The Association for Environment-Conscious Building has put forward its new CarbonLite programme in the hopes that it will be adopted by architects and builders as best practice, or perhaps the government would consider including it within building regulations. As it stands, CarbonLite (“carbon literate” design) is a voluntary sustainable building programme with bronze, silver, gold and platinum standards for energy-conscious design and implementation. Designs are awarded points for high levels of insulation, advanced windows that have only 15% of the leakage of typical single-glazing, passive solar design, use of compact fluorescent lightbulbs, and on-site renewables to generate heat and light. The average house today leaks 73kg CO2/m2 each year. By implementing this programme, new homes subscribing to the gold-standard will emit only 4kg CO2/m2.
Source: Guardian Unlimited