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You are here : Home » Other » Eco Guidance » EcoScope » Business » Energy efficient homes mean bigger business
Energy efficient homes mean bigger business
Construction really is in the doldrums! According to the Construction Products Association, one of the industry’s most outspoken barometers, this year 2011 is ‘looking increasingly bleak!’
The CPA’s economics director, Noble Francis, says the latest Construction Trade Survey highlights the falling demand across the industry, plus sharp rises in costs such as 46% on copper and 80% on iron ore!
According to Francis: “With 70% of light side manufacturers and 56% of heavy side manufacturers experiencing falls in sales compared to a year ago, along with 22% of building contractors also reporting a fall, there is great uncertainty regarding economic activity during the coming year.”
Yet dealing with the consequences of our latest and greatest global problem – climate change – are said to hold a significant solution to the construction industry’s failing fortunes!
It’s widely agreed that the UK’s 26 million existing homes contribute at least 30% of our nation’s carbon emissions. Indeed, Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, plans a radical overhaul of the existing housing stock which could ‘create 250,000 jobs over the next 20 years.’
The coalition government’s new Green Deal could be a major implement in moving this ‘dream’ forward? This may be because the ‘deal’ embraces an innovative financing mechanism that claims to allow consumers to pay for energy efficient measures in their homes and small businesses, through the rather tenuous savings in energy bills?
Although this may help to create thousands of new jobs thus satisfying the Get Britain Building campaign, no one knows if this will work? The cost of making every home energy efficient is phenomenal! And very few can afford the outlay.
The National Home Improvement Council suggests that it would cost £20,000 to energy efficient-ise the average semi-detached house built, say, 30/40 years ago. The Building Research Establishment puts the price at nearer £80,000!
Whatever is right, nobody really knows how the money will be paid or collected!
The crucial date when at least 80% of our housing stock must all be ‘zero carbon’ is 2050. It seems a way off, but if we are going to hit this targetthen around 700,000 homes every year should be brought up to the required low carbon, energy efficient standard.
At the moment we are barely achieving 13,000 homes a year!
However, over the next four decades the repair, maintenance and improvement industry (RMI) could make around £400billion and generate enough construction jobs to fill a quarter of a million wage packets every week!
The Building Regulations and the Code for Sustainable Homes, plus renewable energy measures and the Feed-In Tariff systems are all said to be pulling in the same direction, to achieve these very lofty goals.
Also it’s a sad that fact not enough new homes are being built each year! Not that they could ever solve the housing problem of zero carbon emissions! Nor could they in a million years satisfy the growing numbers of new households that desperately need to created.
Last year only 102,500 homes were built. In fact, more new homes were built in 1875 than in 2010!
As the editor of HouseBuilder magazine says: “What the industry and government has to work out is what to do about it?”
And, perhaps, the only thing to do about is to invest more money and at the same time, get the RMI industry moving positively forward creating more jobs and cheaper solutions for inspired living in the future!
More information: andrew@4ecotips.com
One Response to “Energy efficient homes mean bigger business”
ecoadmin says:
Home improvement has taken on a new and exciting dimension, which should have created new and exciting consequences for the repair, maintenance and improvement industry (RMI). Despite the worsening recession in the building and construction industry RMI could have a very rosy future that should kick-start the building industry?