Simon Brammer reports from this week's meeting of Ashden UK winners in Manchester this week.

This week in Manchester saw the coming together of the very impressive Ashden Awards UK Alumni.  There were 12 Ashden Award winners at the event, which was designed to allow winners to learn from each other, meet potential funders, and share their considerable experience with policy makers.  

Jonathan Hines from Architype, an Ashden Award winner in 2009, talks to Juliet Heller about designing buildings that are affordable, look good, and use less energy.

Architype puts this approach into practice by focusing on passivhaus techniques. Passivhaus is a rigorous approach to building, designed to radically reduce energy consumption and achieve maximum internal comfort. Passivhaus buildings save carbon simply by using less energy. Architype has recently designed two passivhaus schools in Wolverhampton which will be completed this summer. They will be the first in the country.

Jonathan Hines: "The beauty of passivhaus is that it's not about ticking boxes, it is a design tool that really works. You can aim to build a low-carbon building by adding renewables but find that the technology doesn't perform as well as you'd hoped in practice. With passivhaus you know that it works, it will get the energy down lower, and it will last for the long term".

"In the current climate of austerity measures, designing buildings well to save energy is the way to go, not spending more money on technologies that just offset carbon".

Mike Pepler, our UK awards manager, recently posted an analysis of the UK gas supply situation on his own blog, you can read it here.

Using publicly available data from the National Grid, he's plotted some graphs comparing the amount of gas the UK has in storage, and comparing this winter to a year ago. Due to the cold weather, and the declining gas output from the North Sea, storage levels are much lower than they were at this point a year ago. This could present a problem if the rest of this winter is colder than average.

If supplies do run low, part of the process to deal with the situation includes a public appeal to reduce gas use. Reducing electricity use helps too, as about 40% of our electricity is generated from gas. A shortage of gas will also push up gas and electricity prices, so by taking action to reduce your energy use you can yourself some money, help improve energy security and reduce CO2 emissions, all at the same time!

Take a moment to visit some of our recent blogs about saving energy:
Nine solutions that work to combat rising fuel prices
Save energy, save money: cavity walls

This month, the government introduced the Energy Bill into Parliament as part of its new Green Deal. The Existing Homes Alliance also recently published recommendations to ensure government efforts help the UK to refurbish its existing housing stock – to bring it in line with the UK’s commitment to cutting carbon emissions 80% by 2050.

Their recommendations cover key areas of the Green Deal. The first is finance: policies must allow the most to be made from the economic opportunities of widespread refurbishment – estimated between £5-15 billion. Secondly, the Existing Homes Alliance stresses that the government must place attention on how the work will be done - by investing in tradesmen and exploring area-based schemes for example - and done well. Shoddy work will make a dent in consumer demand for these changes. Thirdly, the government needs to focus on driving demand, regulating minimum energy performance is a necessary ‘stick’, but ‘carrots’ are also important.

Simon, our UK Business Support Manager, also works with the Existing Homes Alliance. He thinks making these changes will stimulate wider benefits: