Carbon chaos and confusion

This week has been very confusing. Will there be an election next month or not? Who's going to play inside centre for England's rugby side on Saturday? Will the Government ever be able to offer an easy to understand, or to deliver, definition of zero carbon for housing? From the evidence of recent documents issued the answer to the third is not without a lot of effort and frustration. This leaves those in the unenviable position of trying to achieve the standard in future schemes but not having a clue as to how to achieve it.

So it seem that off-site renewables do not make the grade in the latest definitions for both the Treasury stamp duty exemption and the Code for Sustainable Homes. Environmental consultant Nick Devlin takes them to task on this issue, in his Carbon Limited blob site and I'll be eagerly tracking his campaign to get this changed, backed by his local MP Oliver Letwin.

There's wider problems here, understandably due to the pace at which the drive to aim zero is going. Barratt chief executive Mark Clare raises something of a communications gulf between the housebuilding industry and Government. "The government is saying we need affordable houses and we need to deal with the environment... when you put these together in a market that is less robust than it has been, you have to ask how we square the circle," he says in today's magazine.

Is there another model here? That would involve a truly integrated approach, on display in a Stockholm suburb that has become something of a blueprint for a sustainable community, also featured in today's magazine. Energy is offered centrally across the scheme and waste is collected via tubes. Yvette Cooper has popped across there to see it in action. But is this a realistic model for us to take up? Not according to Design for Homes chief executive David Birkbeck. "Alas we don't have the centralised infrastructure in the UK anymore. It's all left to private companies without a sense of civic direction."