This Government are committed to ensuring that new build homes post-2016 do not add extra carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere—while ensuring that the costs of building new homes do not prevent appropriate and sustainable development.

We have confirmed that the national regulatory requirements will include a high level of energy efficiency, which has been incorporated into a revised code for sustainable homes, to encourage practical experience. In July, we asked the Zero-Carbon Hub to advise on the national benchmark standard for on-site measures. I have now received the Hub’s initial findings; I am grateful for the work of the Hub with developers, green groups and other partners on this study. This is an important piece of work which will help us shape final decisions on the regulatory thresholds. We will also need to take account of decisions on the renewable heat incentive and the Climate Change Committee’s recent advice on grid decarbonisation. We will announce our conclusions next year.

Localities can already plan for zero-carbon development today, using powers in the Planning and Energy Act 2008, where it is reasonable to do so and is consistent with national planning policy, including relevant requirements on feasibility and viability, and relevant regulation. Many local authorities are already demonstrating their desire to drive performance in this area.

Many interested parties have argued for a community energy fund, enabling zero-carbon to be met partly through contributions to a fund used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, allowing developers to meet their carbon obligations cost-effectively. In this respect, the recently confirmed community infrastructure levy provides a mechanism for local authorities to achieve reductions in carbon dioxide emissions locally, through investment in local renewable energy infrastructure that supports development in their area. It will be important that any approach operates in a way that demonstrates transparently that real carbon savings are achieved. We will now work with local authorities and industry on how best to do that.

It will be important that people are able to take the best decision for their area. We recently launched community energy online to support local authorities and others who want to introduce local energy schemes. We will also work to incorporate material on local energy planning into a local standards framework, providing accessible, robust options to underpin local choice.

New homes are an important part of new development, but not the whole picture.

I can announce that we will follow a similar process for new non-domestic buildings as for new homes. The Government’s policy is progressively to raise the national regulatory requirements for non-domestic buildings between now and 2019, enabling them to be zero carbon from 2019. We will maintain consistency between the domestic and non-domestic frameworks as far as it is practical, but will consider taking a different approach on some elements, where the diversity of the non-domestic stock or the nature of the commercial market justifies that. We are today publishing on the Department’s website the findings of the consultation exercise on policy options for zero-carbon new non-domestic buildings that was concluded earlier this year.

We are currently undertaking detailed technical work to underpin the development of future national regulatory standards. We expect also that off-site measures could be supported using the same approaches as for homes, and will investigate this possibility further so it will be open for local areas to use a community energy fund through the community infrastructure levy to achieve the zero-carbon standard for non-domestic buildings should they wish to do so.

In future our homes—indeed, all our buildings—will need to be cleaner, greener and cheaper to run. This Government will continue to deliver the tools to make this a reality.