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What a treat yesterday (28/3): a visit to the EcoBuild Exhibition at Earls Court. I think this is the fourth or fifth of these exhibitions – and it started out very small and very ‘niche’.

The 2008 Exhibition is big, bold and bullish. With dozens of mainstream industry giants mixing it with innovative start-ups, government departments, industry organisations and so on.

The cumulative impact is very impressive, a powerful statement to politicians and citizens alike that if we want to live in sustainable homes, work in sustainable offices, shop in sustainable retail outlets, work out in sustainable gyms, etc etc, then we really are capable of figuring out exactly how to do it.

We are just in the foothills of the innovation mountain that we now have to climb, but the prospect already looks pretty good.

And for those who are sceptical about this Government’s passion for target-setting, you would have been heartened to see the way in which the 2016 target for zero-carbon housing is now impacting on the entire sector. Lots of doubts from the industry, lots of confusion (what is the difference between zero carbon, low carbon, very low carbon and carbon neutral?), but a gathering focus on what now needs to happen.

All this provides yet another example of the way in which timely and decisive regulation drives innovation. So, what we need next is a Code for Sustainable Buildings (commercial, retail industrial) to match the Code for Sustainable Homes, with the same kind of stepped standards kicking in at different milestones along the way. And given that things have moved a lot since the 2016 target was adopted for houses, in terms of the new consensus about the science of climate change, let’s go for the same target date of 2016 for all buildings, and just squeeze the intervals between the different steps along the way.