Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will publish guidance to require planning applications to consider the carbon footprint of a development.

The National Planning Policy Framework is clear that the planning system should support the transition to a low carbon future in a changing climate and we will make sure that the reformed planning system further supports our efforts to combat climate change and help bring greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. The Government recognises that the carbon emitted during the construction of homes and buildings, or embodied carbon, can account for a significant proportion of the total carbon emissions over the lifetime of a building. We encourage developers to consider embodied carbon, while also recognising that improvements in the consistency of whole life carbon assessments are required, supported by robust carbon data, and underpinned by widely adopted product standards. In the Net Zero Strategy the Government committed improving reporting on embodied carbon and has recently published a call for evidence exploring how to grow the market for low emissions products.

Alongside this, the Government sets minimum energy efficiency standards for buildings through the Building Regulations. From 2025, the Future Homes Standard will ensure that new homes produce at least 75% fewer CO2 emissions than those built to the 2013 standards and the Future Buildings Standard will ensure highly efficient new non-domestic buildings. To work towards this, in December 2021 we introduced an uplift in energy efficiency standards, which will come into force in June 2022.