Sustainability And The Value Of Residential Properties

In order for sustainable development to be achieved, humans need to reduce their effect on the environment by consuming less in terms of resources, and living more lightly on the planet. As difficult as this may sound, there are a number of ways in which this is easily achievable. One of the most effective ways to do this is to alter the way in which we function day-to-day, and to begin to change our homes to make them more efficient in terms of resources. In addition, sustainability is not only about ensuring a future in which we can sustain our society without impacting negatively on our environment, but also but ensuring that everyone can have access to this. Therefore we must look at the triple-bottom line approach and align our movement towards sustainable development with this.

The Climate Change Act is the first UK legislation to solely address climate change. It focuses on mitigating climate change, using energy more efficiently; and adapting to risks such as floods. This act set the UK with a long-term emissions reduction target of at least 80% lower than the 1990 baseline by 2050. Carbon budgets are set by the

The UNFCCC is working with the various governments around the world to stabilize the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere to keep the planet from warming more than 2ºC above pre-industrial temperatures (Watts, 2015). The most noted of the work is the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings that began with COP1 in Berlin back in 1995. The COP3 adopted the Kyoto Protocol, even though it wasn’t fully accepted by all member nations. The COP21 was an effort to legally bind members to their submitted plans of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), defining what level of greenhouse gas production each nation would commit to not exceeding from 2025-2030. Prior to the INDCs, a bleak outlook was forecast in 2009-2010 of global temperature rising between 4-5ºC. That figure was restated by the UNFCCC prior to the COP21 in Paris, to below 3ºC, due to the commitments of the INDCs (Watts, 2015).

The indefinite growth of the human population, has monumental impacts on the natural environment, not only in the UK, but around the globe. Architecturally, the entire process of designing and constructing a building, both domestic and not, can lead to the rapid exhaustion of natural resources across the planet. Building with environmental design strategies in mind not only combats the impact we as humans have on the natural environment, but also has considerable economic benefits, due to lower running costs of buildings and advanced occupant productivity. There are also many social benefits, such as improved air quality which resultantly leads too enhanced health of a buildings occupants.

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges that we currently face. With the ever-increasing uptake in the usage of fossil fuels, and getting ever closer to reaching peak oil, it is becoming of increasing importance to reduce our consumption of these non-renewable resources. The United Kingdom (UK) has been set a target to reduce its CO2 output level by at least 80% by 2050, in comparison to a 1990 baseline (Climate change act (2008)). This is a great challenge set by the European Union (EU) that UK is legally obliged to commit to. A large proportion of this CO2 output can be attributed to the UK’s housing sector, which currently accounts for 27% of the UK’s total CO2 level (Davies, P. and Osmani, M. (2011)). Clearly,

This legislation an act of parliament came into act in 2008. The legislation creates a legally binding commitment to reduce the UK’s green house gas emissions drastically by 80% by 2050, and by 34% by 2020. These reductions are contrary to the 1990 emissions. Currently less than 200,000 properties are built every year. In order to rebuild the inefficient homes it would take approximately 120 years, which is not viable in order to reduce carbon emissions by 2050. Therefore the existing stock would need to be retrofitted to improve its energy

Residential houses in the United Kingdom remain amongst the least energy efficient in Europe. Generally housing responsible for about 30.0% of all energy use in the UK. The figure for London was even is higher, approximately 37%. It is also within first 10 world's greatest producer of man-made carbon emissions, producing around 1.8% of the global total generated from fossil fuels in 2008. Climate Change Act 2008 set out provisions and a legally binding target for reducing UK carbon dioxide emission by at least 26 per cent by 2020 and at least 80 per cent by 2050. It sets out main actions should be taken by the UK regarding the issue and how reductions of the emissions should be delivered.

This paper suggests reforms for developments to incorporate broader selections of estates that will be helped, which also should include low cost private rental areas. Moreover, it demonstrates the need for urgent media attention on this issue to generate more funding towards these projects.

Sustainability is now one of the UK governments key objectives. A commitment to national sustainability plans was a key component of the UNCED agreements in 1992,

Sustainability is a topic that has become very important in recent years. Sustainability is defined as, “the ability to continue a defined behavior indefinitely.” ("Finding and Resolving the Root Causes of the Sustainability Problem", 2014)

The UK’s Climate Change Act and participation in the Paris Agreement, has been put into place to ensure the UK plays its part in reducing the emission of greenhouse gasses into our environment. The UK, in particular, has committed to reducing its emissions to 80% of 1990 levels by 2050 and must adhere to strict self-set Carbon Budgets until 2030. In order to meet targets set by the Paris agreement, by 2070 there must be no anthropogenic CO2 input, thus we need to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere, a more common term for this is negative emissions (James R, 2017). There are several ways of going about this, in this essay we will be

Every living being are directly or indirectly depend on natural environment. Sustainability helps to balance financial, social, and environmental factors to facilitate responsible business decision making over the immediate and long term. . Sustainability refers to meeting the needs of present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Oxford University press 1987, p.43). Sustainability is also being protective and aware of use of natural resources and development that meets the need of present and everything that is need for our survival and well being depends, directly or indirectly on our natural environment. According to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Sustainability is

The current level of greenhouse gases in atmosphere poses an alarming situation globally and for Australia in particular. Australia has the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world. Burning coal for the generation of electricity is the major single source of emissions for Australia (Diesendorf 2014). It has been ranked third among OECD countries and seventh in the world with respect to per capita greenhouse gas emissions due to energy (The Garnaut Climate Change Review 2011). Under the Paris agreement world has agreed to pursue a 1.5 degree centigrade limit to global warming and Australia has committed to reduce emissions by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 level by 2030 (The Guardian 2016).

Although various factors are barriers, this situation calls for a better ways of approaching the building activities that are environmentally sustainable. Building policies plays critical role in reducing environmental impacts although little research has been done as far as this sector is concerned. These policies should focus on codes for environmental sustainability of building designs that establishes better planning practices, designing as well as constructing buildings with environmental concerns of the impacts of the build structures (Davies, 2004).

Theccc.org.uk, 2015, The Climate Change Act and UK regulations | Committee on Climate Change. [online] Available at: https://www.theccc.org.uk/tackling-climate-change/the-legal-landscape/global-action-on-climate-change/ [Accessed 21 Nov. 2015].