Are you feeling guilty that your pretty but imperfect listed cottage guzzles up enough energy each year to power a small community? Do you think it may be time you invested in a new eco-home to cut your carbon footprint? Then pause for a moment - a report to be published next Monday, New Tricks with Old Bricks, indicates that staying put might be the kindest thing that you can do for the planet.

The Government is encouraging the construction of new “zero-carbon” homes, yet new-build properties account for just 1 per cent of the total housing stock. Existing homes are being overlooked in the fight for a 20 per cent cut in UK carbon emissions by 2010.

Few homeowners understand how much carbon is produced by the building of their homes - or the creation of materials used in that process. The report, compiled by the Empty Homes Agency with help from the Building and Social Housing Foundation, indicates that the embodied carbon - the carbon released as a direct result of building a new home - accounts for nearly three times as much as the building's lifetime emissions.

The agency claims that building a new home emits more than four and a half times as much carbon dioxide per square metre as refurbishing an existing one. As much as 35 tonnes of carbon dioxide could be saved by bringing an existing home up to scratch - equivalent to driving a car from London to Sydney and back seven times. Over 50 years, this means that there is almost no difference in the average emissions of new and refurbished homes.

The Empty Homes Agency believes that if the 288,000 long-term empty homes were upgraded to higher energy efficiency standards, UK carbon emissions could be cut by 8 per cent (more than 10 million tonnes). This is equivalent to taking 3.3 million cars off the road for a year. Henry Oliver, policy advisor at the agency, says: “More work needs to be done, but one thing is clear: if we're interested in quick wins to minimise the amount of carbon dioxide we pump out in the next 50 years, we need to place far greater emphasis on reusing the buildings we've already got.”

www.emptyhomes.com

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