GBRC

The last couple of years have seen huge interest in tackling the energy use and carbon emissions of the UK’s existing housing stock, and it’s been a real pleasure to be a part of that movement. I’ve met some amazing people from the public, private and NGO sectors but few more inspirational than the homeowners who are leading the way.

Since 2009 we’ve been working with pioneers living in a variety of properties with a shared passion to reduce the energy and resource consumption of their homes. Refit West is part of Forum for the Future’s work to make Bristol and the West of England the most sustainable city-region in the UK, and we want to develop a practical model for ‘whole house’ energy efficiency refurbishment which can be rolled out across the country.

Our approach begins and ends with the homeowner: providing information on the most appropriate and cost-effective options for their property; designing solutions to meet their needs; ensuring suppliers give them quality and value for their money; and making capital finance available at terms that benefit them as owners.  It’s all about empowering and supporting individuals as they make decisions and commission work on their homes. Never assume these are just houses we’re talking about – we are extremely emotionally attached to our housing stock. The information currently available to homeowners is at best complex and at worst contradictory. The homeowners we are working with in Refit West, have committed their time to making sense of it and to take action that will disrupt their homes and lives for a period of time, but this is enough to put many off refurbishing their homes. We’ve helped these pioneers overcome many of the common barriers and it’s significant that, while some of the solutions and ‘whole house packages’ are becoming clearer, no two customer journeys have been the same. We need to learn from the experience of these few in order to stand a chance of building a scheme that delivers for the many.

Our homes generate a quarter of the UK’s carbon footprint and making them more energy efficient is one of the most cost-effective ways to cut carbon. Our homeowners’ experience helps to explain why, despite numerous national and local initiatives, residential carbon emissions have only fallen by 6% since 1990. We desperately need to move from making 3% cuts each decade to 3% a year to meet our national carbon targets. The Committee on Climate Change wants the built environment to be near zero carbon by 2050.

Home energy efficiency is rightly seen as a political priority across all parties, and the forthcoming Energy Bill promises to provide the structures for long-term carbon reduction. But will it really deliver?  Will it champion and support those pioneers and early adopters who are crucial in developing and building support for mass programmes that can refurbish a million homes a year? Or will it simply create another market opportunity for large commercial interests to cherry pick the easiest works at the expense of a long-term strategic approach?

The answer is being written in Whitehall right now. I believe achieving the carbon reductions required from our 27 million homes will take a cross-departmental approach to make your head spin...DECC, HCA, BIS, Defra, the devolved administrations of  Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and significantly the Treasury.  It’s great to see two parties working on this together but will we see the coalition work right across government to deliver on our national objectives and in our collective interest?