Two-thirds of the homes we will be living in by 2050 have already been built. Housing is a significant contributor to the UK’s carbon emissions. Over three quarters of the emissions from housing comes from space and water heating contributing 13% of total UK emissions. So it isn’t surprising that refurbishing existing housing is a significant element of the UK’s carbon reduction activity.
UEA recently hosted a European conference on passive housing [ http://www.buildwithcare.net/ ]. Some of the discussion was about driving CO2 emissions down within new housing developments, but much of the focus was fixed firmly on refurbishment.
Encouragingly, levels of optimism about meeting technical challenges were high; many of the technologies we need are available and well-understood. There was less optimism about meeting the financial demands of retrofitting, but some evidence from Sweden and Germany that as the retrofitting industry scales-up so costs will fall. However, this was all over-shadowed by the cheek-sucking and head scratching whenever the scale of the task was mentioned. Some estimates arrived at the conclusion that the UK needs to be retrofitting at a rate of several houses per minute for the next decade or more. Can this be done? – most people I spoke to couldn’t see how.
There is talk of how the proposed Green Deal – to be launched as part of the forthcoming Energy Bill – will help catalyse the UK’s retrofitting programme. It seems that the Green Deal will link carbon reduction measures to the house rather than the owner. It will be based on long-term loans. However, preliminary analysis presented at the conference indicated that it is unlikely that a loan-based approach would reduce sufficient carbon to meet the targets of the retrofitting programme. Under this scheme some form of subsidy will be required, particularly for improving solid walls where the economic pay-back is measured in decades.
This challenge is a prime candidate for some disruptive innovation. For example, thinking the unthinkable about the inalienable rights of the home owner or finding radical ways to increase the demolition rate. Though the focus has tended to be on the individual home owner or landlord, whole community approaches may be the only way to achieve the scale of the retrofitting in the time available. Can communities be mobilised effectively on the scale required?
What if we can’t achieve retrofitting in the time available? We would be in a higher risk position, relying on forms of adaptation and hoping that the effects of climate change are not as severe as some of the predictions. Ironically, adapting our buildings is also likely to require lots of insulation or buildings may become uninhabitable in the hotter summer months. Screening sunshine out is possible, but unless the UK’s grid electricity was seriously decarbonised then adding air conditioning would simply be fanning the flames.
It’s hard not to conclude that our present efforts will lead to increased numbers of uninhabitable buildings. However, as it was pointed out at the conference, energy price rises may do this job before climate change anyway!
Dr Simon Gerrard, Chief Technical Officer, LCIC
