Open-Source Strategy

Healthier Homes Sustainable Homes, Healthier Communities Sustainable Communities.

The Decarbonisation of heat within our homes has the potential to deliver Healthier Homes, which are Sustainable Homes. We can create Healthier Communities which are in turn Sustainable Communities through the work that we undertake over the coming decade to meet our Climate Change Targets and eliminate fuel poverty. But only if we take control of the design of retrofit solutions, only if we get involved in the specification of those works, and only if we determine what that sustainable housing product is that we want to deliver.

Climate Change

The way we live, work and consume today are putting pressure on our environment in a way that will place a disproportionate burden on our children to resolve, if indeed they are able to do so.  

We pump billions of tonnes of Co2 in the global atmosphere year on year, the majority of which will take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to dissipate.

Climate change is already here, and its effects can already be seen from Australia to the Antarctic. It’ll place pressures on our resources and infrastructure, within our own lifetime in a way that we probably don’t fully understand just now.

We need to reduce emissions as soon as possible so that our children don’t have to put technology in place to extract carbon from the atmosphere during their lifetime, to clean up the mess we’ve left them in ours.

Zero Carbon

Thankfully both the UK and Scottish Governments have committed to becoming Zero Carbon countries, societies, and economies by 2045 and 2050 respectively. Hopefully, a global consensus, and plan, can be reached at CoP26, in November for how we can mitigate the worst effects of climate change and limit warming to 1.5 degrees.

Here in the UK moving towards a zero-carbon society and economy will be challenging, but essential, as part of that global plan. We will need to look at practices and processes across a range of sectors including agriculture, manufacturing, and transport but importantly within housing domestic heating and energy efficiency.

Housing in the UK

Our buildings are some of the least energy-efficient in Europe and as a result heating our homes makes up 40% of the UK’s energy consumption, with 85 percent of UK households (78% in Scotland) being heated using fossil fuels.

Fourteen percent of UK greenhouse gases come from our homes, a similar level to emissions from cars. And emissions from domestic heating are estimated to be 20% of all emissions.

Here in Scotland, we consume around 28,000 GWh (Scottish Government) of gas to heat our homes, or about ￡2 billion worth of household income every year. That’s over ￡20 billion to 2030 or about ￡12,000 per household up to then. 

To put that in some context a medium-sized local authority with 80,000 households would expect to see their residents pay in excess of ￡1 billion over the coming decade on their fuel bills.

Difficult to have a conversation about poverty and indeed child poverty without this in mind.

Decarbonising Heat 

One of the main ways in which we can achieve zero-carbon, relatively quickly, is to use electricity, produced by renewables to heat and power our homes. We can do this through Low Carbon Heat Networks in high-density urban areas, but for the majority of households mainly through individual, or small-scale communal heat pumps, both air and ground source.

However, we need to understand that whilst heat pumps are significantly more efficient than gas boilers, electricity is significantly more expensive than gas as a fuel. Currently between four and five times as much.

A Zero Carbon future through Renewables is undoubtedly the way forward, not just for our heating but for our climate, our economy, and our society. However, it cannot be at the cost of increasing fuel poverty. It’s not a binary choice of one or the other.

The Demand for Power

To make our homes Zero Carbon we’re going to have to electrify heating and hot water, primarily through heat pumps but also other forms of electric heating. It’s really the only viable option we have over the next decade. However, there are a number of factors we need to consider really carefully before we embark on this journey.

The first is that those on low incomes switching from gas to electricity will inevitably be disadvantaged. Even though the co-efficiency of performance for heat pumps reduces the overall demand for energy, that energy is still four or five times the price of gas.

Those within social housing already face significant disadvantages from being on fixed and or limited incomes. The Department for Local Government (DLG) figures show that 63% of social housing tenants, nationwide, are in receipt of housing benefit and Scottish House Condition estimates that 40% of social rented tenants were in fuel poverty, before the pandemic. 

To compound this those living alone, or in single-parent households make up a disproportionate amount of social housing tenancies and are therefore at higher risk of poverty and fuel poverty. 

The second is that our homes are incredibly inefficient and wasteful when it comes to the energy that they need for heating, despite all the work done over the last decade. The department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) estimates that the average consumption of energy per house in the UK is between 5,000 KWh and 17,000 KWh a year, this is significantly higher compared to other European countries.

In Scotland, we consume about 28,000 GWh of gas to heat our homes each year. The requirement for energy needed to switch current gas usage to electricity is significant. So we have to understand that the requirement to electrify heat will mean we will have to generate more electricity. 

And it will place considerable pressure on the existing distribution network, to get that electricity from the wind turbine to our heat pump. 

To put in some context, Whitelee Windfarm, the largest on-shore wind farm in the UK generates around 900 GWh of electricity per annum, and whilst that satisfies about 87% of current electricity demand. It has 140 wind turbines covering an area the size of 40,000 football pitches, generating 322 MW of electricity.

Even if we say that greater efficiency of heat pumps compared to gas, through the coefficient of performance, can bring the required demand down by two-thirds. This still means that an additional 10,000 GWh of electricity, each year, will be required to be installed, that’s over ten times the scale of Whitelee.

Whilst this is expensive of course it’s entirely possible to do over the next ten years or so, given the maturity of the renewables industry in Scotland and what it has achieved to date. But is it necessary and are we not compensating for the inefficiency of our existing housing stock?

Embodied Carbon

A counterargument is that whilst we are focussed on lowering operational carbon, what is the impact on climate change through embodied carbon. What are the environmental costs to building the electricity capacity we need for heating through wind farms and the manufacture of steel, cement, and concrete required to do so?

If the cost of reaching Zero Carbon Operationally comes at a net gain of overall emissions, we need to look at our strategy.

Reducing the Demand for Energy (REdZEB)

To mitigate these issues so that households aren’t forced into fuel poverty, and that unnecessary pressures aren’t placed on the production distribution and supply of electricity there is one very simple and logical solution.  

That is to reduce the demand for energy for heating, within our homes, down to a residual amount. Only by doing this first do we stand a chance of creating a just transition towards our zero carbon targets and ensuring that renewables give us the solution that works and not one that’s a burden on those using them. 

The principle of Reducing the Energy Demand towards Zero Emissions Buildings (REdZEB) is one that has been laid out in the infographic over the page and it’s a flexible one. It’s not a standard it’s more a flexible list of priorities that we need to use and adopt to meet our targets and deliver genuinely sustainable homes. 

It’s a work in progress and open to input but at its heart are EnerPHit principles of reducing space heating and increasing airtightness, but it also includes a wider yardstick for measurement not solely energy.

Whilst generating and storing our own electricity will also be really important, it’s very much second place to making sure that the demand for energy, for heating, can be satisfied in a way that is sustainable. 

However, the REdZEB process is one that will require money, time, and effort to implement and require education and advocacy at a high level to sell the benefits to owners and tenants alike.

Expand the Metric

And to advance that argument we need to advocate the benefits of expanding the metric that we use to measure performance. We need to look at more ambitious measures, for a more holistic outcome, within what domestic retrofit can achieve. 

For that, we need to have a debate about what is a sustainable housing product, what we use to measure that product. This will include the cost and the practicalities of retrofitting lots of old inefficient homes to higher, more sustainable, standards and ensuring that residents can live in them that adapts and changes to their needs.  

 So, conversation on sustainability is not just about energy or the environment, important as they are, but for the occupant.  What that product is will depend very much on how much, or indeed how little, a home will cost to heat and how we ventilate it and create an internal environment that’s fit for purpose for those who live in it.

From an energy perspective, the conversation has to cover not just insulation but airtightness and ventilation (IAV). These three terms hold equal weight in the debate, and they have to be seen together within a system-based approach and not separately. Only through addressing these three issues together can we start to look at decreasing the demand for heat within our homes.

One thing that is for sure is that providing a home, within the social housing sector, that costs between ￡2,000 and ￡4,000 to heat every year isn’t a sustainable product, in fact, it’s debatable whether it's viable.

 Delivering Sustainable Homes

A crucial part of how we deliver works to a high standard is how we specify works to a high standard or to REdZEB principles. For this to happen we need to separate out contractors from designers and place the emphasis on the design and specification of work firmly back in the hands of the architect and landlord.

Social Landlords need to own and control the design and specification for works and not the contractor. Because only social landlords can determine what their requirements are, their priorities, and what they determine is a sustainable housing product. 

The RSL, or landlord, must be the custodian of what is fit for purpose and what is required for tenants, and not what the market deems value for money. The priorities for each, landlord and market are not always aligned.

Skills & Training

An issue we need to consider however does the market have the skills that we need to deliver the type of product we want. Well, the answer is probably not to the level and quantity we need at the moment. Airtightness principles and ventilation can be difficult to master and easy to get wrong but given the right training, the vast majority of operatives can benefit by being upskilled. 

However, this can be overcome through national training academies, and where firms and tradesmen start to understand that higher skills mean higher margins and a more sustainable business model.

We should learn some of the lessons from the work that has been done in Ireland over the last few years, where four national training centres have been established to support both the existing workforce and those that are new to the industry.

Market Maturity

The work that the social housing sector can undertake over the next decade has the potential to change how the retrofit market works for the rest of us, and for the better.

The chances are that most people reading this will be either owner-occupiers or living in private rented accommodation. Each of us will have to retrofit our homes over the next ten years to meet our Zero Carbon targets.

The retrofit market is no different from other markets and it responds to demand, if it sees demand for higher services and products then companies pick up on these signals and adapt their offering.

However, as individual consumers of retrofit work, it’s very difficult to change the offering that you’ll get from a company that’ll carry out retrofit works. This is where RSL’s have an opportunity, maybe even an obligation, as bulk consumers of products and services that we’ll all need. 

If the social housing sector demands higher services, then that will translate into the overall offering becoming better for me and you.

The social housing sector has an opportunity to change the dynamic through the design, specification, and delivery of their retrofit works to higher standards.

Collaboration

The issues of both Climate Change and fuel poverty traverse regional and national borders never mind local authority ones.

Within REdZEB Principles the solutions that we’ll require will be no different from John O Groats to Lands’ End.  The majority of the social housing stock is the same no matter where you go in the UK. Some RSL’s have more of one type than the other, but essentially we have the same issues in differing percentages.

RSL’s need to come together to determine and to develop open-source solutions that can be made available to the rest of the industry. Solutions that work both financially and practically to develop products that deliver on the objectives within REdZEB and are overall a sustainable housing product. 

That is lowering demand, better air quality through ventilation and adequately heated through low carbon (electric) heating as well as being fit for purpose for the resident, now and in the future. 

One way of achieving this is to develop a series of pilot projects, see infographic, across the country the output and learning of which can be distributed to the wider social housing community

Healthier Homes, Healthier Communities

The opportunity that decarbonising our homes and our heating presents us should not be underestimated.

If social landlords, define their requirements, take control and design out the need for heating to a minimum within our retrofit programmes, we can address fuel poverty and meet our climate change objectives.

We can create homes that are warmer and therefore healthier. We can create homes that cost little to heat, using the money saved to put back into the pockets of residents and their communities, contributing to the overall viability and sustainability of local economies.

Retrofit programmes that adopt REdZEB principles can create healthier sustainable homes and healthier sustainable communities.