Carbon cop-outs

摘要

It might now be fair to suggest -adapting George Orwell's famous phrase from his novel Animal Farm -that some zero-carbon homes are more zero carbon than others. This was the extraordinary development which emerged from this year's Budget, although at the time, it did not receive anything like the headlines rising petrol prices received. The policy change had been hinted at by the coalition government previously, but the scale of the changes was tumultuous, culminating in the world's leading independent environmental organisation - the WWF - decision to leave the Government's zero-carbon home task force - of which it had been a member of since 2007 - claiming the zero-carbon initiative was now 'effec- tively useless', and that it had been left with 'no option' but to resign.