The government’s housing strategy would use up England’s entire 1.5C carbon budget on housing alone unless action was taken, according to a study.
Researchers involved in the study, headed by those at the University of Kent’s Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), concluded that if current trends continue, by 2050, 12% of the carbon budget could be absorbed by the development and running of brand-new homes and 92% could be absorbed by emission emerging from existing housing.
Published in Ecological Economics, the paper is the first comprehensive form of analysis to go through the potential impacts of the government’s response to the housing crisis on national carbon.
In response to the housing affordability crisis in England, the government has pledged to build 300,000 homes per year, however, researchers believe that this could influence the carbon budget.
A carbon budget is the cumulative total of emissions a nation can emit over a specific period of time.
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Incompatible
Lead author of the research and Ecological Economist at DICE, Dr Sophus zu Ermgassen, said: “Secure housing is a fundamental human right and should be one of society’s top priorities. But, we recognise that simply building more homes forever is incompatible with achieving national environmental policy goals.
“So, here we have tried to identify solutions that could help the government to avoid having to choose between England’s urgent housing needs and sustainability objectives.
“There is a way we can achieve high living standards for all, without causing too much further harm to the climate system and massive encroachment on what remains of England’s nature.
“But, it will not be easy, as the politics of implementing some of the transformational solutions we review are extremely tough.”
The main suggestion from researchers is that using existing housing stock more efficiently will meet more housing needs through making improved efforts to boost housing affordability by lowering the demand for homes as financial assets, bolstering social housing, and discouraging the overconsumption of floor space.
