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Green home improvements 'key to tackling carbon emissions'
22/11/10
Edited by Andy Jowett.Builders in the UK must start retrofitting existing homes with energy-saving measures if the country is to have any real impact on carbon emissions from buildings, according to one expert.
Speaking in a debate organised by the Energy Services and Technology Association, director of sustainability at AECOM Ant Wilson said former prime minister Gordon Brown had claimed in 2006 that all new residential property would be zero carbon within a decade.
Four years later, the government is still working on a precise definition of zero carbon - and the coalition has said it will stick with the goal that all homes will have to be built to this standard by 2016.
However, Mr. Wilson argued that unless old houses are going to be knocked down as the new ones go up, this will have little effect on overall CO2 emissions and will in fact only add to the problem.
"Every new building, even if it is zero carbon, does nothing to reduce our carbon. We have got to get into the existing stock," he stated.
The government has said it hopes to include all of the UK's 26 million households in its planned Green Deal, which would provide loans to pay for the upfront costs of carrying out environmentally-friendly home improvements.
