Housing: Carbon Emissions

(asked on 24th April 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to ensure that (a) building regulations and (b) thermal insulation standards facilitate the development of zero carbon heated homes.


Answered by
Christopher Pincher Portrait
Christopher Pincher
This question was answered on 4th May 2020

The Government is fully committed to meeting its target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and recognises the important contribution that the energy efficiency of buildings has to make in meeting it.

We have committed to introduce a Future Homes Standard from 2025 which means that new homes in England will be fit for the future, with low carbon heating and lower energy use through high levels of thermal insulation. In October 2019 we published a consultation on the Future Homes Standard which proposed that new homes built to this standard should have carbon dioxide emissions 75-80 per cent lower than those built to current building regulations standards. These homes will be zero carbon ready: once the electricity grid decarbonises they will become zero carbon heated homes.

As a stepping stone to the Future Homes Standard, we have also consulted on a meaningful and achievable increase to the energy efficiency standards for new homes to be introduced through the Building Regulations in 2020.

The Future Homes Standard consultation closed on 7 February 2020. The responses we have received will be considered carefully and a Government response will be published in due course.

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