Building a route out of climate change

BUILDING homes that are carbon-free is an excellent way to combat climate change, and we applaud the Welsh Government’s ambition to achieve such a goal by 2025.

Most people now recognise that climate change is not a manufactured crisis, and that failing to do what we can to stop it is essential if future generations are to take over a planet that has a future.

But many of us agonise over what we can do personally towards helping the cause.

Hopefully we make an effort to cut down on our use of single-use plastics.

Some will cut down or limit their use of cars or aircraft.

And it is not just individuals – companies and organisations across the nation are being encouraged to cut their carbon footprints. In this context, every little helps.

But the beauty of building carbon-free homes is that their future occupants don’t have to take any further action to ensure there’s a win – the win has already been secured through the way in which their home and those of their neighbours were constructed.

With a significant house-building programme in the planning stages, aimed in part at satisfying the need for affordable homes, the move to carbon-free construction techniques can’t come too soon.

But the project must not end there.

New build represents only a small part of Wales’ total housing stock, and once the new regulations are in place in 2025, the Welsh Government should move on as quickly as possible and see what can be done to eliminate, or at any rate cut down significantly, carbon emissions from existing homes.

We all consume too much energy, but the crime is not so great if the energy comes from renewable sources, which is precisely what is due to happen.

A few years ago the Welsh Government was marked highly for its sustainable energy rhetoric, but not so highly for its ability to deliver real change.

Perhaps the plan announced today represents an acknowledgement that setting targets so far into the future that no-one will be left to be held accountable for failure is not ideal.

A five-year target is manageable, however, suggesting that the Welsh Government is fairly confident it can be achieved.

Let’s hope that turns out to be the case – and that climate change is forced to take one step back.