Sustainability Action Plan

about this principle

The challenge

In order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change we need to drastically reduce the global warming gases we produce. In the UK our CO2 emissions need to be reduced by 90% by 2030 and approximately 25% of our CO2 is from housing.

How much energy do we use in the home?

The average house in the UK emits 5.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. That's over a million party balloons full!

The government has set targets for all new homes to be zero carbon from 2016 but in Sutton we will go further and encourage all existing buildings owners to renovate to zero carbon standards as well. At current demolition and new build rates, building all new homes to zero carbon standards will only reduce our CO2 emissions by 4% by 2050. It’s essential that we look at our existing buildings too.

Increasing energy efficiency in existing homes will have lots of benefits to people as well as the environment; reducing fuel bills, fuel poverty and making homes warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.

For Sutton to achieve One Planet Living we need to generate all of our energy from renewable sources like wind or solar power. Currently in the UK only 4% of our electricity is from renewable sources and most of our heating is from gas. Some of this energy can be generated at home; PV or solar panels on roofs for example, and some will be community scale; like communal biomass boilers.

Energy prices are increasing and we are having to import more and more of our energy as UK gas production peaked in 2000. We urgently need to avoid the need to heat our buildings and to find alternative sources of energy for our remaining need.