The price of an eco friendly home?

The industry continues to invest heavily in sustainability, with more and more organisations working towards a lower carbon footprint and ‘greener’ operations.

This week for instance, Ultraframe has joined the growing list of manufacturers to make the most of their factory roof space.

The extended living specialist is set to install 1,000 solar panels on top of its factory buildings in Clitheroe, a significant installation that will generate enough electricity at peak times to allow the business to be self-sufficient for its energy requirements.

Elsewhere, Morley Glass and Saint Gobain have announced that their joint glass recycling scheme has been so successful that it has now prevented the equivalent of one million tonnes of sand from being consumed in the flat glass manufacturing process.

These are just a couple of recent examples. There are many more businesses, from fabricators to system houses, that have spent huge amounts of money in developing greener products and processes.

And if we are to meet the UK’s ambitious net-zero targets, much more will be required – which leads me to the considerable amount of time and money that has been spent perfecting what is being heralded as the ‘greenest’ home on the planet.

Lars Petersson, boss of Velux, has spent millions on a new prototype house with a carbon footprint of just 3.8kg C02 per square metre a year over its life cycle. To put that into perspective, the average detached house in the UK is said to generate 70kg of C02 per square metre a year, or 455 tonnes of carbon over 50 years.

He’s done this by creating what is essentially a posh log cabin. Timber exterior and interior walls, a timber roof, natural ventilation and lots of solar panels. The windows? Timber of course…

Costing less than £250,000 to build (if you build it yourself), it can also be dismantled – and materials recycled – instead of being demolished as the components are designed to be screwed together.

Will it catch on? Probably not in the UK anytime soon, but as a concept, it demonstrates that ultra-low carbon homes are a real possibility, as well as highlighting the importance of timber when it comes to achieving optimum energy efficiency.