Housebuilders win battle against green technologies
· Government to drop rules promoting renewables
· Planners will be unable to set environmental targets

  a.. Ashley Seager
  b.. Guardian Unlimited
  c.. Monday August 20 2007
The government is preparing to torpedo a local authority policy which has
been one of the few genuine drivers of renewable energy technologies in
Britain, the Guardian has learned.

The Department for Communities and Local Government is to in effect abolish
the so-called "Merton rule", under pressure from housebuilders who do not
want to bear the cost of adding things like solar panels to the buildings
they construct or the effort of marketing them as "green".

The decision to axe the Merton rule comes a week after the Guardian revealed
that officials at the business and enterprise department had admitted the
country had no hope of meeting EU targets on renewables over the next 13
years and had advised ministers to find ways to wriggle out of the targets.

The Merton rule is named after the London borough that established it in
2003. It requires any new building to reduce its carbon emissions by 10%
through the use of renewables. More than 150 local authorities have either
introduced it or are about to. In the absence of a proper interest in
renewables from central government, the Merton rule has become central to
tentative steps towards a low carbon future.

But housing minister Yvette Cooper, who last year wanted all local
authorities to adopt a Merton rule, will soon publish a new draft planning
policy statement which outlines the abolition of the rule.

Adrian Hewitt, principal environment officer at Merton council, said: "The
new draft ... on climate change confirms our absolute worst fears. The
Merton rule and any mention of local authorities being able to secure a
percentage of renewable energy on new buildings seems as if it's going to be
airbrushed out of history like a dissident from an old Soviet photograph."

The communities and local government department is holding a "sounding
board" meeting on Tuesday to discuss the new draft policy statement and will
run into protest from concerned groups.

The Royal Institute of British Architects yesterday attacked the
government's apparent U-turn on the Merton Rule.

RIBA president Jack Pringle said: "The RIBA strongly believes that local
authorities should be free to demand higher building standards than those
set nationally.

"Individual local authorities can play a huge role in driving innovation and
can themselves become beacons of sustainability. If the reports are true and
this ability will be lost, that will be detrimental to the government's goal
of reducing carbon emissions from buildings."

On the other side of the argument is the House Builders Federation. Ms
Cooper has been heavily lobbied by the group, which argues for a national,
rather than local, strategy for the government's plan for new homes to be
zero carbon from 2016. The federation's chairman, Stewart Baseley, wants a
national strategy phased in over 10 years and says action at local level
will lead to confusion and higher costs.

"Local authority political posturing for the green ground with ever-more
unaffordable and potentially unachievable targets, and taking no
responsibility for how these targets are to be achieved, will serve no one's
interests," he said recently.

Renewable industry representatives say the Merton Rule is many times more
important to them than the government's low carbon buildings programme,
which provides grants but has repeatedly run out of money and had its rules
changed.

The sources say that the U-turn on the Merton rule makes a mockery of the
consultation: half of all respondents supported the Merton rule and only
three of 324 objected to it on grounds of cost.

Tony Book, head of a company called Riomay which is involved in several
solar energy projects in London, said the rule only added 3-4% to building
costs.

"It has driven some really big projects here in London. The solar thermal
project we are installing on the old Arsenal stadium at Highbury is the
biggest of its kind in the world. It would not have been done without the
Merton rule," he said