The National Refurbishment Centre (NRC) has launched a new web portal that will for the first time make empirical evidence on energy efficiency in real homes available to industry in one place.
The portal, launched at Housing 2011 in Harrogate, is aimed at housing stock managers and other construction professionals, and provides users with access to an evidence base of knowledge related to the cost of a range of housing related retrofit activities and their carbon and energy savings.
Funded by the BRE Trust, Energy Saving Trust and the Technology Strategy Board, and supported by the National Refurbishment Centre partners and the AECB, the portal currently features case study data that has been derived from over one hundred and fifty diverse social and private housing refurbishment projects from across the UK. In time this figure will grow to over five hundred.
The aim with the portal is to drive progress in the sustainable upgrading of the UKs existing stock which accounts for over 25% of our total carbon emissions. It goes live at a crucial time for the housing sector which is faced with escalating energy costs that are pushing many more households into fuel poverty.
Director of the NRC Anna Scothern said ‘The NRC’s objective in developing the portal has been to stimulate effective action on refurbishment. There’s been endless talk around the issues related to existing housing stock – CO2 emissions, energy costs, fuel poverty – but the people already delivering refurbishment need help. They need to know what interventions work and what the cost implications are. The portal will give them this crucial information and enable them to make reasoned decisions around their projects based on the experiences of their peers. It’s a hugely valuable tool’
Portal users can conduct a search based on the type and age of the property they wish to refurbish, as well as their target EPC rating, energy consumption and CO2 emission levels. They then get access to extensive data on homes that match the search; depending on information available for individual projects, this can include a measure by measure graph that details all the different interventions that happened, the cost of each one and the associated carbon and energy savings.
As well as gathering data on the projects users will be able to upload their own case studies and add to the information available.
Stephen Passmore, low carbon homes development manager for the Energy Saving Trust, said ‘We’re proud to be a founding partner in the National Refurbishment Centre and in the development of this portal. The challenge for those in the housing industry has been not enough real data to make rational decisions on their projects – this service takes on this issue head on, offering an ever increasing and broad cache of evidence.
‘By the end of this year we aim to have three hundred more case studies uploaded and we will continue to add to the body of data, enhance the portal and encourage as many people as possible to use it and benefit from it. We’re confident this will make a real difference to the existing homes challenge.’
The web tool can be found at: LINK
BRE News: LINK
