Abstract：
The desire to reduce carbon emissions and the desire to sustain historic buildings and environments are two powerful contemporary value systems that potentially conflict. It is through local governance and policy systems that much of the mediation between these values will take place, and in particular, in the UK, through the interaction between the conservation-planning system and building regulations. This paper will focus upon the relation between conservation values and the powerful emergent agenda of carbon-reduction through a number of planning case studies and in particular, a case study of Hexham Abbey in northern England. Accepting that carbon control aims and heritage values both have legitimacy, there is a need to explore how these two forces might positively interact.