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
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/