Green Building: fighting climate change with insulation

My next article will be on 'green buildings' or more narrowly, the cost and practicalities of creating a building with very low external energy requirements. A significant part of this project will be balancing up small scale renewables and energy efficiency gains.Is it cheaper to install solar PV/micro-wind/solar etc or to use very high spec and careful building design and construction in order to keep the external energy demand down?

I am looking at costs, not policy measures. This is the basics of building, affordability and efficacy, my brother is a joiner so I can draw on some practical knowledge of building to validate or refute my ideas. Policy measures would presumably be drawn from this kind of cost-benefit analysis.

Where am I going to get my info from?
My Brother
The Energy Saving Trust (the best site I have found for practical, detailed suggestions)
The Green Building Bible (its a good introduction to the overall principles)
Environmental Change Institute (more theory based but an amazing resource in general, Oxford University)
Association for the conservation of energy
Grownupgreen

The main problem is getting prices for renewables, there just doesn't seem to be a transparent market in the UK, the prices are two scary its all by request. The search continues...

This will probably take about a week, as the last article did so hold tight, check out 'climate change resources' for more info than you can possibly get through in a month let alone a week!

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