Memorandum submitted by the Empty Homes
Agency
The Empty Homes Agency is an independent campaigning
charity that seeks to highlight the issue of empty homes and work
with others to bring empty homes into use. Traditionally the underlying
principle to our work was to help address housing need. This remains
a core objective but increasingly we also see the issue as an
environmental one.
There are 663,000 empty homes in England. Estimates
from the National Land Use Database suggest in addition there
is the potential for 420,000 new homes to be created from existing
empty commercial buildings including flats above shops. In total
at least a million potential homes are lying empty in existing
buildings in England.
We concur with the consensus that there is an
undersupply of housing in England, and many more homes need to
be built. But we believe that housing supply can be increased
by bringing empty property back into use. We believe that empty
property can provide a substantial and significant source of new
housing.
It may appear self evident that reusing empty
property must be less expensive and have less environmental impact
than building new, but there has been little research to support
or disprove this theory.
We have carried out two pieces of research that
aim to address this and quantify the environmental costs of refurbishing
empty homes and building new homes. This research involved quantifying
all the materials that were used in building a series of case
study homes. Some were new-build homes, and others were created
through refurbishing empty homes. In conjunction with the Department
of Mechanical Engineering at Bath University we calculated the
embodied CO2 (ie the CO2 emitted in the
manufacture and transport to site) of each component and by adding
it together calculated an embodied CO2 cost for each
property in our study.
Our first piece of research carried out in 2005
studied two houses. One new build and one refurbished empty home.
Our second piece of research carried out in 2006-07 and soon to
be published, studied six similar sized three bedroom semi detached
houses, of which three new build properties and three refurbished
empty homes.
Our key Findings were
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions from
new homes fall into two distinct sources: embodied CO2
given off during the house building process, and "in-use"
CO2 given off from normal energy use in the house once
it is occupied.
The new homes in our study gave off an average
of 50 tonnes of embodied CO2. The refurbished homes
gave off 15 tonnes. This difference was largely attributable to
the smaller amounts of building materials used in refurbishments
over new builds.
The new homes in our study were better insulated
than the refurbished homes and therefore had lower in-use CO2.
Overall the new homes emitted less (2.5 tonnes a year) in-use
CO2 than the refurbished homes (3.6 tonnes a year).
The new build homes eventually made up for their
high embodied energy costs through lower in-use CO2
but our projections show it would take 50 years to recover the
initial cost.
The concept of embodied CO2 is not
widely understood but this study shows that it accounts for 28%
of CO2 emissions over the lifetime (50 years) of the
houses in our study.
Our conclusions
We conclude that embodied CO2 can
be seen as an investment in the environmental sustainability of
a house. Refurbished old homes have lower embodied CO2
and therefore a distinct head start over new homes.
Many more homes could be created out of existing
buildings. Empty homes provide an opportunity to create at least
150,000 new homes, with perhaps an additional 100,000 out of empty
commercial buildings.
Meeting an element of housing need from refurbishing
empty property will not in the long term cause a CO2
saving over meeting the need entirely from new build homes. But
neither will it cause an additional cost. We conclude that refurbishing
empty property to meet housing supply will provide a number of
significant advantages:
1. CO2 emissions are spread more
evenly over a 50 year period.
2. Less land take. 250,000 homes from empty
property would save 5,000 hectares over building new.
3. Empty homes returned to use will help
regenerate the areas in which they are located, boosting the local
economy and reinvigorating local communities.
4. Refurbishing empty homes reduce the costs
to the public purse, Local authorities incur costs associated
with removal of dumped rubbish, boarding up of abandoned houses.
Police incur costs responding to petty crime frequently associated
with empty homes. Fire services incur costs attending to fires
in empty homes. The London Fire Brigade report that one in four
domestic fires are associated with empty homes.
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