In these blogs, we are constantly exploring great ideas on saving the environment from around the world and introducing them to readers for educational purposes and to gain some ideas of how readers can live in a more sustainable way. One of the latest great ideas we have seen comes from the United Kingdom.

The British government has only recently implemented initiatives to encourage developers and homeowners to purchase zero carbon houses. All zero carbon homes built and sold in the United Kingdom will be exempted from stamp duty, which can be considerable, up to 500,000 pounds and any homes sold for above that amount will see a 15,000 pound reduction in the stamp duty bill. And in 2016, legislation enacted will force house builders to only build zero carbon houses from that time onwards. In response to this initiative, a major housing developer in the UK, Barratt Developments, has unveiled plans for their design of the zero carbon house.

The idea of a zero carbon house is simple. A zero carbon house can be defined as a building that is supplied with electricity and heating, or in the case of Malaysia, cooling, from renewable sources and can sometimes even supply enough electricity back to the grid. In short, the zero carbon house will have no net emissions of carbon dioxide over its lifetime.

Zero carbon house designs achieve this level of environmental friendliness thanks to the use of cutting edge technologies that are now becoming increasingly affordable. A look at Barratt’s design for their zero carbon house, available here, gives a few clues.

• Solar panels are used to generate electricity for the home from the sun.
• A central computer system maintains the house systems and monitors temperatures throughout the house.
• Concrete flooring is used as concrete is able to keep temperatures stable for longer periods of time when compared with many other materials.
• High performance materials are used for insulation to prevent heat leakages to the outside.

While we think it will be a long time yet before the Malaysian government and house builders introduce such a scheme in Malaysia, we hope that some of these ideas will give you some thoughts of how to reduce the energy consumption in your own home. An example of how this can be adapted is to shop around for solar powered water heaters for your home. These have been available in the Malaysian market for a long time and installing a water heater can decrease up to 30% of your energy bills every month.