Addressing climate change and sustainable construction
One of the nine Local Plan objectives is ‘to adapt well to and mitigate against the impacts of climate change and other pressures’. The need to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This accords with the overwhelming national and international consensus that radical measures are required across the whole of society to reduce man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Currently the built environment is responsible for approximately 25% of carbon dioxide emissions so it is imperative that this becomes an even greater focus for reducing emissions in that sector. While the planning system is not able to greatly influence the vast majority of buildings which have already been built, it is important to ensure that where the planning system has influence, such as with new development, that it is as sustainable as possible and avoids the need for future expensive retrofitting to make buildings more sustainable.