Zero carbon homes - good policy, bad politics

Budget day today, and big news on Zero Carbon Homes. The best summary so far was from our friends at UK GBC, who said this at 5.30pm, when all the shouting died down:

“In the space of two weeks, this government has gone from a firm commitment on zero carbon homes, to a watered down policy. A zero carbon home will no longer do what it says on the tin. The world leading commitment that new homes would not add to the carbon footprint of our housing stock from 2016 has been scrapped despite a remarkable consensus between industry and NGOs in support of it. ... it is a backward step by a government that wanted to be seen as ‘the greenest ever’.” 

So, a bit of a surprise then? After all, it was only in February Grant Shapps had said "the commitment to Zero Carbon remains in place - there's no ambiguity about that" and then on 8 March, just a couple of weeks ago, The Carbon Plan from DECC was still saying things like "the government is committed to ensuring that new-build homes are zero carbon from 2016 and do not add extra carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere". So we might have been forgiven for thinking this one was in the bag, right?

But actually, I think not. It was inevitable that the Zero Carbon Homes objective would be watered down in some way, and here's why: this was a policy which genuinely seemed to say "let's incur cost now, so we can create benefits later - we may not be around to enjoy those benefits ourselves, but let's create them anyway, just because it is so important."

Well, I actually quite like the sound of that. And so do a lot of people. But not most people, and what most people seem to want at the moment is growth and less red tape. So from that point of view, Zero Carbon Homes was a good policy with bad politics - and relaxing it was, well, a bad policy with good politics.

Tant pis.