Cut our emissions from construction and buildings

To cut our emissions from construction and buildings, we need to:

• Avoid unnecessary construction and demolition by prioritising re-use and retrofit of existing buildings
• Retrofit our homes and workplaces to maximise energy efficiency and switch to renewable energy heating, cooling and power sources
• Construct all new buildings using low carbon building materials and construction methods
• Construct all new buildings to be ‘net zero’ operationally as soon as possible, with renewable energy heating and power sources
• Use green infrastructure principles to capture carbon in buildings, landscaping and public realm

Our buildings account for about 26% of Plymouth’s carbon footprint, a figure that has barely changed in the last ten years. The carbon emissions come from the way we heat our homes and workplaces and make hot water—typically from burning gas, a fossil fuel, in our boilers. Our buildings are also quite leaky—heat (and money) literally escapes through poorly insulated walls, floors, roofs and windows. That means we burn even more gas to make up for it, pushing bills up too.

To get to net zero, we need to improve our existing homes and workplaces, making them as energy efficient as possible, bringing our energy bills down. Secondly, we must move away from natural gas for our heating and hot water to low carbon energy. In practice, this often means replacing gas boilers with electric heat pumps or connecting to a heat network. We can also generate our own energy from solar PV panels. This whole process is called retrofit. The retrofit triangle shows which activities will have the biggest climate impact.

We’re also building new homes and premises in the city. While much of the carbon emissions take place outside of Plymouth (largely from the mining and manufacture of materials) we know that the construction process accounts for about 11% of global carbon emissions.

In fact, roughly half the carbon emissions of a building are baked into the fabric of the building,* before anyone has set foot through the door! By reusing and refurbishing or repurposing existing buildings instead of demolishing and building new, we will lower our carbon emissions from construction. We must also use low carbon construction methods and materials, while maximising energy efficiency of the building to ultimately ensure future development is zero carbon.

We emitted 258,372 tonnes of CO₂e from our buildings in 2022, down by 21,670 in 2021. However, since 2008, we’ve made little progress. This means that every year from now on, we need to cut our carbon emissions even more drastically if we stand a chance of getting to net zero.

We can also measure our progress in other ways that show how well we’re doing at making our buildings more energy efficient and heating them from low carbon sources.