The Commons Environmental Audit Committee has said that demolition and rebuilding adds to climate change and that the emissions created must be reduced to meet the government’s climate change targets.
Emissions are created when the materials used in construction are made, including glass, bricks, steel, plastics and aluminium as well as the more obvious cement. Double the emissions are created on sites where buildings are demolished and then rebuilt.
Until recently, developers have been encouraged to replace older, badly insulated buildings in order to replace them with buildings that need less heating and thereby produce fewer carbon emissions. Indeed, in highly built up areas, such as city centres, developers are often under pressure to capitalise on the high value of land by increasing the height of new buildings.
Calling for the issue to be addressed urgently, the committee’s chairman, Philip Dunne MP, said: “Our buildings have a significant amount of locked-in carbon, which is wasted each time they get knocked down to be rebuilt, a process which produces yet more emissions.”
One of the buildings recently marked for demolition, the Marble Arch store of M&S, is in the process of having its case reviewed by Michael Gove. The company said that building a lower carbon building (that would “be amongst the top 10% best performing buildings in London”) would more than offset the emissions produced from redevelopment. Although he did concede that it would take 17 years before a balance was struck between the emissions created by building it and any carbon reductions in energy use.
NOT FINISHED