New leading sustainable construction methods including zero carbon housing and passivhaus are becoming ever more prevalent. – It is all to forget about the UK’s existing building stock, which is accountable for 27% of the UK’s total carbon emissions.
The government has set ambitious targets for 2050 to reduce CO2 emissions by 80%. This is in addition to increasing legislation and sustainability requirements, such as code for sustainable homes and current building regulations, which is causing architects, developer and building owners issues as to re-addressing the way they design, construct and operate both new and existing buildings.
Both private and public sector homes have begun to utilise low carbon initiatives to improve upon environmental standards. Government initiatives such as CERT and CESP schems (Carbon Emission Reduction Target and Community Energy Saving Programme respectively) have also encouraged households to invest in energy efficient products such as condensing boilers and better insulation.
Although the above schemes are positive, there is still a long way to go. The next step from implementing energy efficient measures is to fully upgrade buildings through sustainable retrofitting.
The retrofitting market is vast and if we are to meet the government’s looming carbon reduction targets something needs to be done and quickly. In addition to ensuring that these buildings are thermally efficient and as a result reducing their impact on the environment, the retrofitting market is also an extremely lucrative industry. Due to the number of homes that are in need of scaling up, the specification of sustainable retrofitting for housing is not only environmentally beneficial, but also highly profitable.