MCFly writer Phil James attended the Greenbuild Expo last Wednesday, Manchester’s annual show-and-tell for all things Green and buildy.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this is what I found; Preparation for the Green Deal continues apace. At a packed Q&A industry figures discussed their thoughts. The processes for assessors and installers to get accredited seems to be in place and companies are ready to help you get accredited (for a fee). Some concerns were raised that the role of Green Deal providers (the big guys who’ll hold the purse strings) will lock out Small and Medium -size Enterprises (SMEs). The role of local authorities was seen as crucial in ensuring SMEs can get involved…

The stands on display had a healthy mix of technologies, with noticeably less PV installers than last year if my memory serves. Perhaps indicating that changes to the Feed-in-Tariff have already put a dent in the flourishing PV industry/unsustainable PV goldrush (take your pick)…

Attending a seminar on Life Cycle Analysis was an interesting experience, with the message I took being this: crunching the numbers and knowing how much embodied carbon you save by going easy on the concrete is all well and good, but out-of-town shopping centres are not green buildings…

Finally, taking inspiration from/ripping-off a well known left-wing organ, I’d like to do an In Praise Of… for the Green Building Store http://www.greenbuildingstore.co.uk/ whose stand I visited. This small company based in Huddersfield have been pioneers in developing low energy building products and methods. They built one of the UK’s first Passivhaus homes using the traditional UK method of brick and block cavity walls, and what’s more they told the world what they did, all the technical details of how they did it, and what they’d learned FOR FREE in blogs, videos, documents and discussions! True green pioneers…  

Phil James