Barratt Homes, the UK’s biggest builder, announced in October 2021 that it was going to build a “flagship zero-carbon concept home. All of its new homes will be zero carbon from 2030. This is to be welcomed especially because it is well thought through. Barratt may be the biggest builder, but there are many more builders needing to come up to the mark soon. Ten years in a crisis is a long time. There is a housing shortage and a climate change threat. In that time, 20,000 people will die just from heat waves.
Over the years, house prices in the UK have rocketed. So much so, it’s hard to imagine a time when buying a new home costs less than £3,000. If you could afford to buy a home after the war, it was probably brand new. That was around £65,224 in today’s money, and the average salary was roughly the equivalent of £339 per week.
A home should be an affordable, spacious refuge from climate change. A home office is a place for families to take advantage of the internet and the Meta Universe and thrive for a generation. In Climate Change House (amzn.to/3RgR4Vf), I look at these great alternatives and provide references to offer wider perspectives to the reader.
The UK housing industry can easily commit to development that includes added green energy for 600,000 houses over the next three years. Its efforts can make housing a productive part of the economy and an early market to support world-leading technologies. It can be new jobs, new assets and a bonus in national productivity.
It can also commit to solving a considerable part of the Social Care shortfall, creating supportive accommodation for the elderly and frail and upwards of 25,000 new dwellings for the homeless and challenged families in Britain.
At the same time, I show how in the space of a year 15,000 industrial batteries (and at least as many again each year) can be installed, at no cost to the Treasury, to offer a reserve of power to the nation.
These are among the solutions outlined in Climate Change House.
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