to build 1.5 million homes without accelerating the climate crisis? – Inside track

How can we build 1.5 million homes without breaking the carbon budget? This was the question we set for a webinar I chaired last week, which Green Alliance organised in partnership with the Institute of Structural Engineers (IStructE).

If we carry on doing what we’ve always done, certainly as we’ve done in recent years, the simple answer is we can’t.

Carbon budgets are the legal limits to the total amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted in the UK over a five year period, and the construction industry and its supply chain has a big impact on these, as it uses plenty of hard to decarbonise materials. The broader industry, including all buildings and infrastructure, is responsible for around a quarter of the UK’s carbon footprint (on a consumption basis), according to the UK Green Building Council.

Recent academic research has focused specifically on what impact the 1.5 million new homes target could have on the UK’s climate efforts. One study found that the energy needed to build and run the 300,000 new homes a year, intended during this parliament, could use up all of the UK’s carbon budgets through to 2050, leaving no leeway anywhere, let alone for other hard to decarbonise sectors, like transport and heavy industry.

Even just looking at one material needed, analysts at Green Alliance calculate that manufacturing the cement alone for 1.5 million homes over the next five years could release

All this suggests building 1.5 million new homes would scupper our chances of tackling climate change with the urgency needed.

We cannot ignore the housing crisis
But people desperately need homes and the country is in a housing crisis. According to the National Housing Federation, 8.5 million people in England, including two million children, can’t access the housing they need. Behind that statistic are millions of people suffering in overcrowded, overpriced or otherwise unsuitable homes. And the appalling status quo doesn’t just affect those facing such conditions, it affects all of us, including by burdening the NHS, keeping productivity down and affecting the life chances of many children.

So, to return to the question, does that mean we must choose between solving the housing crisis or solving climate change? No it doesn’t. But it does mean we have to start doing things differently and thinking creatively. We heard plenty of solutions and examples of innovation during our webinar from the worlds of academia, engineering, construction and planning.

Key takeaways for me were:

It is not only about supply
Dr Beth Stratford, co-lead of the Homes that Don’t Cost the Earth project who spoke at our event, suggested that the affordability crisis is not down to an overall lack of housing or bedroom space. In fact, she said, even if government achieves its 1.5 million target, the rent to wage ratio would fall only around one percentage point, as decades of government policy has made investing in property as an asset so attractive and the UK has the weakest tenant protections in Europe. This means an increasing number of homes are bought as ‘additional dwellings’, rather than as primary residences (meaning they’re second homes, holiday homes, or buy-to-lets), at a rate that rose from 15 to 45 per cent between 2016 and 2023.

There are lots of options to use existing buildings better
There’s scope to meet housing needs with the housing stock we already have. Beth pointed out there are plenty of empty nesters who would be open to downsizing with the right incentives. Plus, not all of those 1.5 million new homes need to involve new buildings. There are options, including converting commercial buildings into residential units. Another speaker, Cressida Curtis, group sustainability director at construction company Wates, suggested that enough technically empty space exists in retail units on the high street to create 150,000 homes, noting: “The best building in planetary terms is the one that isn’t built.”

It’s possible to drastically cut the carbon in housing
Aidan Nyman, principal policy officer at Westminster City Council, revealed that the council’s Retrofit First approach has seen emissions per square metre fall by 25 per cent for new buildings (as well as increasing building retention by 50 per cent). Just looking at new builds again, Cressida highlighted that there are plenty of ways to reduce material use and therefore carbon. If volume housebuilders have the right financial incentives, they could alter designs or even adopt more of a standardised approach to property development, harking back to Victorian days where only a handful of designs were used to build homes that continue to command a price premium.

Other countries are regulating to cut construction emissions
EU member states will have to require whole life carbon assessments for all new buildings over 1,000m² from 2028 and all new buildings from 2030. . What the EU is introducing is something very similar to Part Z, the UK construction industry’s initiative calling for regulation of a building’s embodied carbon on top of operational carbon limits. Will Arnold, climate head at IStructE and lead author of Part Z, was blunt on the webinar: “The UK is not special. We have the same barriers to overcome as everybody else. We just need the impetus to get moving.”

We can only “build baby build” if we use innovative approaches
So, what does this mean for a government promising to build millions of homes while preparing its carbon budget delivery plan and circular economy strategy? This question is all the more pertinent following the ministerial reshuffle last week. Steve Reed was moved from environment secretary, where his legacy will include the circular economy strategy, to become housing secretary, where one of his first promises was to “build baby build”.

When, as environment secretary, Steve Reed outlined his vision for the circular economy strategy, he chose to deliver the speech in British Land’s Dock Shed development, which incorporates key circular elements: retrofitting, reuse, recycling, smart material choice and material passporting. He explicitly recognised both the need to, and possibility of, changing the construction industry: “As we meet our commitment as a government to build 1.5 million homes… we must get better use out of our materials and eradicate waste.” Doing so in construction as well as other sectors, he argued, would fundamentally transform and futureproof the economy so we get more value from it, and provide businesses with the certainty and regulation they need.

Now, as housing minister, he is in a prime position to carry over his love of the circular economy and reduce the impact one of our most resource hungry and emissions intensive industries, not least in the matter of regulating the embodied carbon of the million or more new homes coming.

It is possible to address the housing and climate crises at the same time, but only if the government has a coherent, cross departmental plan to “build baby build” (and retrofit baby retrofit) in a more innovative, resource efficient way.