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Some academics are arguing that preservation policies preventing historic buildings from being fitted with energy-efficient measures added \u00a35.6 billion to energy bills across an eight-year period.<\/h3>\nSome academics are arguing that preservation policies preventing historic buildings from being fitted with energy-efficient measures added \u00a35.6 billion to energy bills across an eight-year period.<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
City University of London writes:<\/p>\n
A team of researchers have found that efforts to preserve historic buildings have greatly hampered their ability to be retrofitted with energy-efficient solutions.<\/p>\n
Policies to preserve buildings, including privately-owned homes, for historical, cultural or architectural reasons are widespread across Europe and North America.<\/p>\n
In England, two common policies are\u00a0Conservation Areas<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Listed Buildings<\/a>. These policies collectively cover more than two million homes.<\/p>\n With an economic rationale centred on the external value of heritage, historic preservation policies typically put limits on the alterations to designated buildings.<\/p>\n The benefits of these policies are well established in academic work. However, the costs of the policies have not received similar attention.<\/p>\n One source of these costs is that the policies prevent the uptake of energy-efficiency measures, such as energy energy-efficient aluminium, uPVC windows or external wall insulations.<\/p>\n These, in turn, increase the private costs of energy consumption to homeowners as well as\u00a0\u00a0greenhouse gas emissions, a cost to society as a whole (a \u2018social cost\u2019).<\/p>\n The team \u2013 which included\u00a0Dr Edward Pinchbeck<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0City, University of London<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0Department of Economics<\/a>, and two\u00a0London School of Economics<\/a>\u00a0academics,\u00a0Professor Christian Hilber<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Dr Charles Palmer<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 recently published a\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0in which they quantify the foregone energy efficiency savings and the social cost of carbon from historic preservation policies in England between 2006 and 2013 \u2013 a period with rising energy prices.<\/p>\n Controlling for income and a number of other factors, such as the age and type of the housing stock and the geographical location of the neighbourhood, the team demonstrated that energy price increases lead to a very significant reduction in energy consumption but that this response was much more muted in neighbourhoods with a high degree of historic preservation.<\/p>\n They estimated that historic preservation policies (for conservation areas and listed buildings) added about \u00a35.6 billion to energy bills between 2006 and 2013 \u2013 approximately \u00a3350 per year for each preserved home.<\/p>\n These lost energy savings as a consequence of historic preservation policies during the sample period were equivalent to the emission of 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.<\/p>\n Using UK government assumptions about abatement costs, this amounts to an additional social cost of \u00a31.2 billion during the period from 2006 to 2013.<\/p>\n The costs are much larger when it is considered that the costs of not undertaking energy efficient upgrades will continue to be incurred year after year beyond 2013.<\/p>\n Indeed, the academics\u2019 best estimates of the full private and greenhouse gas costs are \u00a323.2 billion and \u00a34.8 billion respectively.<\/p>\n The study points to important \u2013 and so far unquantified \u2013 internal and external costs of historic preservation policies.<\/p>\n \u201cPolicymakers ought to consider these costs when deciding on designations, determining the stringency of preservation rules, or setting energy-efficiency targets,\u201d said Dr Pinchbeck.<\/p>\n \u201cPut differently, solely focusing on the benefits of preservation policies and ignoring the adverse impacts of the policies on energy consumption may lead to undue levels of preservation and energy-efficiency targets that are excessively costly or unfeasible to achieve altogether.\u201d<\/p>\nLost energy savings<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Preservation versus energy efficiency<\/strong><\/h2>\n