13:21 Jerome Mayhew (Conservative)

This Bill creates a mechanism to boost United Kingdom construction while driving down our greenhouse gas emissions, which is key to delivering UK growth in a manner aligned with the country’s net zero targets. The proposal has come from the industry, which supports the Bill wholeheartedly. The industry is working to reduce these carbon emissions voluntarily, but it needs the Government to take the lead and accelerate the work that it has started.

The Bill tackles an area of greenhouse gases called embodied carbon. Every year, our buildings and construction are responsible for the emission of more than 150 million tonnes of greenhouse gases, fully a quarter of our country’s total carbon footprint. Two thirds of those emissions are due to the lighting of buildings, their power and their water—the heating and cooling—and bear the tag “operational carbon”, and the Government have taken bold steps to reduce them as part of the net zero strategy. The building regulations, under part L, effectively address the reduction of operational carbon. As a direct consequence of the regulations and, importantly, the decarbonisation of the electricity supply, it is anticipated that by 2035 the emissions related to the services side—the operational carbon side—of buildings and construction will have fallen to an almost negligible level.

Let us think about how much effort we put into the control and planned reduction of those emissions. We have the sustainable aviation fuels plan, we have jet zero, and we have plans for corridors for emission-free shipping based on ammonia and hydrogen. We take all those plans very seriously, but what are the Government doing, and what are we doing as a nation, to deal with embodied carbon from construction? With 50 million tonnes of embodied carbon emissions a year, we might expect that the Government would already have plans to direct a reduction in line with our legally binding net zero targets.

The truth is that embodied carbon remains completely unregulated, and it shows from the data. Operating carbon emissions are dropping rapidly because of part L and the decarbonisation of our electricity supply, but the data on embodied carbon shows no current trend towards any reduction at all. In 1995, there were 43 million tonnes of greenhouse gas-equivalent emissions; by 2018, emission levels, far from reducing, had crept up to 49 million tonnes and were approaching 50 million.

To be fair to the Government, their net zero strategy sets out an intention to

“the requirements to report whole life carbon, and set informed limits on embodied carbon, would help the real estate sector to decarbonise.”

My Bill would enable the Government to catch up on the issue, directly amending the building regulations. It will require the reporting of carbon on significant building work, both new projects and refurbishments, from 2023 in the large-building, non-domestic sector, and by 2025 for housing in developments of more than 10 dwellings. It will then move to introduce limits on the embodied carbon emitted through construction from 2027—something that can be ratcheted down over time, in line with our net zero targets.

A clear policy signal on the direction of travel is what the industry needs to accelerate its development and the large-scale use, and more efficient use, of lower-carbon products. Just as how the policy statement that vehicles will not be sold with an internal combustion engine post 2030 has transformed the car manufacturing market, the construction industry needs that kind of market signal to invest in lower-carbon alternatives and take the next step to the wider adoption of what are currently niche products. By sending a clear policy signal from Government to industry, we will enable the sector to grow ahead of time. We must signal the road map to the end of high-carbon construction in the United Kingdom to enable the building industry to take the needed steps towards zero-emission construction.

When the Government say that they want to consult on their approach on measurement and reduction of embodied carbon, we may be beginning to wonder who else is there that they are intending to consult. The sooner we start this process, the sooner we can reduce our emission of 50 million tonnes of carbon every year. My Bill will reduce the construction industry’s carbon footprint, while sending certainty to UK industry that investing in decarbonisation is economically sound. It will bring economic growth and it will save the taxpayer money by standardising the decarbonisation process. The Government have great ambition to decarbonise. We all support it, and they should be commended for their ambition and for the many actions they have already taken in this field. The construction industry has the appetite, tools and skills to match that ambition. We have here a tremendous opportunity to make a significant impact on the UK’s carbon emissions and ensure that the UK remains a global leader by regulating embodied carbon in construction. I commend this Bill to the House.

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13:37 Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)

“Embodied carbon” is the sum of carbon dioxide or green gas emission released during the life cycle of a product or service. For buildings, that could include extraction, manufacturing, transporting, installing, maintaining and disposing of construction materials and products. I know that work has been undertaken to develop a global approach to embodied carbon. In June 2021, a coalition of Governments and organisations, led by the UK and India, launched the industrial deep decarbonisation initiative. The IDDI aims to develop shared approaches to embodied emissions reporting and definitions for green steel and cement to drive public and private procurement. These working groups will deliver guidelines, comparison mechanisms and digital tool solutions agreed by member Governments no later than 2024.

The Government continue to take forward work to mitigate carbon emissions through measuring and reducing the embodied and operational carbon of the buildings and infrastructure they fund, and within the construction supply chain. I welcomed that when the net zero strategy was published in October 2021, it stated:

“the sum total of all asset related greenhouse gas emissions and removals, both operational and embodied, over the life cycle of an asset including its disposal”.

Under the measures in my hon. Friend’s Bill, the Secretary of State will be required to approve the methodology, means of expression, reporting platform and tools for carrying out whole-life carbon assessments of building work. Where a new building or multi-building development with a total useful floor area of over 1,000 square metres is erected or where building work takes place in any such building, the whole-life carbon emissions of the works will need to be calculated and reported. The day before the work starts at the latest, the local authority will need notice of the CO2 equivalent, a list of specifications to which the building work is to be undertaken, and a reference to the location on the reporting platform where the whole-life carbon emissions for the building work have been reported.

Within five days of completing the work, the person carrying out the work must update the local authority on those measures following construction. The local authority will authorise their approval and that the conditions have been met by way of a certificate. I understand that the Bill will also require the Secretary of State to approve target CO2 equivalent upfront embodied carbon emission rates, which would set requirements for the building work.

I am very concerned about carbon emissions from our homes, but we cannot be concerned with new builds only. Only a few months ago I led a Westminster Hall debate on energy efficiency of homes in the north, where 26% of carbon emissions come from our homes. If we are to tackle climate change and meet net zero, we have to do something about that 26% in addition to all the other things that we are doing.

In the north, we have a higher percentage of older properties than the rest of the country. Twenty four per cent. of all homes in the north were built before 1919 and 41% were built before 1944. Despite all the housebuilding going on around the country, the UK’s housing stock as a whole is generally older than in the rest of Europe. Older homes are largely beautiful, characterful homes that provide us with the backdrop to constituencies such as mine, but they cause serious issues when it comes to energy efficiency and carbon emissions. Decarbonising homes and making them more energy efficient has the potential to offer parts of the long-term solution to fuel poverty, insulating homes better and reducing the reliance on fossil fuels to heat homes. Less money spent on wasted energy is less money spent. It is a win-win for our homes, their residents and the environment.

I praise the work that the Government have done so far to tackle this issue. The heat and buildings strategy was published in October 2021. The social housing decarbonisation fund has awarded £179 million and the local authority delivery scheme is helping to improve energy efficiency. I also welcomed the Chancellor’s announcement in the autumn statement of a new ambition that, by 2030, the UK will have reduced energy consumption from buildings and industry by 15%, as well as the continuation of the £6.6 billion of energy efficiency funding promised in this Parliament, and the promise of a further £6 billion from 2025, which would amount to a doubling of current annual investment, with the formation of a new energy efficiency taskforce to help to direct the new funding.

Some progress on decarbonisation and retrofitting is under way, but we still have a long way to go. We need to tackle the huge costs currently associated with making our homes more energy efficient. We cannot achieve decarbonisation while it remains financially unviable for homeowners, private landlords and housing associations to pay for the work. Will the Minister therefore outline what more can be done to decarbonise our existing housing stock as well as ensuring new housing is energy efficient?

Back to the construction of new builds, which is the focus of the Bill. The Government plan to publish a future homes standard and future buildings standard in 2025. They will set new standards for how new homes and buildings should be constructed. The future buildings standard will ensure that new buildings are zero carbon-ready, with high energy efficiency and low carbon heat. As a first step towards implementation, I understand that the Government introduced an interim uplift to energy efficiency standards in June 2022 so that new non-domestic dwellings will be expected to produce 27% fewer carbon dioxide emissions. Will the Minister outline what progress has been made towards that?

Timber has the lowest embodied carbon of any mainstream building material. I also know that the net zero strategy states that the Government recognise the potential to reduce embodied carbon through material substitution where appropriate. The strategy commits the Government to work with stakeholders, including the Green Construction Board, the Construction Leadership Council, the Home Builders Federation and the Federation of Master Builders to develop a policy road map to increase the use of timber in construction in England. Naturally, with timber construction, we must also take into account considerations on fire safety and structural matters, but, as the Government have already said, there are key opportunities for the safe growth of timber use in low-rise buildings using traditional and certain modern methods of constructions, and in a wide range of commercial and non-residential settings. We should take advantage of those opportunities. I welcome the Government’s commitment to take a number of steps outlined in the net zero strategy to increase the use of timber construction. The steps include financial support to develop innovative timber products—the woods into management forestry innovation fund and the timber in construction innovation fund—and working with Homes England and delivery partners to explore ways to increase timber use in the delivery of housing programmes.

In conclusion, this is a very interesting Bill. We must keep to our target of reaching net zero by 2050, and I fully agree that we must do more to ensure that the construction of new buildings results in as low a level of carbon emissions as possible. I strongly encourage my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland to continue to push the Government on this issue and to continue to have discussions on this issue, because what the Bill proposes is definitely worthy of strong consideration.

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13:48 Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson). Like him, I will speak for the third time today. I hope I will be able to speak at slightly greater length than on the previous Bill, but I am very glad we have got to this Bill from my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew). He is not only a doughty champion for the people of Broadland, as we have seen in this place but a consistent champion for the environment in everything he has done. That is what the Bill is doing today. It demonstrates that the Conservative party is on the side of the people who want to make net zero a reality and who want to decarbonise our buildings. The Bill is concerned mostly with commercial buildings because of their size, but we also want to decarbonise our homes. We had some of the same discussions earlier, when debating the Electricity and Gas Transmission (Compensation) Bill presented by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), on the low carbon future we need to work towards. Decarbonising is absolutely vital for the future.

My advice to the Government is that, on principle, we should consider applying that more broadly when we think about decarbonisation, because it is a valid criticism of the Government that, although we have been the most successful country in the G20 at reducing our carbon emissions, we are offshoring them. We need to think about that and, therefore, about whether we are doing the right thing by the environment when we do not give permission for a coal mine in this country or for offshore oil and gas. It might be the right thing by our numbers, but the Bill makes the point that we cannot look at one number in isolation—we need to look at the whole ecosystem and life cycle, as my hon. Friend talked about.

My hon. Friend is right to focus on embodied carbon, which is the sum of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions released during the whole life cycle of a product or service. That is not just the manufacturing part, which is dealt with here. It is the extraction, transportation, installation, maintenance and, ultimately, disposal, because all buildings have a life cycle and most will not last forever—happily, we are in one that has lasted longer than most.

If I may get on my hobby horse, that waste ends up in sites such as Walleys Quarry in my constituency, which is notorious for the local stink that is caused by construction and demolition materials that end up in landfill. I know that is not just my experience. We need to reduce the total amount of waste and one way to do that is to have the transparency that the Bill seeks to introduce. That is also, of course, what young people want; I was rather touched when my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell) talked about his daughter’s birthday today. We have to look at what young people want for the future and make sure that we in this place are building—literally, in this case—a better, brighter, net zero future where we do not have to worry about carbon dioxide emissions or the warming of the planet.

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13:53 Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)

The national planning policy framework already sets out that new developments should help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through their location, orientation and design, in line with the emissions obligations in the Climate Change Act 2008. Using those guidelines, local planning authorities then put forward a local plan, against which planning applications must be considered. Indeed, my excellent local council—probably the best council, in fact—North Lincolnshire Council, released its local plan this month, and it contained standards that encourage developers to reduce whole-life carbon emissions. The plan states that all developments should maximise the reuse or recycling of materials in new construction, and make the best possible use of existing building infrastructure. According to the plan, that should be done by minimising the use of non-renewable and unsustainable finite resources, during both construction and use. Hypothetically, if every council was as good as mine, and every planning proposal in the country was tested against standards like those, developers would already need to show that they are minimising carbon emissions through their building materials.

My hon. Friend the Member for Broadland will not be surprised to hear that I also have questions regarding the steel industry. Members understand that steel is a carbon-intensive product to make. The future of the steel industry will inevitably at some point be around decarbonisation, finding greener ways to make steel and mitigating the impact of production, but while that process takes place, the adoption of embodied carbon limits on development may affect demand for steel if they do not appropriately recognise steel’s value of recyclability.

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14:06 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Dehenna Davison)

As hon. Members will know, the Government considered closely the Environmental Audit Committee’s report, “Building to net zero: costing carbon in construction”, and its recommendations. In our response, we were pleased to set out details of our work in this area, including our plan to consult next year on our approach to measuring and reducing embodied carbon. As we made clear in that response, reducing embodied carbon in construction is critical to meeting our net zero target. I think that all of us across the House can agree on that, but we disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland about the exact mechanisms and timings for achieving that. That is why, I am sorry to say, the Government cannot support the Bill today. It is not because we disagree with the Bill’s aims, but because ambitious work is already well under way in this area. Passing the Bill ahead of that work would risk adverse effects on our housing supply, on small and medium-sized enterprises and, given the reach of our construction industry and supply chains, on other sectors of the economy.

Reducing embodied carbon is exceptionally difficult across the built environment—not just in buildings—which is why the Government have been planning ahead to tackle those emissions head-on. The industrial decarbonisation strategy and the transport decarbonisation plan, for example, set out how large sectors of the economy will decarbonise, and the England trees action plan looks to increase the production of timber, which can be used to replace higher-carbon materials in construction when safe to do so. As those policies take effect and industries that supply construction decarbonise, we expect that in turn the embodied carbon emissions of buildings will fall.

We recognise that those efforts alone will not be enough. As pointed out by both the Climate Change Committee and the Environmental Audit Committee, our choice of materials and how we design and construct buildings will also need to change dramatically.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his contribution. I know that was the intent of the design of the Bill—we have discussed that before today. The important thing to note is that we will be consulting not just on how we reduce embodied carbon but on how specifically we go about gathering that data, because that data collection will be so important in ensuring that we can decarbonise embodied carbon. I hope he will appreciate that that is one of the reasons why we are keen to consult before we take any further action.

I want to quickly highlight some of the contributions made by hon. Members across the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) raised some fantastic points about broader decarbonisation and asked some questions about decarbonisation within existing housing stock. I know that we are pressed for time, so I will write to him with some further details on that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) was absolutely right to highlight that the Government are on the side of those who want to decarbonise. For all the rhetoric, this Conservative Government’s action on decarbonisation has been exemplary, and some of the small examples highlighted by hon. Members during this short debate have really shown that. I note that he mentioned the ever-famous “Stop the Stink” campaign, about which he is so passionate, and it would be remiss of me not to mention his incredible campaigning on that.

Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft) talked about the planning framework as being incredibly important on the decarbonisation agenda. She is absolutely right, and I congratulate her and North Lincolnshire Council on their brilliant progress on that. It would be remiss of me not to thank her for her stellar work in championing the British steel industry and, in particular, the steelworks in Scunthorpe in her own constituency, on which she has been and is an incredibly passionate campaigner.

Together, I believe we can adopt the right approach that lets industry and markets properly prepare for change, while not letting up in our fight to tackle carbon emissions, to win the race to net zero and to build the cleaner, greener homes and buildings this country needs.

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14:16 Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)

I am sure the whole House agrees that the need to tackle climate change and reduce carbon emissions is of critical importance. In 2019, I was proud to stand on a manifesto that committed to reaching net zero by 2050. I strongly believe in the need to invest in green energy and infrastructure while finding new and innovative ways to cut carbon emissions.

The Government’s 10-point plan to bring about a green industrial revolution is a critical part of the plan to decarbonise our economy. Part of this plan involves carbon capture, usage and storage, and I welcome the Government’s £200 million investment to become a global leader in this new technology. Moreover, the Government’s net zero strategy has set the UK on a path towards lowering our reliance on fossil fuels. We are investing in green energy, helping businesses transition to green energy and, most importantly, helping to secure our energy security long into the future. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this is now vital.

More locally, in my beautiful Milton Keynes North constituency, we are proud of our decarbonisation efforts, particularly in transport. Over the past year, Milton Keynes City Council has received more than £800,000 of Government funding to install public electric vehicle charging points. I am especially proud that Milton Keynes is one of the best places to drive an electric car, but there is more work to be done.

We need to find more ways to ensure that our infrastructure is fit for the future. As we embark on levelling up the country, we need to ensure that the buildings we construct allow us to achieve the ambitious targets we have set ourselves. This Bill rightly addresses the issue of embodied carbon—the emissions produced by a building’s materials. As of now, the UK’s built environment contributes a quarter of our total greenhouse gas emissions, and that raises important questions about how we construct our buildings. I welcome the intention of this Bill. By establishing limits on embodied carbon emissions in building construction, we are taking steps towards a more sustainable construction sector.

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