The world in which we live in has seen huge population growth over the last few decades, especially within urban environments. The issues surrounding this are immense and complex, but it is clear that the earth has finite natural resources, and it is clear that human activity increasingly favours politically and economic activities over issues surrounding long term sustainability despite a huge layer of research highlighting the dangers, and if future generations can enjoy the earth as previous generations have it is clear that ideas and concepts surrounding sustainability need to come increasingly to the forefront. This blog will look at individual layers of sustainability as the blog develops and the first blog post relates to Zero Carbon.
It will be within a context of both national (*) and global (**) legislation. The concept of zero carbon when developing something is to ensure the net carbon dioxide emissions from all energy use from what is built is zero over a measurable period of time. In the house building industry this is only being pioneered in relatively small chunks worldwide, and this is primarily to do with the greater cost to develop a zero carbon home, or even an urban extension of zero carbon homes, when compared with more traditional forms of construction. Inter alia, this means if a site for development for an urban extension achieves a planning permission to build, for example, 400 homes, and is taken to the market, all property developers interested in acquiring the site will have to bid competitively to acquire the site, and if there is no specific legislation attached to the planning permission regarding having to achieve zero carbon homes, nobody will bid on that basis, as clearly they will not be successful. What is interesting is where globally Government's are producing legislation to pilot certain urban extensions in planning terms to insist this happens. A well designed zero carbon home has proved popular to the market when built and there is evidence to show that, although the home may not demand a premium on more traditional forms of construction, it certainly sells quicker than other similar sites within the same geographical location. This is primarily due to purchasers knowing that the running cost of the home will be cheaper than a traditional home, and also because there is a growing number of people who wholly buy into the concept of sustainability and what it means for future generations. Examples of this are the "One Brighton" project carried out by Crest Nicholson in the UK where they constructed 2 blocks of flats adjacent to each other, where one had higher eco credentials than the other, and although there was no premium attached to the block with higher credentials, it sold a lot quicker than the other block. Another good example which takes the concept further as the planning permission stipulated zero carbon, is the urban extension at Bicester in the UK which is a designated Eco Town under legislation pertaining to PPS (Planning Policy Statements) and more specifically PPS1 which is an addition to legislative PPS and specifically deals with sustainability. This meant the land within the urban extension is designated as zero carbon and can only be acquired and built out if it adheres to a specific set of principles. The first phase of this urban extension completed in 2016 and the new homes sold for a marginal premium above competing developments and also sold quicker. The important point though, is it needed specific legislation in planning terms to stop the site simply being developed in a more traditional way. This has the effect of significantly reducing the land value, so it is crucial that any planning permission of this nature has to be granted only in areas where the land is still likely to be sold when suppressed. (*) Victoria State Government Climate Change Act 2017 kyoto Protocol - unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php
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AuthorGerald Walker. BA Hons Economics and Studying for a Masters at UNSW in Property and Development Archives
June 2017
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