Whole Life Thinking - David Arnold responds
President George Adams wonders whether lawmakers are doing their bit in responding to and mitigating the consequences of climate change. He points out the law, both national and international gives permission to governments, organisations and investors to take from the earth's resources but does not have a provision to create a balance that prevents the potential worst effects of climate change. This led me to think of the part building services engineers can play; we aren't lawmakers but how we can best contribute to achieving this balance and how we should best try to influence legislation? Clearly building services engineers play an important part contributing to achieving this balance by designing services installations that minimise energy use. However we usually think of minimising emissions as simply improving the operational efficiency with the ultimate goal of “Zero Energy Buildings”, i.e. zero net energy consumption and zero carbon emissions annually. The zero net e