Eco-retrofitting
The government's targets for reducing carbon emissions from the housing sector cannot be met unless there are effective measures to eco-retrofit the existing housing stock.
‘Most of the properties standing today will still be around by 2050 ( 25 million out of 25.8 million) and by then the rate of heat loss from these homes has to have dropped by at least a half. The existing housing stock is by far the biggest challenge to housing and energy policy'
Boardman 2007 p 41'
Boardman 2007 p 41
The retrofitting/rehabilitation of older housing is an important market sector for small and medium sized construction companies. This market sector is likely to grow significantly as eco-retrofitting becomes increasingly important as part of the nation's response to climate change, stimulating increased re-investment in older properties.
Most of this re-investment will be privately funded by home-owners. The encouragement of much higher investment in energy efficiency and micro-generation by those ‘able to pay' is a key objective of government policy. However, a range of programmes also focus on assisting low income households who are in ‘fuel poverty'.
Home-owners upgrading their properties will increasingly want their builders to incorporate energy efficiency savings and, as installation prices come down, renewable energy installations, as part of their specification for modernisation.
Similarly, builders who buy to upgrade/convert for sale will increasingly find that they will need to achieve higher energy efficiency and environmental performance standards, as consumer preferences change through increased awareness of the benefits of eco-retrofitting.
The current policies and programmes include ones which focus on tackling both fuel poverty and energy wastage:
- Carbon Emissions Reduction Target: action to promote domestic energy efficiency by electricity and gas suppliers, which is based on energy companies subsidising the installations by private owners and RSLs and passing the cost on to their customers. This is the successor to the Energy Efficiency Commitment (EEC) and is programmed to double in volume over the period 2008-11, costing about #1billion a year, to include the insulation of about 1 million cavity walls a year.
- Warm Front Programme: provides government grants to private home-owners of up to £2,700 for insulation and heating improvements and is managed by eaga plc. This programme currently delivers much of the eco-retrofitting which aims to alleviate fuel poverty.
- Decent Homes Standard; government has set a target that all social housing must meet a basic standard by 2010, which includes ‘a reasonable standard of thermal comfort' - implementation has often used EEC and from 2008 will use CERT funding.
The main initiative targeted to the ‘able to pay' households is the introduction of Energy Performance Certificates, phased in from August 2007 onwards, which will provide home-buyers detailed information about the energy performance of their prospective home and a report on the action they can take to reduce carbon emissions and fuel bills.
The government expects that this will stimulate demand for energy efficiency investment by private owners. The Energy Saving Trust (EST) has undertaken research which shows that for two thirds of the households surveyed energy efficiency is now an important consideration when buying a house, and half said they would pay an additional £10,000 for an environmentally friendly house.
www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmenvfru/88/88i.pdf
To date, over half of all homes have received some form of energy efficiency measure from these government programmes. By virtue of the delivery of these types of programmes and incentives for private investment, the 2007 Budget stated the government's intention that by the end of the next decade all households will have been offered help with energy efficiency measures, so that wherever possible all homes will have achieved their cost effective energy efficiency potential.
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/F/D/bud07_chapter7_273.pdf
This is well short of the target of the longer term target of a minimum of 92Mt CO2 by 2050.
Retrofitting of existing housing stock will be assessed, for the moment, against ecohomes. A good reference guide is published by the Housing Corporation
