Towards cleaner housing

When we think about environmental hazards we tend to think about pollution from cars, or from industry, or when we look at Maghtab, at the very huge amount of waste caused by our essential building industry.

Few of us look at our homes and think of them as dirty or polluting in any way. And yet at a recent conference on sustainable housing (only two months away from the Johannesburg Earth Summit) we were told that buildings, in Europe particularly, are a major source of greenhouse emissions.

European buildings produce a staggering 40 per cent of all greenhouse emissions, in Europe at least!

Europe therefore has a particular responsibility to be a leader in this field, because leadership in the field of our global environment can rest nowhere but with us, the "old continent", as one speaker described Europe.

Firstly though we have to be careful not to generalise when we talk about buildings. We have to understand there are different target groups with different interests. Among others there are landlords, tenants, public authorities, and all the different operators in the building process from professionals to companies.

All these different groups require very different plans and instruments of action. We were told that a key impediment to making environmental sustainability move from a problem to a solution is that there is no one owner, and understandably very few who are keen to claim ownership.

Governments must, however, lead by example.

Another little known reality is that the energy use during the lifetime of a building (and this will become more and more apparent here as we increasingly rely on air conditioning to survive our summer!) is much more important than the energy needed to construct a house.

If one assumes the lifespan of a building to be 75 years (it can of course be much longer) and one adds up the energy savings from various design features, the savings over 75 years are enormous.

The OECD has three headings as proposed policy instruments - information-based strategies, incentive-based instruments, and directive-based regulations

Information-based strategies

These are essentially there to correct the lack of information in the market, and many instruments are possible.

Among the most prominent and popular are award schemes for energy consumption, public information campaigns, environmental audits of buildings, and LCAs (Life Cycle Analysis reports) of both individual products, as well as of the entire building.

The main speaker in this field said that energy audits were the most helpful not least because the consumer then understands the real costs of both heating and cooling, as well as the environmental costs.

Most of all for the consumer, it makes the housing costs transparent!

The EU Council Directive obliges member states to introduce a voluntary system to certify energy efficiency in buildings. The flagship countries in this field, notably the Scandinavians and the Germans, now have legislation to make this energy certification of buildings compulsory

There is also now a proposal for EU legislation to make this certification compulsory too.

Incentive-based instruments

(Sometimes called the carrot policy and in my view more likely to work in our local context)

Many were mentioned but the most salient and perhaps most likely to work locally were tax benefits for energy-efficient housing both for contractors and purchasers; special loan subsidies to make buildings, particularly older ones more energy efficient; examples of good practice by local authorities; general subsidies, and voluntary agreements with large building operators such as the hotel trade, developers, etc.

Directive-based regulations

(Sometimes called the stick policy)

These are direct, hard-hitting and mandatory and are aimed to change a specific behaviour or situation.

Some possibilities include air emission standards per square metre of heated or cooled floor, building regulations for both new build and conversions, a liability scheme whereby builders would have to give building users guarantees on energy savings; VAT advantages for energy-saving products over energy products proper.

Two important points were singled out for the attention of governments. The first was the potential conflict between owners and tenants. Owners want a cheap building while tenants tend to be more interested in the total operating cost. Having said that, in Malta, with very little new building being destined for the rental market, this proviso has little consequence.

Secondly the importance of the policing of building regulations, which must apply to new build as much as to conversions.

In conclusion we were told that as long as Europe's buildings were producing 40 per cent of greenhouse emissions, Europe risks losing credibility if an effective programme of energy saving is not made mandatory for new buildings as well as for conversions.

In Malta the debate is just beginning but in most of Europe too, this whole vital issue is still in its infancy.

Time then for the key players to not only look at buildings (as we are currently doing) from the waste they generate to build, but also from the huge amount of energy we are wasting in Malta, over a building's lifetime?

Marisa Micallef Leyson, M.Sc. (Urban Planning Policy Studies), is chairperson of the Housing Authority