Material concerns

Of course this is not always the case – for example, the traditional-looking fibreglass chimneys of the kind used at Prince Charles’ Poundbury development.

The problem for Adam, the prince and other traditional building material enthusiasts, is that they think brick, tile, cement, glass and steel are good for society. Unfortunately for them, and the rest of mankind, they are not. They all have high embodied energy and will continue to be unsustainable until renewable energy is used to produce them.

However much the manufacturers of these materials massage the figures in order to manage public perceptions, the fact remains that if countries with enormous populations such as India and China were to use them in the way we do in the UK, climate change would be boosted considerably.

Biocomposite building materials made from engineered timber, waste vegetable matter and processed lignin are sustainable, as are materials made from nanocellulose fibre. A range of plastics is also starting to become available made from natural sources such as sugar and algae. The main characteristics of these materials are their low embodied energy levels, low weight, high tensile strength, and their low cost per unit of surface area.

We have a choice: we continue to use traditional building materials in the grossly energy inefficient way we do now, or we switch as rapidly as possible to new materials and most of mankind survives into the post-climate change era.

John Prewer