In 2003 the London Borough of Merton became the first local authority in the UK to include a policy in its UDP requiring large new non-residential developments to generate at least 10% of their energy needs from on-site renewable energy equipment.

The policy was adopted by many other councils throughout England. Merton’s principal environment officer Adrian Hewitt and his team provided the UK’s most important example of a climate change initiative starting as a local measure and growing into a national one.

If there was no Merton Rule or its equivalent there would be no reason (except altruism) for developers to incorporate renewable energy in any of their buildings. The policy is rapidly becoming one of the most important weapons in fighting climate change. It is not perfect but it works in a modest way.

Its success was instrumental in persuading the government to confirm in national planning policy guidance (PPS22) that the rule was both legal and desirable. On 8 June 2006 Yvette Cooper, the minister for housing and planning, said: “Government expects all planning authorities to include policies in their development plans that require a percentage of the energy in new developments to come from on-site renewables”.

Yet on 20 August 2007 the Guardian reported, under the headline “Housebuilders win battle against green technologies”, that under pressure from housebuilders concerned about the cost implications, the Merton Rule will be abolished.

We should not permit housebuilders, or energy companies, or any group of businesses to dictate planning and environmental policies. We as a nation should dictate the polices that housebuilders should observe. We elect governments to make sure this happens.

Housebuilders are only concerned about additional costs if there is an uneven playing field; the only flaw in the Merton Rule was that it was selective. A better rule would be that every new building should generate at least 10% of its energy itself by renewable means. That way we would have a level playing field for all housebuilders and developers.

People need new homes, but those should now be using all the low carbon technology available today, not chasing the fictional holy grail of a carbon neutral house in 10 years’ time. It is obvious that housebuilding must be heavily regulated; the Merton Rule is very light regulation, a welcome beginning, and now these green shoots are to be poisoned by a government blind to all forms of reducing carbon emission, except the foolish and fraudulent Emissions Trading Scheme, which Reuters recently reported has provided pure windfall profits to energy companies. Robert Kyriakides, chief executive, Genersys plc

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Building Sustainable Design