NetZero Buildings brings its expertise in net zero offsite manufacturing to housing
For more than six years NetZero Buildings has been manufacturing the most energy-efficient schools ever seen in Britain.
However, as a company it’s in our ethos to ask ourselves – is there anything more that we can do?
We believe there is.
Which is why we’ve invested our years of experience and expertise in net zero offsite manufacturing in order to create one of Britain’s most energy-efficient and precision engineered new homes.
We’re excited to announce that our first housing development is now set to get underway in Sittingbourne, Kent as a result of our partnership with local authority property specialists, Public Sector Plc.
When NetZero Buildings started developing new schools using offsite manufacturing we knew we were addressing a clear need. The Department for Education (DfE) estimates that in total almost two thirds of the school estate (60%) was built before 1976 and is therefore at least more than 42 years old. Two fifths of the that schools estate (40%) was built between 1945 and 1976 and a further fifth of was built before 1945 so is more than 70 years old.
We desperately needed more high-quality, new schools to create a better learning environment and experience for our children.
The exact same issues exist in our housing market – only the problem is much, much larger – we need to build at least 300,000 new homes a year to meet demand.
As a result, England needs the construction industry to build more homes, better and faster in order to solve the housing crisis and increasingly Government is looking to offsite manufacturers to contribute to the solution.
And we also need to tackle the growing global crisis of climate change caused by man-made carbon emissions. In Britain climate change is already creating more extreme weather as evidenced by the recent floods which have seen hundreds of homes evacuated across South Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
In the UK the largest emitters of carbon are: buildings and transport.
As the most widely-used man-made material in existence concrete plays a significant part in this with cement accounting for 8% of the world’s total carbon emissions.
According to the UK Green Building Council the built environment contributes 40% of the UK’s total carbon footprint.
Continuing with more of the same is unsustainable.
While climate change is a global problem – the answer to it is local. All of us in communities in cities, towns, and villages across Britain need to change the way we produce and consume resources in order to cut the amount of carbon we release into the atmosphere.
From our factory in Cambridge, NetZero Buildings has pioneered the production of net zero carbon and energy positive buildings in Britain since 2014 and is due to complete its 100th A+ EPC rated building in 2020 – a building which generates more energy than it consumes.
We are delighted to soon be breaking-ground in Kent and bringing our innovative technology and precision engineering offsite manufacturing to Britain’s housing market, the first in a number of projects we’re working on with Public Sector Plc.