It has been suggested that sustainability will take a back seat in the recession. Nothing could be further from the truth. But it can pay to be green, now and in the future.
I note that the 'Inconvenient Truth' was on Channel 4 on Saturday evening. I have shown Al Gore's excellent film several times in both work and social forums.

Although Al and others have ensured that global warming has been high profile, a certain poignancy has been injected into the equation by the recession. People are seeing that carbon saving and energy efficiency are ways of retaining and enhancing their quality of living.

Thus, they may not be getting a pay rise this year, but they want to use less fuel in their homes and cars and the green message is getting out there.

At the various conferences I have attended this year, a number of people have suggested to me that sustainability has taken a back seat to the economic outlook, but nothing could be further than the truth.

The triple bottom line right now is that developers can have smaller boilers and installations using less pipes and pumps, leading to smaller plant spaces, less energy use and ultimately less cost and more revenue per square metre from the building.

Beyond the financial considerations, there is less pollution and a cleaner environment, and the improvements in people's well being are enormous.

This time of economic turmoil is an opportunity for designers to come to the fore with lean, clean and greener design that will actually help us to emerge from this recession. Sustainability has always been an ideal but now it has become a business. It can pay to be green.

Government and local authorities are leading the way demanding the use of renewable energy in all developments and the private sector has had to respond.

It is now technically viable for new buildings to be carbon neutral and prototype houses and offices have been constructed. The INTEGER house built over ten years ago at BRE led on to a number of low energy/carbon housing developments and some of its features are now commonplace in our modern housing stock. Equally the office sector has now produced the ZEBRA Project a new office building in Northumbria that has an A+ Energy Performance Certificate.

When the recession is long gone we must continue to build as if we were still in recession, saving carbon emissions and energy costs.