Policy Choices for Glasgow Traditional Tenements Retrofitting for Sustainable and Affordable Carbon Reduction

A particular challenge for Scottish housing is the sustainability of its older tenemental housing stock. Nearly 200,000 such properties exist in the main cities and towns of Scotland. Many of these properties are in poor repair, which makes it particularly hard to retrofit in order to meet carbon reduction targets that seek to tackle climate change. Through examination of a specific case study, this paper reviews policy options for funding and delivering such retrofitting in the context of specific initiatives already underway in Glasgow. The paper considers technical but primarily also the financial, economic and policy choices and trade-offs facing older tenement retrofit. The carbon reduction challenge has, additionally, to be understood alongside the wider tenemental conservation argument and the underlying long-term problems relating to conditions and multiple ownership of the tenement stock.