Hoisted by its own petard or the Climate Change Act

The Labour Government seems to have lost any sense its members might have had about the legal requirement to comply with the Climate Chnage Act 2008 that was its branchild. Two Tory attempts to produce a compliant carbon reduction plan were rejected by the High Court and Labour has until May 2025 to do better. The main thrust of policy is to generate economic growth which is not a distraction from complying with carbon reduction budgets but, the ways in which Labour proposing, will inevitably fail and presumably attract the ire of the Courts. The 1.5m new houses (some in remote green belt locations and new settlements) could wipe out the whole carbon budget were they to occur (highly unlikely given the way in which the housing inductry is configured). Then there is an announcement that all the expansion plans of regional airports (and road building) are being supported. Under the radar is the electrification of the steel production industry that had been reliant on coal. There is now the quantum leap in AI that implies a massive increase in internet servers. And there are policies and incentives supporting the electrification of heating and road transport. The former is reliant on heat pumps (boiler upgrade scheme) and the latter on charging a growing fleet of millions of EV cars, vans, lorries and buses. If the building industry moves to Modern Methods of Construction this will add to the demand for electricity. Those vehicles being replaced will continue to emit greenhouse gases, and drive at inefficient and highly polluting speeds unless they are re-powered and the speed limit is reduced to 50mph (or below). Some of this growth will maintain if not increase the demand for fossil fuels and some will exceed the ability of the generators and distributors to supply low carbon electricity. I can't see any sector that will reduce demand to any material extent and I doubt that the Court will be convinced by the promises of carbon capture or any other carbon negative technologies. And all this will be occurring as global temperatures have moved past 1.5 degrees C and after the Prime Minister has been on record as increasing the Government's ambition in terms of the speed of carbon reduction??

Presumption in favour of sustainable development

This blog post is for those with an interest in how the planning system operates in England so apologies for those lucky enough to be living and/or working elsewhere. In 2012 the newish Tory Government introduced the National Planning Policy Framework and the presumption in favour of sustainable development. Greg Clark, the minister at the time, did a reasonable job of defining ‘sustainable development’, before the discovery that this would put a brake on urban development that was a significant contributor to carbon emissions and biodiversity loss. From then on the ‘presumption’ operated as a balance tilted towards development with little or no concern about sustainability and the environmental impacts. The Labour Government in 2024 has picked up the baton and decided new development should be accelerated in the pursuit of economic growth. The extent or depth of the denial of the importance of sustainability can be judged by Labour’s revised NPPF that continues with the presumption in favour of sustainable development at the same time as acknowledging that the upfront or embodied carbon from new development is a problem. Come May 2025 when the Government’s carbon reduction plan will be scrutinized by the Courts the problem of upfront carbon from development could be a decisive issue. At a recent housing seminar at the London School of Economics and Political Science Prof Becky Tunstall thought that the issue of embodied carbon emissions justified consideration of a ‘presumption against new housebuilding’. This would not be a moratorium on housebuilding but would enable the planning system to select those forms of new houses that would meet genuine housing need; social housing, housing for older people, co-housers, self/custom-builders, conversions and sub-divisions. If these sustainable forms of housing continued to be permitted as a percentage of general market housing then the overshooting of carbon budgets would be inevitable. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800922002245. Incidentally, this paper was cited twice in the December issue of the TCPA Journal. And Tamworth and Litchfield tried and failed at appeal to successfully argue that the level of under-occupancy should be taken into account when calculating the housing land supply – a good attempt which requires more robust data and policy backup. Mental gymnastics should be unnecessary in the application of planning policy and law and I would recommend practitioners reverting to the original presumption, the one in favour of sustainable development, and ask appeal inspectors and the courts as may be necessary, to find general purpose housing unsustainable due to excessive upfront/embodied carbon (and car dependency) that conflicts with the way in which everybody but the ‘planners’ have been using the word/concept. Why set up a new presumption when the original, that has been accepted by an unwary Labour Government in its latest NPPF, should do?

Impacts of new housebuilding

Much of my time and energy is spent working with One Planet Abingdon Climate Emergency Centre. The principles of one planet living created by Bioregional have been adopted and the idea of a climate emergency centres emerged from Trust the People. More about the the centre can be found at Oneplanetabingdon.org. Every three months we change the focus of our work that from Oct to Dec 2024 is on the impacts of new housebuilding. As a chartered town planner, who is expected to be looking for ways to solve the shortage of decent and affordable homes, it has not been easy to oppose the building of new houses as the politically correct response. A shortage normally implies the need to increase supply. However, if the means of supply causes even greater problems that it might soleve then there should be no hestation to look for alternatives. This is our current project and a survey has been designed to find out what others are thinking. Could I impose on the readers of this blog to spend a few minutes adding to the richness of the data that we will be analysing in December? https://oneplanetabingdon.org/survey-on-the-impact-of-new-housebuilding/ And please pass on to any or all of your contacts. If the link does not work then going t the web site and scrolling under Green Forum to the last item should access the survey Meanwhile I have several unpublished letters written to the Guardian that continues to back new housebuilding. The Government, Labour Together, Labour Housing Group and Labour Policy Forum all refuse to acknowledge the conflict between housing and both carbon emissions and biodiversity loss. Housebuilding is so integral to the Government's plans for growth than an alternative strategy based on refitting and sub-divisions cannot be considered seriously.

Repowering and sharing fossil cars

I recently learned that Vauxhall (they are part of a conglomerate including other brands) are thinking about giving up car production in the UK due to the "mandate" which requires 20% of its production to be EVs. The problem being that demand for its EVs is not sufficient to enable the company to produce ICEs in the numbers required for profitability. I have written an yunpublished letter to the press (The Guardian), to Citroen (the make of car we are driving) and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (also with no reply) suggesting that a whole production line be dedicated to the re-powering of ICEs by replacing the petrol or diesekl engine with an e equivalent and battery. This would save scrappig the chassis, wheels, windows, body and upholstery. I estimate that giving this job to one of the smaller ans specialist garages would cost far mopre than the car is worth. Doing the job at scale could be half the cost and much cheaper than buying a new EV. Please tell me if I am wrong about the benefits that could be derived from this approach to electrifying road transport. Buses, trucks and dust carts are already being re-powered but it would but affordable re-powering of cars would have far more impact. If this would just sustain car dependency then please ignore this blog. I actually hope that other measures will assist in the change from individual car ownership car sharing of many kinds.

A carbon literacy test for Labour

The new government is adamant about its manifesto based right to do what it can to boost annual housebuilding rates to 370,000 to reach 1.5million new homes by 2029. It could not be unaware that the upfront or embodied carbon emissions from this scale of new building will be hard to contain within the carbon budgets set in accordance with the Climate Change Act 1990 as amended. This was legislation drafted by Ed Milliband the new Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero but has not publically questioned those chanting ‘build, build, build,’ so that the economy can ‘grow, grow, grow’ I am not in the planning business to advocate to increase or maintain the shocking levels of homelessness. But I fail to see sufficient connection between the new housing estates being built, permitted and planned on the edge of towns and villages, on ‘grey belt’ land and in new settlements and those living on the street or in sub-standard temporary accommodation. Neither do I see any real prospect of 29m dwellings being brought up to a zero carbon standard in the next few years. So there is a way of addressing both housing needs and carbon emissions that readers of the blog will know by heart. https://redbrickblog.co.uk/2023/06/sub-dividing-properties-to-meet-carbon-budgets/ The previous Government had not just one but two transition plans/carbon budgets found to be illegal for incompatibility with the Climate Change Act. No minister of official responsible for this travesty was fined or put in prison, unlike those who are arrested and charged with drawing these successive Government failures to the attention of the public. It seems to be more than likely that the new Government will see the manifesto commitment to housebuilding as a reason to sidestep responsible and legal carbon budgeting. There is the Future Building Standards and the NPPF consultation that could reference and Paul Brannen’s book Timber! How wood can help save the world from climate change were the Government interested in at least reducing upfront emissions. I doubt that the additional reliance on wood would be sufficient especially when new services and infrastructure is involved. But I would like to be proved wrong.

The significance of upfront carbon

I have just emerged from a public inquiry that is the result of the Secretary of State recovering the decision to be made on whether a road should be built across south Oxfordshire to serve seeveral thousand new houses planned for the area. The claim being made in support of the road is that it would result in a reduction of carbon emissions. The expert evidence that includes an environmental statement suggested that the very substantial carbon embodied in the building of the road would soon be compensated for through avoiding the gridlock that would occur without the new road. This claim was supported by the chartered civil engineer who specialises in this susbject, the three planning officers representing the county and district councils and the planning consultant ("our practice is always supporting sustainable development") paid by the county to support the application/appeal. The second schoolchild error made by these highly qualified experts was to claim that the carbon emissions involved were "insignificant". I suggetsed that what might appear to insignificant to an emgineer in Didcot might not look the same to a farmer in Bangladesh or a fisherman on a Pacific Island. And what might be insignificant when a mile from a cliff edge was highly significant if we had reached a cliff edge or tipping point. There would not be much good in avoiding carbon emissions one we had fallen over the edge. And then there was me. A chunk of my evidence was taken from the code of p[ractice that applies tp all chartered planners; members of the Royal Town Planning Institute,that points out the paramount importance of reducing carbon emissions. Nobody referred to the expection that climate change should be determinative of the decision. This was aimed primarily at the inspector who was MRTPI. The resto of the proof of evidence explained that upfront carbon emissions were certain and damaging and the carbon avoided from a more efficient transport system was speculative and not necessarility dependent on a new road. Twelve different measures were identified that could have reduced carbon emissions without the road; road user charging, APPGI/ICE report, road user charging, workplace parking levy, lower speed limits, electrification, car sharing, automation, public transport, active travel including E-bikes, and working from home, and/or the Government’s Transport Decarbonisation Plan? The claim by the county that all these possibilities had been in the transport modelwas never discussed but obviously the model which "predicted" an 80% modal shift for all traffic if the road was built could have been adjusted to find a combination of these measures that would shift say 50% of traffic from private car without the road. The point of a model is to investigate "decide or vision and provide". As a mere interested party it was made difficult to be involved in the inquiry. However, my final contributiton was to encourage the inspector to write a report that would recommend the rejection of the road on grounds of the significant level of upfront carbon emissions in a way that would survive legal challenge, unlike the refusal of the replacement of the M&S Oxford Street store where the Secretary of State had seen the upfront emissions being unacceptable despite of promises of a more efficient replacement building. Framing of the decision would be critical and I had given uncotested evidence to make that possible.

Upfront carbon

In refusing permission for the redevelopment of the M&S Oxford Street store against the recommendation of his inspector,Michael Gove the Secretary of State for DLUHC relied on the unacceptable level of upfront carbon emissions. This is the sensible term applied to embodied emissions that occur in the short term before the relatively low emissions from and energy efficient replacement building kick in. I particularly like the evidence given by Susan Barfield who "... highlighted that the IPCC told us in 2018 that we have 12 years to avoid a catastrophe, and we see growing evidence all around the world that it is happening – with floods, droughts, fires and melting ice caps. Instead of acting as if there is an emergency, by proposing to throw a huge carbon bomb unnecessarily into the atmosphere, the scheme misunderstands the urgency of our situation. What the science tells us is that what we do in the next 8 years is critical. The brief here was clearly to maximise the site’s potential and the architects have fulfilled their brief well – creating a building minimising operational carbon that 5-8 years ago would have been considered fine. However, now that we understand the upfront impact of embodied carbon it really isn’t. Particularly building two extra basements! They are the worst in terms of embodied carbon.” This decision should make it hard to justify building 300,000 houses every year instead of devising ways to use the under-used space in the existing housing stock. The use of unwanted retail space in town centres as being proposed by the PM would be a step in the right direction but is very unlikely to be sufficient. Sub-dividing some of just a small proportion of the 28m existing dwellings would meet genuine housing needs, including an element of custom-splitting (see numerous previous blog posts).