| Comment | I want to see a plan for the Green Tenement.
We're in one of the most ambitious countries in the world for aggressive reduction in carbon emissions. We have incentive schemes for building insulation, low-carbon heating systems, electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, PV panels, all kinds of great initiatives at making our housing stock greener and healthier places to live.
All these things are great if you live in a rural or suburban area in a detached or semi-detached, yet none of this applies to the half a million or so tenement flats across the central belt. We can't install heat pumps. We can't charge EVs. We can't install decent insulation. We can't put PV on the roof. We can't do anything to the main building fabric. Complex ownership rights, as well as fundamental Victorian/Edwardian engineering, stand in the way of progress.
These are solvable problems. Countries like the Netherlands have big retrofit schemes in train for their aged housing stock.
What does a Green Tenement building look like, and how do we achieve it? What better use could we be making of the shared and open spaces around them? If this involves difficult answers - which it undoubtedly will - then we should make progress on them now. |
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