"We’ve seen a real push to combat the carbon footprint of the property market in recent years and it’s clear that this is paying off, with residential buildings leading the way with regard to the largest reduction in carbon emissions"
- Craig Cooper - epIMS
The latest analysis from epIMS has shown that it’s the residential sector that is driving efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of the property market, having seen the largest annual reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
epIMS, analysed carbon dioxide emissions by sector and how the carbon footprint of each of these sectors has changed over the last year.
The figures show that the residential property market is leading the way when it comes to reducing carbon emissions across the property sector.
In the last year, the level of carbon emissions emitted by residential buildings has fallen by -7.3%, having also reduced by -31.3% over the last decade.
This annual rate of growth is the highest in the property sector, however, there have been declines almost across the board. Carbon emissions caused by commercial buildings have fallen by -3.1% year on year, whilst public sector buildings have seen a drop of -4.2%.
As a result, the property sector as a whole has seen a -6.3% year-on-year drop in carbon emissions, the third largest drop of all top-line sectors, with just the electricity supply sector (-19.9%) and industries sector (-8.2%) seeing a larger annual decline.
However, with 71.6 million tonnes of CO2 emissions generated on an annual basis, the property market still generated the second largest annual level of emissions, with just the domestic transport sector seeing a higher level at 109.2 million tonnes.
“The residential property alone is vast and so it’s no surprise that the carbon footprint of the entire property sector is one of the largest there is," noted COO of epIMS, Craig Cooper.
However, he added, "We’ve seen a real push to combat the carbon footprint of the property market in recent years and it’s clear that this is paying off, with residential buildings leading the way with regard to the largest reduction in carbon emissions.
"This has largely been down to improvements in the energy efficiency of new housing delivery, as well as a more conscious understanding from existing homeowners on how to improve energy efficiency, a trend that has been fuelled by the higher cost of living in recent years.
"With the government also looking to improve the energy efficiency of the private rental sector via a mandatory EPC C rating requirement, we should see the residential sector continue to drive a reduction in the carbon footprint of the overall sector.”
