Loughborough University
Browse

An investigation into zero-carbon planning policy for new-build housing

Download (2.49 MB)
journal contribution
posted on 2021-10-27, 14:23 authored by Joe Forde, Mohamed OsmaniMohamed Osmani, Craig MortonCraig Morton
Housing represents a critical sector globally in the drive to reduce carbon emissions with many countries adopting building energy standards to lower the carbon emissions of new build housing. However, ambition is often inadequate when considering the long-life time of homes built today. Globally, many regional or local authorities are taking action to improve the performance standards of new build housing beyond national requirements, though application within nations is heterogeneous. Understanding of why adoption of performance standards displays this diversity represents a research gap. The present work sets out to determine why the application of local planning powers relating to lowering emissions in new-build housing have been inconsistently implemented within local level planning policy. This is achieved through an explanatory sequential mixed method design targeted towards all local authorities within the case study nation of England. It is found that uncertainty following the withdrawal of national level agendas has led to a policy void for many local authorities, with many now suffering from a lack of policy power to enforce lower carbon standards. Drivers of heterogeneous uptake of standards at a local level have international relevance and indicate the need for clear central governance to facilitate local level ambition.

Funding

The UK Doctoral Training Centre in Energy Demand Reduction and the Built Environment Grant EP/H009612/1

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Published in

Energy Policy

Volume

159

Publisher

Elsevier

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Authors

Publisher statement

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Elsevier under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2021-10-06

Publication date

2021-10-09

Copyright date

2021

ISSN

0301-4215

Language

  • en

Depositor

Mr Joe Forde. Deposit date: 7 October 2021

Article number

112656

Usage metrics

    Loughborough Publications

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Licence

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC