A leading insulation firm has launched a campaign to encourage consumers to take up the Green Deal because of the added benefits it could bring in terms of protecting homes from fire.
Rockwool, the UK’s leading manufacturer of stone wool insulation, has launched an online video campaign called Does It Burn?, in which it aims to educate the public about the added benefits of insulating their homes beyond the energy efficiency ones of the Green Deal.

Video campaign
The YouTube video series, which launched today, shows £500 cash being placed into a mini-house made of Rockwool and then blasted with a flame thrower. The cash is then extracted from the box undamaged. The £500 represents the energy bill savings the Energy Saving Trust estimates householders could make by investing in external solid wall insulation in a gas-heated, semi-detached home with three bedrooms.

The first stage of a study sponsored by insulation manufacturer Rockwool, has been completed on a West London estate that could provide a blueprint for taking householders out of fuel poverty.

'High Rise Hope' presents evidence from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) on the social impact of greening homes by insulating residential tower blocks.

The study measures energy costs and social conditions before and during a £16 million upgrade of three tower blocks at the Edward Woods Estate in Shepherds Bush. Improvements affected community pride, feelings of safety, relationships with other residents, energy bills and fuel poverty.

A long-time champion of building energy efficiency, Steve Selkowitz, is one of two recipients of the new Lifetime Achievement Award from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Selkowitz received his award in the Societal Impact category for “solving important challenges for society, research that furthers solutions to large social problems, or scientific breakthroughs that have improved the world.”

For 35 years, Selkowitz has led the Building Technologies Department at LBNL, a group that includes 80 researchers and carries out some of the world’s leading research on energy efficiency in such areas as building simulation, window glazings, daylighting, electric lighting systems, and demand-response technologies. The nomination statement for the award noted that “few in the world have had as big an impact on reducing energy use in buildings” and went on to describe Selkowitz as “the ‘Steve Jobs’ in the world of energy-efficient buildings,” adding, “he has literally changed how we design, build, and inhabit buildings the world over.”

Construction work has begun on Europe's largest man-made nature reserve, located in Essex.

Wallasea Island is being transformed from farmland into a 670-hectare (1,500-acre) wetland.

The site is using 4.5 million tonnes of earth excavated from the Crossrail project, for which a 21km (13 mile) tunnel is being bored through London.