The UK’s Future Homes Standard applies only to England, yet it reflects a much wider, international shift in housing. As homes electrify and standards tighten across the globe, buildings are increasingly connected to energy systems, materials and landscapes.
When the UK government published the Future Homes Standard in March 2026, it appeared to be a national update to building regulations. Yet the significance of the policy extends well beyond the technologies used inside buildings. As housing electrifies and construction standards tighten, homes become increasingly dependent on wider systems of energy generation, infrastructure and land use. In this sense, housing policy is beginning to reshape landscapes as well as buildings.
Published on 24 March 2026, the new regulations apply to England and are scheduled to come into force on 24 March 2027, with transitional arrangements that may allow some developments already in the pipeline to proceed under earlier rules until March 2028.
At first glance, this looks like a technical change to building regulations. Yet viewed in a wider context, the standard forms part of a much broader shift in how countries approach housing, energy and land use.
The future of homes, increasingly, is tied to the future of landscapes.
One country, four policy approaches
One detail often missed in international reporting is that the Future Homes Standard applies only to England. Housing and building regulations are devolved across the UK.
Wales has already introduced significant energy-efficiency reforms through its own building regulation updates. Scotland is moving toward requirements for zero direct emissions heating in new buildings. Northern Ireland is following a separate regulatory pathway.
Taken together, these differences create something of a small policy laboratory within the UK: four nations with similar climates and economies experimenting with slightly different approaches to low-carbon housing.
For researchers and policymakers this creates a rare opportunity to compare how similar societies respond to the same climate and housing challenges under different regulatory frameworks. It also echoes governance structures elsewhere in the world — including federal systems such as the United States, Canada and Australia — where states or provinces pursue distinct approaches within a shared national framework.
Electrification and the geography of energy demand
The most significant implications of the new standard lie beyond the walls of individual homes.
Low-carbon housing depends on electrification. Heat pumps replace fossil-fuel heating, while solar panels may generate electricity on site. As a result, homes become more tightly linked to wider electricity systems.
This transition alters the geography of energy demand.
Electrification does not simply change technologies inside buildings. It redistributes where energy must be generated and how it moves through territory.
As heating electrifies, electricity consumption rises — particularly in winter. Meeting that demand requires expanding renewable energy systems such as wind farms, solar arrays, battery storage and electricity transmission networks.
Those systems occupy landscapes.
Across Europe and beyond, renewable infrastructure is becoming increasingly visible in rural and coastal areas. Solar farms now occupy agricultural land in parts of southern Europe and North America. Wind turbines have become familiar features of upland and offshore environments. Transmission lines and substations are expanding to connect renewable generation to cities.
Housing policy therefore intersects directly with land use and landscape planning.
A global direction of travel
The UK is far from alone in tightening building standards.
Across the European Union, the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive will require new public buildings to be zero-emission by 2028 and all new buildings by 2030. France’s RE2020 regulation places limits on the life-cycle carbon emissions of buildings, including construction materials. Denmark has introduced national caps on the embodied carbon of new developments.
In North America, approaches vary by state or province, but the overall direction is similar. Several US states and cities now require all-electric buildings, while Canada is progressing toward a national “net-zero energy ready” building code.
Across the Asia-Pacific region, countries such as Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are also strengthening standards to address both carbon emissions and climate resilience.
Although policies differ in detail, the overall trajectory is consistent. Buildings are increasingly understood not as isolated structures but as part of wider environmental systems.
Landscapes at the centre of the transition
These changes are drawing new attention to land systems.
Low-carbon housing depends on renewable energy landscapes. Climate-adapted settlements rely on green infrastructure such as urban forests, wetlands and restored floodplains. Meanwhile, growing interest in the life-cycle carbon of construction materials connects cities more closely to rural resource landscapes — from forests supplying timber to quarries producing aggregates.
These relationships are becoming more visible in academic research.
Researchers are examining how renewable infrastructure shapes rural landscapes, how urban green systems help cities adapt to climate change, and how material supply chains connect land management to construction practices.
For landscape research, the built-environment transition is opening a new set of questions.
Emerging themes in landscape scholarship
Several themes are appearing more frequently in international research.
Energy landscapes: how renewable energy infrastructure can be integrated into landscapes while maintaining ecological integrity and public acceptance.
Material landscapes: how the sourcing and use of construction materials link urban development to forests, agricultural land and mineral extraction.
Climate landscapes: the role of nature-based infrastructure in helping settlements respond to climate risks such as flooding and extreme heat.
It would be premature to suggest that any single theme will dominate the research agenda. Academic priorities evolve through many influences — including funding programmes, policy developments and the interests of researchers themselves.
Nevertheless, these areas may prove increasingly relevant as countries adapt their housing and infrastructure systems in response to climate goals.
A global publishing landscape
The questions raised by the changing relationship between housing, energy systems and landscapes are increasingly visible within academic publishing. Landscape scholarship has always drawn together multiple disciplines — from design and planning to environmental governance and cultural geography — and journals provide an important forum for these conversations to develop.
Several established publications illustrate the breadth of this international research community. Landscape Research, published in association with the Landscape Research Group, brings together interdisciplinary scholarship examining how landscapes are planned, governed and experienced. Landscape Review, based in New Zealand, is also supported by the LRG and highlights research from Australasia and the wider Pacific region.
Other journals contribute further perspectives on landscape architecture, planning and environmental change. Landscape Journal has long provided a platform for research connecting landscape architecture, planning and environmental change, while Landscape Architecture Frontiers, published in China, explores emerging ideas in landscape architecture and territorial design.
Together these journals reflect the increasingly international character of landscape research. While their institutional homes may differ, the questions they address often overlap: how landscapes respond to environmental change, how energy and infrastructure reshape territories, and how planning and design can support more resilient relationships between people and place.
Opening the publishing conversation
As housing, energy and land systems become more closely intertwined, landscape research may play an increasingly important role in understanding how environmental transitions unfold across territories. For researchers interested in contributing to these debates, understanding how academic publishing works can sometimes feel opaque.
The Landscape Research Group (LRG) is hosting an online event series this April titled Publishing Pathways, designed to support researchers navigating the publication process.
Hosted by LRG’s China and Australasia-Pacific Networks, the sessions will bring together editors, authors and reviewers from several landscape journals to discuss how research ideas develop into published work.
As housing standards evolve across the world, the questions they raise extend far beyond architecture or engineering.
They reach into landscapes — and into the ways landscapes are planned, governed and studied.
Researchers interested in exploring these issues further can learn more about the journals Landscape Research, Landscape Review and the Publishing Pathways event series via the Landscape Research Group website.
Accessing landscape research
Members of the Landscape Research Group receive online access to the peer-reviewed journal Landscape Research, with unlimited access to both current and archived issues. Members may also opt to receive printed copies of the journal at no additional cost. Membership additionally provides online access to five related Routledge journals — Landscape History, Landscapes, Social & Cultural Geography, International Journal of Heritage Studies and Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning — along with a 30% discount on Routledge books and publications.
Further reading
The relationship between energy systems, infrastructure and landscape change is an expanding area of research. The following articles provide useful perspectives on how renewable energy transitions are reshaping landscapes and spatial planning.
Nadaï, A., & van der Horst, D. (2010). Introduction: Landscapes of Energies. Landscape Research, 35(2), 143–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/01426390903557543
De Boer, J., Zuidema, C., & Gugerell, K. (2018). New interaction paths in the energy landscape: the role of local energy initiatives. Landscape Research, 43(4), 489–502. https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2018.1444154
De Laurentis, C. (2023). Reshaping energy landscape: a regional approach to explore electricity infrastructure networks*. Landscape Research, 48(2), 224–238. https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2022.2047910
Codemo, A., Ghislanzoni, M., Prados, M. J., & Albatici, R. (2025). Landscape-based spatial energy planning: minimization of renewables footprint in the energy transition. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 68(6), 1421–1448. https://doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2023.2287978