Key trends in policy for low-energy built environments: a 20-year review

In a review of policy frameworks for low-energy buildings and built environments over 20 years in England, the paper identifies a transition from the early years when the connection between energy and the built environment was only just beginning to be recognised, through to a more coordinated approach to carbon and buildings in the period to 2010. It identifies fives key trends: a greater reliance on regulation; the growing importance of the retrofit agenda; more tightly targeted subsidies; more finely tuned market-based instruments to shape and structures energy efficiency and decentralised renewable energy markets; and a shift from the dominance of market rationality towards a more nuanced understanding of how inter-related change in energy systems and built environments is achieved.