-panels-mandatory-on-new-uk-buildings-petition
Will the zero home houses be allowed to import green power from the grid when winter top ups are needed? Or can they really hope to balance their energy needs over the year?
I am very interested to hear what the use case is for the Gas plants that are co-located at Nuclear power stations.
Every solar panel requires 1) a promissory note guaranteeing the eventual delivery of a long=promised storage system and 2) an equivalent capacity to provide natural gas and burn it in a power plant, until that one day when a storage system is finally provided.
1) First I’ve heard of all that! I’ve never heard of that when I install my own solar systems. 2)I do find it interesting that anti-renewables people argue on the one hand that the solar plant are ‘inefficient’ and only produce a small proportion of their rated power on average, and then claim that they need as much back up as their rated capacity. This is contradictory.
None as far as I can see!
although, I must confess, nuclear power plant do need something to take up the slack, which can happen quite often these days, especially in France.