The Drivers for Low Energy Materials Application for Sustainable Public Housing Delivery in Nigeria

Abstract

Rural to urban migration has been a disturbing factor in Nigeria. The urban cities have become over populated resulting into poor provision of comfortable and healthy accommodation for the citizenry. The menace has further metamorphosed into complex units of socio-economic and cultural degradation, increasing youth unemployment, poor housing delivery, and depletion of the ozone layers due to carbon dioxide emission from small electric generators called “I pass my neighbor”. The situation is no longer convenient to be curtailed because of the limitations of the existing institution to provide mechanism to curtail the growing challenges. This indicates a factor of undermining urban poor of affordable and decent housing, which makes them “homeless. The research aims at conveying into luminance the drivers of low energy materials that could be employed through sustainable measures to deliver public housing in Nigeria. The objective brings forth considerations for application of low energy materials that can be integrated at the design stage to reduce the energy used in achieving comfort and limit the overall energy consumption of residential buildings in Nigeria. The purpose is to make public housing affordable and sustainable in Nigeria. The study employed the use of qualitative data analysis from relevant literatures. The results obtained indicate the high energy delivery in Nigeria’s public housing reflects the overgrowing poverty level in the country. The population living in poverty has remarkably grown from 1980-2010. This factor has made it difficult for the majority poor populace to own a house due to the high cost involved in obtaining a high energy material for building construction. The study recommends a drift to low energy materials, which involves lesser energy of production and are locally found in the country, and tends to provide affordable housing to the poor living in urban centers. Hempcrete, cob, raw earth, sheep wool, bamboo, rice hull, wattle and daub, rammed earth, the mud, adobe, fire brick, are available traditional building materials with low energy richly found in Nigeria, government and private developers should adopt them in construction of dwellings to curtail the limited provided accommodation for the increasing population in urban centers and to provide decent, affordable, and sustainable accommodation to Nigerians.