Eco-homes moving up homebuyers wish list

Up to 85 per cent of homebuyers in the UK would consider purchasing an eco-friendly home, according to new research published by Legal and General.

On Monday the prime minister Gordon Brown pledged to build ten new 'eco-towns' in the UK - doubling the previous commitment made during his election to the leadership of the Labour party earlier this year – and demand looks set to be high.

The undertaking comes on top of a proposal to build 240,000 new homes "in places and ways that respect our green spaces and the environment" - again made during his leadership campaign.

"There is clearly a demand for the green homes proposed by Gordon Brown, showing the environmental agenda is starting to influence the choices people make with respect to their homes," commented Ruth Wilkins, head of communications for Legal & General.

According to the Changing Face of British Homes report released by Legal and General, Brits are becoming more environmentally savvy.

As many as 59 per cent of homeowners would now consider purchasing a property with solar panels, whereas 40 per cent would opt for a carbon neutral home.

A further 33 per cent said they would like a property made entirely from local materials and 32 per cent would opt for a timber framed property.

The strongest demand for these eco-improvements was among those over 45 years of age according to Legal and General.

Only 18 per cent said they were not interested in an eco-friendly home.

One further interesting trend the Legal and General research reveals is in the north-east, where 18 per cent of those questioned stated they would consider a house with livestock.
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Lovelock urges ocean climate fix

Two of Britain's leading environmental thinkers say it is time to develop a quick technical fix for climate change.

Writing in the journal Nature, Science Museum head Chris Rapley and Gaia theorist James Lovelock suggest looking at boosting ocean take-up of CO2.

Their idea, already being investigated by a US firm, involves huge flotillas of vertical pipes in the tropical seas.

The two scientists say they doubt that existing plans for curbing carbon emissions can work quickly enough.

"We are taking the very strong line that we are not going to save the planet by the regular approaches like the Kyoto Protocol or renewable energy," Professor Lovelock told BBC News.

"What we have to do is to look at it in a systems sense, or a Gaian sense, and see if it's curable by direct action."

Natural cycles

Professor Rapley, who has just moved to head up the Science Museum from a similar post at the British Antarctic survey, said the two men developed the ocean pipes concept during country walks in James Lovelock's beloved Devon.

Unbeknown to them, a US company, Atmocean, had already begun trials of a very similar technology.

Floating pipes reaching down from the top of the ocean into colder water below move up and down with the swell.

As the pipe moves down, cold water flows up and out onto the ocean surface. A simple valve blocks any downward flow when the pipe is moving upwards.


See how the pumps would work
Colder water is more "productive" - it contains more life, and so in principle can absorb more carbon.

One of the life-forms that might benefit, Atmocean believes, is the salp, a tiny tube which excretes carbon in its solid faecal pellets, which descend to the ocean floor, perhaps storing the carbon away for millennia.

Atmocean CEO Phil Kithil has calculated that deploying 1.3 million pipes could potentially sequester about one-third of the carbon dioxide produced by human activities each year. But he acknowledges that research is in the early stages.


The scheme could pose problems for marine creatures such as whales
"There is much yet to be learned," he told BBC News. "We need not only to move towards the final design and size (of the pipes), but also to characterise the ecological effects.

"The problem we would be most concerned about would be acidification. We're bringing up higher levels of CO2 along with the nutrients, so it all has to be analysed as to the net carbon balance and the net carbon flux."

Atmocean deployed experimental tubes earlier this year and gathered engineering data. The pipes brought cold water to the surface from a depth of 200m, but no research has yet been done on whether this approach has any net impact on greenhouse gas levels.

The company says a further advantage of cooling surface waters in regions such as the Gulf of Mexico could be a reduction in the number of hurricanes, which need warm water in order to form.

And Professors Lovelock and Rapley suggest that the ocean pipes could also stimulate growth of algae that produce dimethyl sulphide (DMS), a chemical which helps clouds form above the ocean, reflecting sunlight away from the Earth's surface and bringing a further cooling.

Ethical fix

In recent years, scientists have developed a wide range of technical "geo-engineering" ideas for curbing global warming.

Seeding the ocean with iron filings to stimulate plankton growth, putting sunshades in space, and firing sulphate aerosols into the atmosphere from a giant cannon have all been proposed; the iron filings idea has been extensively tested.

But the whole idea of pursuing these "technical fixes" is controversial.

"One has to understand what the consequences of doing these things are," commented Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University in California, who has published a number of analyses of geo-engineering technologies.

"There are scientific questions of safety and efficacy; then there are the broader ethical, social and political dimensions, and one of the most disturbing is that if people start getting the idea that technical fixes are available and cheaper than curbing carbon emissions, then people might start relying on them as an alternative to curbing emissions.

"So I think it's worth investigating these kinds of ideas, but premature to start deploying them."

Chris Rapley does not believe ideas like the ocean pipes are complete answers to man-made global warming, but may buy time while society develops a more comprehensive response.

"It's encouraging to see how much serious effort is going into technical attempts to reduce carbon emissions, and the renewed commitment to finding an international agreement," he said.

"But in the meantime, there's evidence that the Earth's response to climate change might be going faster than people have predicted. The dramatic loss of ice in the Arctic, for example, poses a serious concern for the northern hemisphere climate."

High stakes

Professor Rapley said the letter to Nature, one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals, was intended to get people thinking about the concept of technical fixes rather than just to advocate ocean pipes.

"If you think of how the science community has organised itself," he said, "with the World Climate Research Programme, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, International Polar Year and so on - you've got all this intensive interdisciplinary collaboration figuring out what Earth systems are up to and figuring out how they work, but we don't have a similar network working across the entire piece as to what we can actually do to mitigate and adapt."

He said there was a need for some sort of global collaboration to explore potential climate-fixing technologies.

"Geo-engineering is one of the types of thing that are worth investigating," opined Ken Caldeira, "and yes, the amount of effort going into thinking of innovative solutions is far too little.

"If we can generate 100 ideas, and 97 are bad and we land up with 3 good ones, then the whole thing will have been worthwhile; so I applaud Lovelock and Rapley for thinking along these lines."

He observed that human emissions of greenhouse gases are bringing huge changes to natural ecosystems anyway, so there was nothing morally difficult in principle about deliberately altering the same natural ecosystems to curb climatic change.

But changing patterns of ocean life could potentially have major consequences for marine species. Whales that feed on krill, for example, could find their favourite food displaced by salps.

These would all have to be investigated, James Lovelock acknowledged.

But, he said, it is time to start. "There may be all sorts of ecological consequences, but the stakes are terribly high."
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New study for Severn energy plan

The government has announced a fresh feasibility study into the Severn Barrage, a tidal power plan that could provide about 5% of UK electricity.

Speaking at the Labour Party's annual conference in Bournemouth, business and enterprise secretary John Hutton said the concept was "truly visionary".

Some environmental groups have warned the barrage could affect wildlife.

The idea was first floated about 150 years ago, but environmental and cost concerns have always blocked approval.

It was last seriously considered in the 1970s and 80s.
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THE 'FLAT PACK' HOME

Imagine a 'flat pack' home that can be built in five days, which recycles the bath water and has walls that store heat.

That dream is becoming a reality on the campus of the University of Nottingham where the eco-home is being built by students.



But far from being a house of the distant future, this new technology should be seen across the country in less than a decade.

The Government has a long-term goal to reduce carbon emissions - 'greenhouse gas' - by 60% by 2050. It wants all new homes in England to be carbon neutral by 2016.

With Gordon Brown announcing that he wants 200,000 new homes built, the challenge will dominate the sector in the coming years.

As the National Housing Federation warned that the target will be missed, the university was hosting a two-day conference on zero carbon sustainable homes.

Professor Brian Ford, head of the School of the Built Environment, said: "The move towards zero carbon housing is a major challenge, but recent changes in legislation and the move towards modern methods of construction have created a significant shift in the industry."

Experts toured the eco-house which is under construction and afterwards Phil Holliday, director of building conservation company Stoneguard, and Dr Mark Gillott, associate professor of the Institute of Sustainable Energy Technology at the university, explained some of its key innovations.

Central to the energy use of the house is its ten-fold more efficient insulation and ventilation. This includes roof insulation, triple-glazed windows and walls that contain a gel which absorbs heat when it is hot, stores it and sends it back into the room when the temperature cools.

On average, everyone uses 125 to 140 litres of water per day. This needs to fall to 80 litres, so the house includes automated taps and lower flush toilets. A water management system reduces water consumption by 30%.

But most significantly, the main sections of the home are built away from the site and are driven in on a single lorry.

With skilled labour at a premium, this 'flat-pack' can be put together by general labourers in five days, and be ready to live in after ten or 12 days. Only four skips, instead of the usual 12, are being used for waste materials - primarily packaging.

Researchers will live in the house, monitoring the energy use and conducting tours.

Eventually six houses will be built on the campus - at least one of which will meet a £60,000 price limit.

Public tours of the building have been arranged before a public meeting and latest in a lecture series on climate change. The tour starts at 6.30pm and the talks and meeting are at 7.30pm on Thursday.
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