Housebuyers shun extra £50,000 bill for zero carbon
Mark Jansen
CHRIS ENDSOR has a problem. His firm, Miller Homes, has just built some of Britain’s greenest houses, stacked to the rafters with environmental gadgets and gizmos. Now that he is trying to sell them, however, he is on course to make a loss.
The four bedroom properties for sale at Merton Rise in Basingstoke look much like any other new homes. But inside they are loaded with insulation and equipped with a boiler that is powered by biomass. The roofs are fitted with 35 square metres of solar panels. The houses also have a ventilation system that recycles heat from the kitchen and bathroom round the rest of the house.
These are zero-carbon homes. By 2016, all new houses are supposed to be built to these standards. The only trouble is that housebuyers do not seem willing to pay any premium for all the extras.
Although the houses are being sold for almost £300,000, the green features have added £50,000 to the cost. Even if the design were replicated on a mass scale, Endsor said, the additional costs would still come to at least £35,000 a unit. Multiply that by the average build density in England of 15 homes per acre and the housebuilder would be looking to recoup extra costs of £525,000 for every acre of land developed. That is more than the asking price of many sites.
These costs look like a significant obstacle in the battle against climate change. Homes are the source of 27% of Britain’s total carbon emissions. In 2007, Labour introduced regulations requiring all new homes to be built to zero-carbon standards from 2016. The coalition government has promised to continue the policy.
“There is no hope of zero-carbon homes appearing in 2016,” said Liz Peace, chief executive of the British Property Federation. “Demands on developers have to be workable, and asking for mini power stations next to each housing develop- ment simply will not work, financially or practically.”
Housebuilders believe the zero-carbon policy, enshrined in the code for sustainable homes, should be changed to allow housebuilders to concentrate on making homes better insulated.
The current version of the code insists that all renewable-energy sources must be built on the same site as the housing, which housebuilders say is prohibitively expensive and hopelessly impractical in many cases, especially in cities.
Building firms want that burden to be passed to electricity providers, which could provide more renewable energy across the grid, not specifically on site.
The Home Builders Federation is also pushing for a change to the rules. “We want an affordable policy that doesn’t add so much to housebuilders’ costs that sites become unviable,” said a spokesman for the trade body.
