The world is under threat from a series of approaching environmental crises and Scotland is a country which still has enduring social failures like poverty and inequality. Many people are pessimistic. But both can be tackled if we take them head-on and plan for them – which is what Common Weal did with The Common Home Plan, the world’s first comprehensive Green New Deal. It is a reason for optimism and hope.

― The aims of the European Union’s Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), which requires EPCs to be produced for all new buildings and those being sold or rented out, are fundamentally sound and should serve to drive improvements in energy performance. However, in Scotland and the UK, the method by which EPCs are produced are fundamentally flawed. In particular, this is due to the reliance on using modelled energy consumption data rather than actual (measured) data.