UK housing: Fit for the future?

1. Outline

This report, by the Committee on Climate Change and its Adaptation Committee, assesses whether the UK’s housing stock is adequately prepared for the challenges of climate change; both in terms of reducing emissions from UK homes and ensuring homes are adequately prepared for the impacts of climate change.

2. Key findings

The report’s key findings are that:

• the UK’s legally-binding climate change targets will not be met without the near-complete elimination of greenhouse gas emissions from UK buildings.
• emissions reductions from the UK’s 29 million homes have stalled, while energy use in homes – which accounts for 14% of total UK emissions – increased between 2016 and 2017.
• efforts to adapt the UK’s housing stock to the impacts of the changing climate: for higher average temperatures, flooding and water scarcity, are lagging far behind what is needed to keep us safe and comfortable, even as these climate change risks grow.

3. Actions needed

The Committee’s report says action is needed in the following five areas:

1. Performance and compliance. The way new homes are built and existing homes retrofitted often falls short of stated design standards.
2. Skills gap. The chopping and changing of UK Government policy has led to a skills gap in housing design, construction and in the installation of new technologies.
3. Retrofitting existing homes. Ensuring existing homes are low-carbon and resilient to the changing climate is a major UK infrastructure priority, and must be supported as such by the Treasury.
4. Building new homes. New homes should be built to be low-carbon, energy and water efficient, and climate resilient.
5. Finance and funding. There are urgent funding gaps which must be addressed, including secure UK Government funding for low-carbon sources of heating beyond 2021, and better resources for local authorities.

4. Supporting research, charts and data

• Updating an assessment of the costs and benefits of low-regret climate change adaptation options in the residential buildings sector (Wood)
• The costs and benefits of tighter standards for new buildings (Currie & Brown and AECOM)
• Charts and data – Chapters 1-4

5. Infographic

The following infographic highlights the key messages from this report. Click the image below for a higher resolution version.