Inventions such as phase change materials are not used widely enough in the building industry, operations director at SIG Vince Lunn said at the Greenbuild expo in Manchester.
"Our biggest problem is that we can bring them to the market place but, unless people start designing them in and start using them, they won't become mainstream," he explained.
This follows the close of the Low Carbon Building Programme (LCBP) - implemented by the government to encourage the use of environmentally-friendly construction materials - to new applicants, a fallout of the £6 billion spending cuts that are being made to reduce the UK's fiscal deficit.
So far, the LCBP has raised the uptake of low-carbon buildings technology and established a green materials industry in the UK, in the form of an assembly, supplier and installer base.
Posted by Ryan Gilbert