It seems that nowadays we can’t even rely on the nursery rhymes that we learned as children. The one about the three little pigs and their house-building endeavours will need to be rewritten in the light of modern house-building techniques and the challenge to reduce carbon dioxide production.

I recall that the first little pig tried to hide from the wolf in a house built of straw, but this was easily blown away and the pig had to seek asylum. However, building houses from straw is now a very positive step forward and is to be encouraged. Indeed, the Ecology Building Society headquarters in Silsden has a meeting room made from straw bales. It would be possible to see the tale of the piglets escaping from the wolf almost as a fable, extolling the virtues of solid, brick-building techniques, and careful planning, in the face of a life-challenging threat – the wolf.

However, when the threat is climate change, in wolf’s clothing, we would need to acknowledge that making bricks and cement consumes very large amounts of energy, and these traditional materials are responsible for more than five per cent of the UK’s CO2 emissions. Perhaps the first little pig was right after all, but just lacked some technical information.

It would certainly be more helpful if we used natural products, such as wood, and now straw, and they have much to commend them. Both store the CO2 that they took out of the atmosphere as they grew, and so prevent it contributing to a warming climate, but they can also insulate buildings to a much higher level, and particularly so in the case of straw.

Compressed straw slows down heat loss, with U values a third less than the best standards in brick buildings, as well as sequestering CO2 – about 46 tonnes, for a normal-sized house.

Builders normally set up a factory to make the panels within 20 miles of the construction site, and using sustainable and certified timber make a wooden frame into which local straw is compressed. After lime rendering to make them watertight, the straw blocks are used to fill in the walls of the building.

The new Newlands Community Association building nearing completion in Eccleshill is the largest straw-bale construction in Europe, with 260 48cm-thick straw panels. Because of this high level of insulation, the need for heating is much reduced.

Ten miles away in Bramley, Leeds, the 20 new homes at Lilac, a Low Impact Living Affordable Community, are built in the same way, with compressed straw bales that keep the buildings very warm.

Huffing and puffing won’t cool these houses down.