Building regulations and standards are evolving towards ‘zero energy’. The European Parliament recently approved a recast of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive proposing that all new buildings in the EU be at least ‘net-zero energy’ by 2019. Other countries, such as the UK, have already established comparable targets for all new housing which will see ‘net-zero’ achieved by 2016 [59]. However most regulations refer to ‘net-zero’, focusing on energy in use only and ignoring factors such as embodied energy. This paper proposes that a life cycle perspective should be added to the ‘equation’. Authors such as Cole and Kernan