Aviva has published its second Building Future Communities report, which found that the carbon cost of restoring a flooded home can equate to 55 car trips from Land’s End to John O’Groats or six and a half return flights from London to New York.
According to the British insurance giant, an analysis of its claims data showed that restoring a flooded home can create nearly 14 tonnes of CO₂ emissions.
“Using data from its UK general insurance claims team and real-life case studies, Aviva modelled the potential carbon cost of a flood event in two homes,” reads part of the 30-page Aviva report seen by Insurance Business.
“The homes had identical profiles, except for one important difference: the first did not have property flood resilience measures installed (Home A); the second had simple measures installed in line with the Flood Re Build Back Better funding scheme (Home B).”
The measures include flood doors, sealed brickwork, and raised electrical points.
“Comparing the protected and unprotected homes shows that failure to install property flood resilience measures comes with a substantial carbon cost,” noted Aviva. “The carbon footprint of a protected home was 64% lower than one without basic resilience measures in place.”
In its report, the insurer also cited the following three areas that it believes require urgent attention:
“This new analysis underlines the link between protecting homes and reducing carbon emissions,” said Aviva UK & Ireland general insurance chief executive Adam Winslow (pictured) in an emailed release. “Climate adaptation and mitigation can no longer be dealt with in silos. They must be addressed as two sides of the same coin.
“Failure to adapt buildings to cope with extreme weather could lead to more damage and a higher carbon cost in repairing that damage. It is critical that we work together to be climate-ready in all aspects of our lives, and that includes the regulations that stipulate how and where we plan, design, and build homes, as well as how we restore them after a flood.”
The CEO asserted that it is vital that resilience is embedded into new properties and that existing ones are restored with property flood resilience measures.
In terms of financial cost, Aviva said restoring a flooded three-bed, semi-detached, pre-1930s property without resilience measures would cost more than £67,000, while the same home with resilience measures would need £24,000 for restoration.
“Unless more urgent action is taken to make our homes climate-ready, properties will be exposed to multiple threats from extreme weather, be it flooding, subsidence, or over-heating,” declared Winslow. “We simply cannot continue with the current status quo.
“Now is the time to act to make existing and future properties fit and prepared for the climate threats they will face in future.”
