The Government is not doing enough to protect people from the increasing risk of heatwaves and flooding due to climate change, it has been warned.
Despite efforts to prepare the UK for the impacts of a warming world, government advisers the Committee on Climate Change warn more needs to be done to conserve scarce water supplies and fertile soils and protect against floods and high temperatures.
Building regulations needed to include measures such as the orientation of houses, shading and ventilation to prevent overheating, while efforts to halt the loss of front gardens and city green areas would keep down temperatures and reduce flash flooding.
Ministers also need to extend emissions-cutting schemes to meet targets to tackle climate change in the most cost-effective way, including the subsidy programme for low carbon power such as wind farms and nuclear.
The scheme currently runs to 2020, at a price tag capped at £7.6 billion on consumer bills in 2020/2021.
Investors urgently needed certainty into the 2020s, when the costs could need to rise to £9 billion a year in 2025 before falling, the committee said.
In a progress report to Parliament on tackling climate change and adapting to its impacts, the committee also calls for an action plan to deliver low-carbon heating and energy efficiency for homes and continue support for low-emission cars and vans.
Speaking as the UK is set to swelter in soaring temperatures, adaptation sub-committee chairman Lord Krebs warned: “By the 2050s the sort of heatwaves we might experience in the next few days will be the norm, a typical summer.”
He said that a fifth of houses were already at risk of overheating, and nine out of 10 hospital wards were of a design that put them at risk.
The report from the committee said the number of heat-related deaths were set to rise from 2,000 a year to 7,000 in the 2050s.
At the same time, the UK has lost 7% of its urban green space since 2001 as parks and trees vanished and garden lawns were lost to paving and decking, and on current trends the country could have lost between a fifth and quarter of its greenery by 2050.
The loss of green spaces pushes up city temperatures, as well as causing run-off in heavy rain which can lead to flooding and damaging wildlife.
Lord Krebs said there should be requirements in the specification for new builds to make them well protected against overheating.
The Government should also be working with local authorities and individual households to ensure that retrofits of buildings incorporates measures to prevent overheating.
“We are building new homes, and we need to build more a lot new homes in the future, with a growing population.
“It makes absolute sense to think about in building new homes not just to make them energy efficient in terms of how much they cost to heat in the winter, but design them in ways that incorporates passive cooling so they don’t overheat in the summer.
“It’s not rocket science, people are doing it in other countries.”
And he said: “Just as we’ve been encouraging on the mitigation side retrofit of loft insulation and so on, we need to think how to develop passive cooling measures maybe tinted glass, shading, again as is common in other countries.”
He also warned that despite major investment in flood defences, tens of thousands more homes and other buildings would be at risk of flooding by 2050 – a situation being exacerbated by continued building on the flood plain.
The committee also raised concerns about the loss of fertile soils, which have declined by 84% since the 1850s, with topsoil being eroded at a rate of 1cm to 3cm a year, a situation which would get worse in a future of extremes such as heavy rain and drought.
Work was needed to preserve the fertility of the soil to counter declines in productive farmland, otherwise some of the country’s most productive farmland could be lost in a generation – at a time when climate change could hit crop production elsewhere.
The report, which also covered action to reduce climate emissions, warned that many policies designed to cut carbon were due to run out in this parliament, creating uncertainty for investment post 2020.
Committee chairman Lord Deben said decisions on carbon-cutting policies on power, vehicles, home heating and energy efficiency systems needed to be made “urgently” to give companies time to invest.
And he warned: “All over the world people are now doing this. We are no longer one of the leaders, this is now an international operation.
“So there are other places seeking to get the investment we want, if we don’t have a continuing investment programme and the context so people can securely invest, people will make choices to go elsewhere.”
The committee also called for the Government to be transparent about the additional costs of emission reductions having ended subsidies for onshore wind farms a year early despite being part of the most cost-effective way of cutting carbon.
A Department of Energy and Climate Change spokeswoman said: “We are committed to meeting our climate change target of an 80% emissions reduction by 2050. We have already made great strides to that goal, with emissions down 30% since 1990.
“There’s still much work to do and we will continue to power our move to a low-carbon economy at best value to consumers.”
But Emma Pinchbeck, head of energy and climate change at WWF-UK said: “To maintain global leadership on climate change and deliver domestic policy at a low price, ministers must get serious about energy efficiency and low-carbon growth.
“They should make the retrofit of our buildings a national infrastructure priority, and provide certainty over the long-term investment framework for large-scale renewables.
“Given the decision to cut support for onshore wind technology, this could not be more urgent.”
Shadow environment secretary Maria Eagle said: “This report is proof that the Tories have failed to take climate change seriously, putting public safety and our economy at risk of serious harm.
“David Cameron needs to get a grip because we can’t afford to fail in the task of preparing for climate change and that’s why we urgently need a new National Adaptation Programme to be published this year.”
The Royal Horticultural Society welcomed the call by the committee to tackle the paving over of green spaces.
Sue Biggs, RHS director general, who earlier this year launched the charity’s Greening Grey Britain Campaign to transform 6,000 grey spaces to planted green places, said: “There is an alarming trend of Britain paving over its front gardens and not growing any plants in them.
“Today there are three times as many front gardens paved over compared to ten years ago and over five million gardens have no plants.
“It is vital that we champion the role of horticulture as being a key tool to help us to address the multiple challenges of climate change in our built environments. We need to fill our cities with plants.”
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