{"id":14385,"date":"2016-12-07T16:03:26","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T16:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ihbconline.co.uk\/newsachive\/?p=14385"},"modified":"2016-12-07T18:17:31","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T18:17:31","slug":"building-retrofit-is-only-part-of-a-low-carbon-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=14385","title":{"rendered":"Building retrofit is only part of a low carbon solution"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) says improving thermal efficiency is important, but not as much as decarbonising the supply of energy to buildings.<\/h3>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The ETI\u2019s <em>Housing Retrofits &#8211; A New Start<\/em> report says that heating the 28 million UK homes accounts for 17% of energy-related CO2 emissions, mostly from space heating, hot water and cooking. Adding indirect emissions from electric heating means 20% of UK emissions come from domestic heat.<\/p>\n<p>The report\u2019s key findings include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>improving the thermal efficiency of existing UK housing stock is a key part of a cost-effective UK decarbonisation strategy but is not a substitute for decarbonising the supply of energy to buildings<\/li>\n<li>making efficiency improvements an integral part of improving the amenity and value of dwellings, rather than a series of independent measures, should improve uptake<\/li>\n<li>a focus on the interests of the owners and occupiers, and the performance of the supply chain in delivering retrofit to them, is critical<\/li>\n<li>although cost savings are rarely enough to justify the work at current energy prices, there is a strong case for improving the quality of the UK housing stock<\/li>\n<li>a coherent long-term strategy that recognises the underlying economics will enable more entrepreneurial businesses to invest in the changes required to deliver more cost-effective, high performing retrofits.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Retrofit progress must recognise that efficiency savings are a very weak driver and that a combination of improved comfort and amenity, improved supply chain performance and mechanisms mandating or rewarding carbon savings will be required. A mix of measures is more likely to be a successful \u2018sell\u2019 than a blanket approach. Although very deep retrofits are technically feasible, their cost could potentially be similar to the cost of rebuilding the entire UK housing stock (in excess of \u00a32tn).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eti.co.uk\/insights\/housing-retrofits-a-new-start?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Housing%20Retrofits%20-%20A%20New%20Start&amp;utm_content=Housing%20Retrofits%20-%20A%20New%20Start+CID_37e7fce9d028e0d29ff53f793944231b&amp;utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&amp;utm_term=Continue%20reading\" target=\"_blank\">View the full report<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) says improving thermal efficiency is important, but not as much as decarbonising the supply of energy to buildings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sector-newsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14385"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14414,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14385\/revisions\/14414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}