Hitting the 80% carbon reduction by 2050 has huge implications (and costs) for the residential sector. Two strategies are emerging for dealing with these costs, each with its own potentially severe side effects.
Nobody is debating the 80% figure. No one is even quibbling about whether a smaller reduction in emissions by 2050 would be more appropriate. 80% is taken as read and that’s a good thing. But we now have to figure out how to get there.
The residential sector is going to have to shoulder more than its share of the burden – it looks like that debate is settled as well – with people increasingly saying that the whole sector will have to go zero carbon. Estimates on cost vary but the figure of £7Bn – £15Bn per year from now to 2050 is frequently quoted. While statistics can be flimsy, this one looks reasonable.*
But if you don’t like statistics, forget the figures – just take a minute to think about what we’re really trying to do here. We want homes that were built decades or even centuries ago to outperform even the “zero carbon” homes built from 2016.
Because don’t forget, following outcry from the industry, from 2016 Government is only asking for less than half of emissions to be reduced on site before resorting to carbon offsets in the form of allowable solutions. Every noughties shoebox, Victorian semi, Edwardian townhouse, and Georgian pile will need to leave these near-passivehaus new-builds in the dust.
This is a big, big job.
And it’s a big job that comes at a time when Government money has already dried up. Additional public sector borrowing is impossible. The Green New Deal is a gauzy construction that’s likely to blow away with the first faint breeze of post-electoral reality. In the words of George Bailey, the money’s not here.
So what are the potential solutions?
HEMS (formerly HESS, god help us) isn’t out yet but civil servants are already hinting at its contents. These semi-public snippets reveal a struggle in DECC and CLG between advocates of two main mechanisms: PAYS and the Suppliers Obligation. At first glance both have their weaknesses – but on further examination it’s quickly apparent that one of them will be an absolute disaster.
Part 2 to follow shortly.
*Fag packet calc: £20k per home x 26m homes / 40 years = £13Bn/yr to 2050
carbon limited 
Sounds impossible, and I would guess that it probably is.
Instead, we could build some nuclear power stations for £3bn each, and heat our leaky homes with zero-carbon power.
Then, spend the *hundreds of billions* of pounds saved on other stuff that would actually improve the lot of people round the world.
To the above commentator: setting aside my inherent aversion to new nuclear based on the risks and my fears of big business running anything so potentially damaging, I am willing to accept that new nuclear is part of the future solutions.
However, Can I ask that if you want to advocate new nuclear so heartily, could you provide a little more detail to your comment….
Interestingly, Casey’s article is taking about £13B a year until 2050, and yet we already know that the current clean up of old nuclear is going to cost at least £70-£80bn. What is the real cost of your proposed new nuclear scenario when you include decommissioning existing plants, the cost of building new stations and then decommissioning them. You might also need to include the cost of converting old gas/ oil dwellings to electric resistance or heat pump systems and any knock-on reinforcement of the local electricity grid, at £50K per sub station.
Furthermore, the measures casey refers to includes efficiency measures, ie reducing the energy used through insulation etc, which do have a financial payback. Swapping to nuclear doesnt address this, just delays the problem.
So ultimately, whilst I would support new nuclear as a necessary evil, I would be interested to see the evidence that actually supports it as the best long term option for UK PLC…in short, I think your costs need a bit more flesh on them.
IMHO, the cost of decommissioning nuclear is inflated in order to make nuclear look uneconomical. The French put decommissioning at 10% of the cost of building. Maybe because they don’t have such a green lobby, they’ve kept costs down, I dunno. I think it’s a choice between the impossible (see the post above), and the doable.
PS, even if nuclear is not the ‘best long term option’, we need emergency short-term measures in order to save the world… right?
Wrong, I reckon. The cost of decommissioning is probably deflated in order to avert public outcry.I think France has 20 long term storage sites for waste, 19 of which are full and 3 are reportedly leaking into the groundwater in Champagne. Bubbly, anyone?
I agree with Nick, its probably inevitable that we need to build them, but how much fuel do we have left at our current profligate consumption rate? Shouldnt we reduce that rate as much as we can and build a few stations instead?