The future of the Government's flagship Green Deal programme hangs in the balance after an intensifying tax dispute with the European Commission.

Brussels bureaucrats have warned Whitehall to overhaul the tax rules regarding energy-saving materials or face the prospect of massive fines at the European Court of Justice.

Currently, the UK Treasury levies a reduced rate of five per cent VAT for insulation materials for walls, ceilings, floors and water tanks. However, the full 20 per cent rate of VAT still applies to energy efficient windows and doors.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced the launch of the Green Building Information Gateway. Coined GBIG, the web-based tool is designed to help accelerate market transformation by providing greater transparency and understanding of the green dimensions of the built environment.

GBIG provides a transparent view of places, projects, collections and credits, detailing the actions and activities of LEED building owners and project teams over time. The tool provides maps, analytics and insights that reveal trends, patterns and processes in green building practice.

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) announced winners of the 8th Annual Design & Build with FSC Awards at a special reception connected to Greenbuild 2012.

The winners include a “Living Building” that is the first heavy timber commercial building in Seattle since the 1920s, a traditional West Indian cottage in the U.S. Virgin Islands and wood tables manufactured for Cisco Systems’ telecommunications products. The winning projects were chosen based on extensive use of FSC-certified wood, impact on the marketplace, broader contributions to sustainability, and aesthetics.

Retrofitting can cut carbon emissions by at least half in homes, but the costs of retrofitting at this level are still significantly more than the likely limits on expenditure under the Green Deal, the first independent analysis of the UK ’s leading domestic retrofit programme has found.

The findings, published today, are the first to come out of the Technology Strategy Board ’s (TSB) £17 million Retrofit for the Future (R4tF) demonstration programme, which was set up to to find innovative green technologies to dramatically improve the energy efficiency of homes. The study also concludes that the supply chain is currently too underdeveloped to support large-scale retrofit.