To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many zero carbon homes he expects to be built in each year for which his Department has made such an estimate. (133769)

I have been asked to reply.

The Government do not collect this information centrally, but are aware of a small number of low and zero carbon homes currently built. The Code for Sustainable Homes and the draft Planning Policy Statement on Climate Change are designed to cut carbon emissions from new homes and promote low and zero carbon homes in the period up to 2016, when the Government have proposed that all new homes will be zero carbon. We would therefore expect an increasing proportion of new housing built over the next 10 years to be zero carbon, but no exact estimates have been made.