Sustainable Bristol

Homes

Our built environment is comfortable, functional and extremely low carbon in design and operation.

Deal or no Deal? (The Green Deal, that is)

by Ben Ross

26 January 2012

The potential felt enormous, the excitement was palpable and the outcomes were uncertain… You probably wouldn’t guess that I was describing the atmosphere at a government consultation workshop that I attended before Christmas. But that is exactly how I felt after the day spent with the UK Green Building Council, representatives from DECC and nearly 200 experts and leaders from across industry. It followed the launch of the much anticipated ‘Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation Consultation’ giving just a few short days to digest the 236 pages and 24 supporting documents.

While I’m not suggesting that the success or failure of one of the Coalition Government’s flagship energy programmes will be as random as a certain TV game show, there’s certainly a lot to play for. We’ve now been presented with the overall framework, but the devil will always be in the detail, of course, something we found with our pilot domestic retrofit programme Refit West. The primary legislation, including the financial mechanism allowing capital investment in a property to be recouped through the energy bills, passed into law with the Energy Bill 2011. The bit we’re engaged with now is all about how we actually translate that into building works and improvements in our homes.

Forum, alongside numerous others, has been working with DECC to ensure that the final shape and fine-print of the Green Deal maximises opportunities for the economy, the environment and the quality of life for homeowners. It feels like the Government has been listening on this one, reinforced by Greg Barker, undersecretary of state for DECC, asking the delegates for ideas on how best to spend the £200 million ring-fenced by treasury to kick start the delivery in autumn next year… answers on a postcard to Greg please.

I implore politicians and civil servants alike to keep an open mind as people feed back on this extremely complex consultation.

At the workshop, a series of speakers from different sectors gave their initial views on the consultation. They all started with positive endorsement for the scheme, and that felt right. But they also raised a number of big questions that should be considered if this scheme is going to work. And two other themes kept cropping up. One was a plea for Government to align incentives and clear out disincentives – such as VAT being charged at 5% on energy consumption but 20% on energy efficiency works. The second was a plea to provide a stable and robust platform for investment, where recent actions have left significant ground to make up (I’m thinking of the Renewable Heat Incentive, the Feed-in Tariffs and the Carbon Reduction Commitment). Confidence is going to be crucial.

I was also pleased to hear speakers and delegates talking about ‘people’, not just ‘customers’. A nuance for many, but it encourages us to ask questions like, ‘what does this mean to me and my family?’ Solitaire Townsend, of the sustainability communications experts Futerra, suggested we use the language of the home and not of the workplace; let’s talk about using less gas and electricity, rather than increasing energy efficiency!

The market-driven solution presented in the consultation is no bad thing as competition will drive down costs and ensure high quality marketing. But there’s a risk – if we get a repeat of dodgy double glazing salesmen or poor installation we will be storing up problems for the future. We need to be careful to ensure that the quality is high, it is equitable for home owners, and that smaller businesses are not excluded. We also need to include and involve communities as these could be the fastest route to scale.

OK, I may have got carried away by describing the excitement as palpable; maybe I should have used ‘tempered’. What really excited me though was the recognition among those involved that no one can do it on their own and that success will be through collaboration and innovation.

As many of us now get to grips with the detail of the Green Deal consultation there are significant questions unanswered and details still required. But what is clear is that strategies aren’t about beating but rather working with the banker, the contractor, the communities and, yes, people to deliver a deal we’re all proud of. Let’s shake up the way we engage with energy in our homes.

• Ben works at Forum for the Future on creating a sustainable energy system, and was manager of the domestic retrofit project Refit West where they have  just published a number of technical case studies.
• Check out out Green Futures special edition on retrofitting, Retro and Fit. You can download it here for free, or get a paper copy delivered to your door for £4.

---

Bad news week…

by Helen Burley

04 November 2011

It’s not been the best week for progress on sustainability.  While the world’s political leaders meeting at the G20 in Cannes were focused on fixing the increasingly fragile global economic system, the US Department of Energy revealed that global carbon dioxide emissions increased by a “monster” six per cent last year.

While China and the US are the source of much of the increase, the European Environment Agency reported last month that Europe’s emissions rose by 2.4% in 2010.

Given that a proportion of China’s emissions come from manufacturing goods for export to Europe, the overall picture is not looking good.

Meanwhile at a national level, the UK Government’s announcd proposals for major changes to the Feed in Tariff, cutting the incentives available for people wanting to install solar PV electricity. The funding had been a key trigger for community schemes aiming to increase the take up of renewable energy and cut carbon emissions, including here in Bristol, but as proposed, the changes could have “devastating effects”, leave solar firms facing bankruptcy and affect 25,000 jobs.

Local initiatives on climate change appear to be suffering more generally as a result of the government’s austerity measures, combined with the new localism agenda. A Green Alliance report found that 37% of local authorities were deprioritising their commitment to climate change (or did not have a commitment in the first place).

A further 28% were reducing their commitment, often focusing just on cutting emissions, rather than a wider environmental agenda.

One officer reported: “the sustainability function within my local authority has been deleted and the climate change function has been discontinued”.

Better news is that 35% of local authorities remain firmly committed and think that they may do more as a result of the government’s localism agenda, with Local Enterprise Partnerships, such as the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership, and Neighbourhood Partnerships flagged up as potential opportunities.

In the same week that the Energy Minister Greg Barker announced his proposals to slash the solar panel incentive, he instructed the government’s Committee on Climate Change to investigate the role councils can play in cutting carbon emissions.

David Kennedy, chief executive of the CCC, said the report was likely to recommend some form of carbon targets for councils, but targets alone were unlikely to deliver deep cuts in emissions.

Local action is of course key to bringing down global carbon levels – but if we are going to make progress at the global level, local and national policies need to work together and encourage individuals, business and local authorities to move to a sustainable future.

---

Bristol Green Doors shortlisted for SW Green Energy Award

by Helen Burley

11 October 2011

Bristol Green Doors – the innovative Bristol project to raise awareness and share experience of eco-refurbishment – has been shortlisted in this year’s South West Green Energy Awards, in the Best Community Initiative category.

The first ever Bristol Green Doors weekend in September 2010 attracted visitors from across the country, keen to learn more about people’s experiences of retrofitting their homes – and a second big event is now being planned for a follow up weekend in spring 2012.

Visitor feedback suggested many were planning on carrying out energy efficiency work in their own homes – or thinking about installing solar panels.

The Bristol project faces stiff competition from across the south west region, with three other projects from Devon and Cornwall also making the shortlist. The winner will be announced at a ceremony in Bath on 9 November.

Bristol Green Doors co-ordinator Dan Weisselberg said:

“We are absolutely thrilled to have been nominated for this award. Bristol Green Doors is all about bringing the community together to share knowledge and experience so that we can help each other make our homes warmer, more comfortable and fit for the future.”

Householders interested in opening their homes as part of the 2012 Bristol Green Doors weekend should register here.

 

---

New Refit West report on real homeowner retrofit journeys

by Ben Ross

24 March 2011

I can, rather sadly, quote the stats and policy targets in my sleep… 27 million homes in the UK… 27% of carbon emissions… 70% owner occupied… built environment to be near zero carbon by 2050… 80% of the homes we will live in on 2050 have already been built… but what does all of this really mean?

In essence it shows that we need to be retrofitting each and every one of the country’s domestic properties to reduce emissions by between 60 and 100 percent* at a rate of 6 homes a minute** for the next 40 years!

The figures are huge, the speed and scale of the transformation of our homes simply staggering and the effects of just this one element of the transition to a low carbon economy virtually unknown. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever done before and yet none of it is rocket science.

We need to be innovative and pragmatic, and take the best of many areas including: the flexibility of the building trades; the communication and marketing of ICT and retail; and yes, the ever evolving tools and mechanisms of the finance community. It is also essential that we learn from past major transformation programmes and that we get the enabling structures right.  We welcome the Government’s Green Deal and have been working with the Department of Energy and Climate Change to support its ongoing development.

But it’s still far from clear what this actually means for the consumer. What decisions will they be required to make? How will they make these? And what implications are there for the long term value of their home?

I have written about Refit West before, Forum’s project to address this issue. We’ve been working with private homeowners to learn from their experience and support them through their retrofit journeys. Our new report, ‘Update from the Front Line: real homeowner retrofit journeys and barriers the Green Deal must overcome’ is available today and the topic of a 2degrees webinar on Friday 25^th March.  It shares some of the key lessons and insights that we can offer into the homeowner journey and into how to deliver a successful retrofit scheme across the country.

From the survey being technically accurate and responding to the homeowner’s motivations, through to bridging the skills gap in the building trades, we must develop trust and confidence in this new system. We need the planning system to enable change, rather than present a piece-meal and localised approach to conservation and permitted development. And we need estate agents, mortgage companies, surveyors and the capital markets to understand the future benefits of domestic energy efficiency and microgeneration.

We’re certainly not alone in working on this aspect of the housing challenge and have been collaborating with Bristol Green Doors, the Energy Saving Trust and others across the country to raise the profile, available information and trust through open-doors events. These have been a huge success, allowing interested homeowners to physically get to grips with the measures they are considering and to learn from some of those we trust the most, our neighbours.

It’s been an engaging and challenging project and above all a personal experience, being invited into people’s homes as they wrestled with the challenges of domestic retrofit. We love our homes in this country and have one of the highest homeownership rates in the world. This presents us with a virtually unique challenge and opportunity for action.

Just before you move on I’d like to ask you to reconsider the scale of the challenge and the benefits if we get it right, but also that we’re already a dozen homes behind schedule since you started reading this piece.

* The exact figures will depend on how much we will rely on a decarbonised electricity grid and low or zero carbon district heating.

** I’m not a great one for working round the clock or weekends so have calculated this for 8 hour days Monday to Friday.

---

Refit West webinar – an update from the front line

by Ben Ross

17 March 2011

What will happen when the UK Government’s flagship ‘Green Deal’ retrofit policy hits the rocky reality of public attitudes and behaviour?

Forum for the Future’s Refit West project in Bristol has been piloting just that with local homeowners in the city.

During UK Climate Week in March, Refit West will be launching their report into the findings and recommendations from their work over the last year, and holding a live webinar on Friday 25th March 2011 to discuss the homeowner journey and experience.

Forum for the Future’s Refit West manager, Ben Ross, and Bristol homeowner, Chris Priest, will be sharing a wealth of experience relevant to developing or delivery of home energy efficiency schemes to the private housing sector, including through the proposed Green Deal.

You canjoin the webinar, hosted by the 2 Degrees Network, here.

Refit West, is a group of organisations in the South West of England including architects, builders, local authorities, and environmental groups, led by Forum for the Future that  have been supporting homeowners to increase energy efficiency and reduce their energy bills.

---

Bristol’s Great British Refurb

by Ben Ross

05 August 2010

Refit West is supporting The Great British Refurb (GBR) campaign goal to make green home makeovers as easy and as accessible as possible for as many people as possible. Yael Rosenfeld from WWF explains what GBR is campaigning for, and how as a result one pioneering house in Bristol already earns more from making energy than from using it:

Imagine the ideal situation. A homeowner can easily install energy efficiency measures without paying a penny and a situation were the housing sector in the UK significantly reduces its carbon output (remember it accounts for 26% of the UK’s national emissions) in the climate change fight.

In the last year and a half  the GBR – which is a partnership between WWF, the UK Green Building Council, Grand Designs Magazine and Kevin McCloud, the host of the popular TV series Grand Designs -has achieved a lot .

Not trying to blow our own trumpet, but: we collected thousands of signatures on a petition to Gordon Brown asking the government to do more to help us green up our homes by providing cash and skilled tradesmen capable of doing energy makeovers.

And they listened, with the new government committing to it; Kevin McCloud elbowed his way on to last year’s Conservative party conference platform to set out what we need, and they once again heeded us, making it government policy now in the form of the Green Deal. Thousands of new supporters recently signed up supporting tax rebates for those who green their home, and again it was leaked as a government plan last week. A good strike rate by any measure.

Yet we have done more than just talking- we teamed up with the 10:10 campaign and organised a competition where one home owner won a full eco-retrofit of his home.

Will Homoky from Bristol is the lucky home owner – you can read about his experiences in his blog, including the fact that he now earns more from making energy than from using it!

We still have many more things to achieve in the coming year which is a crucial one. The new government is about to introduce an energy bill to the Parliament with provisions on new finance mechanisms to help home owners finance these eco-refurbishments and we’re working on making sure that it will be ambitious in its scope and that it will kick start a mass retrofitting programme.

This is the way forward for CO2 emission reduction, better homes for people, lower bills leading to more money in people’s pockets and creating new local  construction jobs to boot!

---

Can a hundred year old Bristol property become a PassivHaus?

by Ben Ross

03 August 2010

 

The Re-habit retrofit project in Bristol is part of the £17m Retrofit for the Future programme launched by the Technology Strategy Board in 2009.

Focusing on the existing social housing stock, the programme seeks to identify 50 prototype whole dwelling solutions, to deliver significant cuts in energy use and carbon emissions, while also providing high levels of comfort and affordable running costs.

The Bristol Re-habit team has selected a typical “2-up 2-down” Victorian terraced property, based in the Easton area of Bristol, which will be used as supported housing for homeless families.

Re-habit has two distinct, but intrinsically linked, aims:  The first aim is to deliver the required cuts in energy use by focusing on the building fabric, structure and energy systems; the second aim is to gain an in-depth understanding of occupant behaviour and psychology, identifying technologies and processes that facilitate low carbon lifestyles and decision-making. 

Combining these two approaches, our objective is to deliver system solutions which address all aspects of carbon emission reductions in the home, while also establishing the potential for cost-effective, large-scale replication of the refurbishment project.

Adopting strategies developed by the PassivHaus system, we aim to:  

• significantly reduce fabric u-values for walls, floors, windows and the roof; 

• provide a ventilation system with two modes:  in winter air is extracted through the bathrooms and kitchen and supplied to the bedroom and living room through a very efficient mechanical ventilation heat recovery unit; in summer the existing chimney stacks in bedrooms and living room are used as passive stack ventilation, by opening  manually adjustable vents.  The mechanical ventilation system is set to by-pass mode and extracts from the kitchen and bathroom only, on demand, and  controlled by a manual controller and humidistat.

• develop an active roof model that creates opportunities for increased natural light, regardless of building orientation; and

• integrate appropriate renewable technologies to support the provision of hot water and/or renewable electricity generation. 

 Re-habit has now successfully reached the second stage of the programme.

The team, led by Bristol-based White Design  and the Self Help Community Housing Association along with Forum for the Future and other retrofit partners, is one of 87 groups in the UK who have successfully come through the first stage to secure further funding to implement these design proposals.

The Bristol retrofit team was drawn together to ensure that the project has the wide range of skills and experience to deliver the project’s aims. Key partners include; Forum for the Future, Sustain, Sustrans, ROK and Arup.  

By considering the significant social challenges faced by people on low incomes and their potential disengagement with low carbon living, our scheme aims to investigate how we can incorporate simple, robust, yet effective sustainable technologies which will encourage supported housing residents to engage with low carbon lifestyles.

For further information please visit the project website  or email - mail@white-design.co.uk

---

Bath project on solid-wall insulation and renewable energy

by Paul Rainger

15 June 2010

Matthew Rees and Phillip Morris, from Bristol’s Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE), report on the completion of the first of a 15 home freedom from fuel poverty project in Bath, that retrofits hard to treat properties with solid wall insulation and renewable energy measures.

For years, loft and cavity wall insulation has been the mainstay of local and national schemes to help improve energy efficiency and reduce fuel bills. Hundreds of thousands of households across the country have been helped in this way, with CSE at the forefront of much of this work in Bristol and Somerset.

However there are many other older homes – built without cavity walls – which require different measures to achieve improved energy performance standards. In particular need are those living in solid-walled properties suffering from fuel poverty. In many cases these are elderly people on low, fixed incomes who simply cannot afford to heat even modestly sized homes adequately.

Bath and North East Somerset Council’s ‘Freedom from Fuel Poverty’ project may go some way to help. This scheme, managed by CSE, focuses on providing free solid wall insulation, solar hot water or solar photovoltaic systems to those people living in fuel poverty.

In May 2010, the first such property, in Claverton Down on the outskirts of Bath, was treated with solid wall insulation as part of the scheme. The owner described it as, “smart” and admitted he was “looking forward to the benefits the work will bring next winter.”

The Bath and Bristol city region has a particularly high proportion of hard-to-treat solid-walled properties ( around 50% of the homes in Bristol) which aren’t currently suitable for mainstream insulation schemes. The UK won’t meet its tough carbon reduction targets without addressing these properties, yet there is currently very little on offer to help the owners and tenants of these ‘hard-to-treat’ buildings.

Solid wall properties were mainly built prior to the 1920’s and have no cavity between walls to help reduce the heat loss from the home. Around 1 in 4 homes across the UK have solid walls.

For more information about similar schemes call your local Energy Saving Trust advice centre (0800 512 012).

---

Refit West homes work underway

by Ben Ross

17 April 2010

Our homes are responsible for over a quarter of the UK’s carbon footprint.  A key theme of Forum for the Future’s work in Bristol and the West of England is Refit West, a pioneering whole house retrofit scheme to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions from privately owned homes in the existing housing stock.

One of the important elements required to enable homeowners to take cost effective action is a simple delivery process and access to a trusted and skilled workforce.

Refit West has developed a three step process of: survey & report; followed up by firm quotes from approved contractors; and then the practical works.  All of which are driven by providing the homeowner with the right information.

For the last few months we have been working with 9 homeowners to test and improve our approach and works are now under way on the first property.  The build schedule on this total whole house refurbishment is 10-12 weeks and it’s not the only one.  The next demonstration properties are lining up and we anticipate having three or four more underway within the month. Homeowners will be blogging as the works progress, reflecting on their experience and the realities of carrying out an eco-refurbishment.

---