Whichever way we look at home energy consumption the numbers are scary and construction (world wide) is reacting slower than it needs to.
Taking the UK as a ‘below average’ performer there is some simple maths to emphasise the task:
- 26million existing homes (99.9% leaking heat and wasting energy)
- A shortage of 2million homes
- Current build rate of <100thousand per year.
- Maximum ever U.K. build rate of 400k in 1948
- Design life of 200 years (optimistic).
- So just to get housing stability we need to:
- Replace 26,000,000/200 = 130,000 homes per year
- End the shortage, 10yrs = 200,000 homes per year
- Assuming all these are built to high standard (not the minimum building regulations private developers create today) there will be:
- 7.2M Energy efficient homes in the UK by 2050
- To meet the CO2 reduction agenda by 2050 we need to either:
- Refurbish the balance: 21.8M in 40yrs = 550,000/ yr.
Dilapidated house
(A real challenge from a standing start).
Or
Knock down and build new: 730,000/yr on average over 40yrs.
This is nearly double what we have ever built before.
The answer will be some combination of the two and the key challenge is to make both refurbishment and new-build more affordable.