Posted on 05/29/2005 7:24:58 PM PDT by blam
3m homes 'should be demolished' to cut global warming
By Charles Clover
(Filed: 30/05/2005)
Some 3.2 million homes must be demolished over the next 45 years to fulfil the Government's aspirations for tackling global warming, academics have warned.
The report, by researchers at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute and Heriot Watt University, is bound to re-ignite the controversy caused by the proposed demolition of 400,000 homes in the Midlands and the North.
Households account for around 30 per cent of Britain's total energy use and the researchers conclude there is a "desperate need" for a clear strategy for housing stock to bring about the 60 per cent reduction in the country's fossil fuel emissions that Tony Blair has said he wants to see by 2050.
The academics say that Britain's 25 million homes are among the oldest and least efficient in Europe and recommend that 14 per cent of the current stock - 3.2 million homes - should be pulled down by 2050.
Listed buildings would be spared, but the plan would quadruple the present demolition rate to 80,000 homes a year by 2016.
"Care must be taken not to invest money in upgrading those homes that will ultimately be demolished," say the authors.
Even so, two thirds of the housing stock of 2050 has already been built and this will have to be made more efficient. The immediate priority is for walls and lofts, then solid walls, to be insulated. By 2050 all windows will be double or even triple glazed. The report, the "40 Per Cent House", emphasises the need to construct the 10 million new homes that will be built by 2050 to far greener standards than in current building regulations.
John Prescott's department has said that from April 2006 all publicly-funded new homes - including 120,000 planned for Thames Gateway - will comply with a new code for sustainable buildings, due to be released this year.
Quinlan Terry, the leading classical architect, criticised the researchers' recommendations last week at a conference in London about designing sustainable buildings.
He said the proposed demolition missed a "bigger picture", which included the fossil fuels already expended in putting up existing buildings and how long the new buildings would last.
He said that the embodied energy in each Victorian terrace house scheduled for demolition as part of the Government's urban renewal plans in the North was equivalent to 15,000 litres of petrol, according to the Buildings Research Establishment.
The carbon from the fossil fuels burnt to build our existing housing stock was already in the atmosphere, warming the Earth. "So why repeat the process?" asked Mr Terry.
Hey, great idea...
Might I suggest the big 'blue' cities, i.e. San Fran, NYC, LA, Seattle, Portland, etc.
Let them start with the homes of government officials and royalty.
Good point -- it's amazing how often these kinds of studies ignore the energy input needed to achieve their aims: energy to produce hydrogen; energy to plant, fertilize, and harvest the crops to produce ethanol, etc.,etc.
"Households account for around 30 per cent"
ye, it is the homes that are the users, not the people. Oh, wait, next, birth controls, abortions, and Chinese style forced hysterectomies!
That's indisputable. My concern is that if she's not elected we're still headed down that path, just maybe not as lickety split. After all, I've seen nothing in the last five years of Republican rule to make me think we're not going to have a socialist government in my lifetime.
If the cold war is over, we lost and Communism won. I just hope it's not over.
It's called Smart growth and it's coming to your neighborhood.
Why do I have the definite feeling that if we start with the demoltion of the homes owned by every controlling little despot doing research at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute and Heriot Watt University, the problem will have a tendency simply to disappear?
"These people are nuts!"
My thought exactly. They've lost their bloody minds over there.
And just who gets to pick who loses their house? I'm guessing none of the members of Paliament have their house on the list. Maybe they should consider old dilapidated buildings like the tower of London, Westminster Palace, Paliament - those places are enormously inefficient. Knock 'em down and replace them with low income flats!
Careful. Barbra might get pissed!
But won't this increase the "homeless" population?
And, Hey,
If they don't quite reach low earth orbit---The world is still a better place without them!
I got the impression that the old drafty homes will be torn down and replaced with modern, energy efficient ones. Of course it will take energy to construct those...
"Some 3.2 million homes must be demolished over the next 45 years to fulfil the Government's aspirations for tackling global warming, academics have warned"
We will start by demolishing all homes owned by acedemics.
And extraction and processing heavy metals to run their techie toys like wind generators and solar cells.
They clearly have selective vision.
But, Hey,
If they saw things clearly they'd be sound minded conservvatives.
Yeah, what is 15 million and a beautiful house anyway?
ROTFL! Good term. I have one of those, too. Vintage cats, that is.
Now there's a global improvement project I could get behind.
Hmmm... I live in a Victorian Age flat in Edinburgh. It has single-paned windows. Really drafty in the bedroom in the winter. There are historical preservation type laws that prevent double glazed windows from being installed. Have to keep the building looking like it always has and all that sort of thing.
I see some conflict of interests down the road somewhere on this.
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