Gerry McCaughey, chief executive of Kingspan-Century Homes, is urging the UK government to promote modern methods of construction (MMC) to help combat global climate change.

He maintains that houses and house building are responsible for energy abuse on a massive scale and that the construction industry needs to take action.

“The UK government needs to proactively encourage the widespread adoption of MMC such as timber frame, so that all new homes are more energy efficient,” he said.

“For instance, because timber frame homes are precision engineered offsite, they don’t suffer from energy leakage in the way that traditional homes do, making them much cheaper to heat and significantly reducing CO2 emissions.”

&#8220The government needs to encourage widespread adoption of MMC such as timber frame, so that new homes are more energy efficient”

Gerry McCaughey, chief executive of Kingspan-Century Homes

Mr McCaughey said that 90% of new houses in England are still built using bricks and mortar but added: “For every tonne of cement produced to build a house from bricks and mortar, one tonne of CO2 is released into the atmosphere. We simply can’t go on building like this.”