>The UK could take bits of land it owns, chuck homes there "Chucking homes there" would be a good place to start improvements, actually. Designing zero-energy

>The UK could take bits of land it owns, chuck homes there "Chucking homes there" would be a good place to start improvements, actually. Designing zero-energy homes and offices is not hard, but housing developers have been slow to adopt the practice. Looking around, it seems like most modern house plans/blueprints have no preferred orientation to the single greatest energy source: the sun (or if they do then housing developers ignore them). When there's literally no "sunward"[1] on the map, then the cheapest of all energy reduction strategies -- passive solar design -- is all but impossible. Why isn't the climate zone given on a house plan? Because the assumption is that you'll just consume energy (typically fossil fuels) to make up the difference. We're designing buildings totally backwards: starting at form and bolting on function. The ideal would be adjustable parameters based on local conditions. South facing windows based on heating-degree-days, overhangs based on latitude, floorplans that adjust to ground topology and microclimate, etc. So you punch in the site conditions (or sense them), hit "compile", and it spits out blueprints for a zero-energy passive building specifically suited to those exact local conditions. This is more similar to how plants develop -- by sensing and adapting to local conditions, they incrementally design themselves to suit their habitat. [1] that is, south in the northern hemisphere and north in the southern hemisphere