This is the first monthly column from Ant Wilson, director at Faber Maunsell | AECOM.
I am grateful to Paul Braithwaite, Heating and Ventilating Review, who has enabled me to get the sustainability and energy efficiency message out there. In fact, it was a journalist that first warned me about how the unimaginable could occur during the last year.

I can remember listening to a radio programme last winter saying the price of oil would go up to $200 a barrel, and thinking this was ridiculous but possible. However, during the past year, the price of oil soared to almost $150 in July and I thought $200 was on the cards for Christmas. Then came the credit crunch, and the price tumbled down again to less than $40 dollars a barrel as demand decreased.

Such fluctuations in the price of oil make energy conservation a difficult concept to promote - even impossible. The impossible has already seemingly happened, and there could be more to come with the possibility of Eastern European politics interrupting the flow of gas and oil.

Could we lose control of our fuel supplies as North Sea oil and gas runs out with nuclear energy with renewables unable to fill the gap in the short term?

Indeed, is all this turmoil a good thing for energy conservation and the prevention of global warming? Does it not concentrate the mind?

You could argue that the global credit crunch has done more to conserve energy, fuel and power than any legislation. The energy impact of buildings have increased because of the commercial and domestic sectors' CO2 emissions. Buildings have created more CO2 emissions than any other sector.

But there is plenty that can be done when industry and the public are forced to do it by circumstances. There has been a decline in the CO2 emissions in the UK industrial sector, for example, and people are driving and flying less. What more can the credit crunch force us to achieve in the coming years?

During the coming months, I will be putting forward some similar questions and maybe a few answers on issues ranging from changes in the market and how this affects energy use to new and rapidly changing technology right across the services sector.

Keep on using less energy.