William Prescott is a researcher at Bright Blue.
With spring and summer around the corner, we will need to think about another climate risk: overheating.
As parts of the UK emerge from one of the wettest Februarys ever recorded, few concerns seem more remote than how to protect our homes from this particular danger.
However, with British summers getting ever hotter thanks to climate change and a housing stock ill-equipped to cope, it is a concern that can no longer be ignored.
Rising temperatures during the summer months already claim lives. During the 2022 summer, Europe recorded 61,672 heat-related deaths, of which 3,469 occurred in this country between 11 July and 14 August alone.
If nothing is done, that toll is only going to increase: the Health Security Agency estimated that, in a worst-case scenario, extreme heat could cause up to 10,000 deaths a year by mid-century. The health risks are likely to be especially great for people over 65 and those with pre-existing medical conditions.
Unfortunately, being designed to keep buildings warm during winter months rather than cool during summer ones, the UK’s housing stock is not equipped to cope with rising temperatures. A 2023 Resolution Foundation report found that one-fifth of English homes overheat in summer, even at current temperatures.
Unsurprisingly, this too is set to worsen considerably as the century progresses. A report for the Climate Change Committee estimated that if, as is probable, global temperatures rise by 2°C from pre-industrial levels, then 90 per cent of the UK’s homes will suffer from overheating.
Worse, those from low-income households are most likely to endure the consequences of this. The same Resolution Foundation report estimated that triple the number of English households in the poorest quintile, as measured by net income after housing costs, live in homes at risk of overheating compared to those households in the wealthiest quintile.
Although the Government has taken some steps to make homes more heat-resistant, these have not gone far enough – or have been poorly devised.
The Government’s 2023 climate adaptation plan was criticised by its own climate advisers for not including new measures to retrofit existing homes.
Similarly, the most recent building regulations, introduced in 2022, attempted to reduce overheating by limiting window sizes, with more stringent requirements imposed on postcodes deemed to be at ‘high risk’ of overheating. However, these changes only apply to new housing stock. Moreover, the requirement that upper-floor windows must be at least 1.1 metres above the floor, ostensibly to prevent building occupants from falling out during the summer months, produced absurd-looking buildings and attracted widespread ridicule.
The negative reaction forced Michael Gove, the Housing Secretary, to order a review of the new regulations; such backlashes against ill-conceived policies only make the urgent task of upgrading our housing stock more difficult.
While installing air conditioning can certainly prove effective at cooling homes it is too expensive for many households to install. Its widespread use could put pressure on the electricity grid and increase carbon emissions. Improving the design of newer homes and retrofitting older ones, on the other hand, can reduce the need for air conditioning even where it still needs to be installed.
Fortunately, there are several options available to reduce the problem for both new and existing homes – without alienating the general public.
First, the planning system should require that roofs be painted with lighter-coloured paints. As the House of Commons Environment Audit Committee report into heat resilience and sustainable cooling noted, these so-called ‘cool roofs’ are far more effective at reflecting solar energy than darker-coloured ones.
One Australian study, for example, found that white roofs could reduce interior temperatures by an average of 4°C and by as much as 10°C.
Second, the Government should support the targeted installation of external shutters. As a report for the Climate Change Committee advised, installing external shutters, a common sight in continental Europe though rare in the UK, can also prove highly effective at preventing solar radiation from entering homes during daylight hours.
For example, one study looking at homes in the West Midlands estimated that installing external shutters could reduce heat-related deaths by up to 43 per cent. The same study also found that targeting the installation of shutters to protect the elderly “could significantly reduce summertime mortality risk, by 5–33 per cent while only requiring adaptation of 3–12 per cent of the housing stock”.
Third, central and local governments should expand vegetation cover in urban areas. Because vegetation absorbs less heat than paved surfaces and asphalt roads, it can reduce the so-called ‘urban heat island effect’, which refers to the higher temperatures generated in urban areas than surrounding rural ones.
For example, a recent Arup report which examined the urban heat island effect across seven global cities found that, in most cases, “the hottest spots had less than six per cent vegetation cover – while the coolest spots in most cities had over 70 per cent”. Similarly, a European study estimated that increasing tree coverage to 30 per cent of a city’s urban area could reduce deaths caused by the urban heat effect by almost 40 per cent.
For a country far more used to dealing with the cold, adapting its housing stock to combat heatwaves may not instinctively seem a top priority. However, with temperatures set to increase and effective remedies available, there is no excuse for leaving millions to swelter.
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Author: William Prescott
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