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A groundsource heat pump is retrofitted
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With one of the harshest winters for decades only just starting to thaw, it would perhaps be understandable if climate change momentarily slipped down our agenda for 2011. But the temperatures of -10 and below once again brought into stark relief the very real associated problem of fuel poverty in this country today.
The affordable housing sector has broken new ground in recent years in developing low-cost, low-carbon housing at broadly comparable prices to traditional homes. Energy consumption savings of around 50% against even a few years ago can now be achieved in newbuilds with relatively modest extra investment. A range of mass-market models are now available to take homes through to level four of the Code for Sustainable Homes – and beyond.
Our real problem is existing stock. The vast majority of the 21m homes in this country have poor energy performance ratings. They leak heat, resulting in ever-increasing heating bills for residents and generating carbon emissions which fuel climate change.
Delivering a cost-effective solution to millions of hard-to-fix properties has become the holy grail of housing, not just for those of us directly involved but also within government. The Green Deal provides useful incentivisation and funding mechanisms to support the delivery of greener homes both in the private and affordable sector.
However, alone it is not a panacea. In fact, this country faces a range of structural challenges to making significant progress in the next decade. Government spending restraint, limited capacity in the green technology sector and a historic lack of public understanding of low-carbon measures will all hamper our ability to move quickly and effectively in tackling this issue on anything other than a ‘pepper pot’ approach.
Working across sectors
To overcome these barriers, we need a much more collaborative, creative and entrepreneurial approach to delivering large-scale retrofitting solutions, which work on a community, neighbourhood and even town and city-wide basis. Only by working together across the public, private and third sector can we deliver the step change we need.
Examples of this new era of collaboration are already emerging. The new M6 Group of housing associations recently committed to exploring ways to build capacity, create jobs and reduce bills by exploiting the sheer scale of our joint 135,000-home stock holding to develop a Midlands-wide, low-carbon retrofit programme. There is a long way to go yet – but we have at least set ourselves on the right road with a clear goal in sight.
Regionally, the Social Housing Action Partnership (SHAP) has become an increasingly well-established, active and effective forum for promoting best practice, exploring new ideas and influencing the policy agenda. Meanwhile Orbit and others are building extensive links with experts abroad to create coalitions of interest and share ideas around low-carbon housing– Germany, Holland and the Scandinavian nations all have long-established track records in this field, allowing us to extract existing knowledge about what works.
Emerging policy agendas such as localism and The Big Society also offer opportunities to develop new types of partnerships that work for communities. For example, in Coventry, the city council is leading the development of a low-carbon social enterprise with a range of partners including housing associations and the private sector in a highly ambitious project aiming to create jobs, investment and large-scale retrofitting of existing stock. We are delighted to be involved and this collaborative approach has already attracted significant national interest.
Community solutions
And in our own communities Orbit is working with private partners such as E.ON to deliver neighbourhood-wide solutions to both affordable and private residents using renewable energy technology such as ground source heat pumps. Partnership is also at the heart of the 30-year sustainability strategy we are currently developing across Orbit.
So, as we look to the future and our own contribution to reducing CO2 by 80% by 2050 and helping people live more sustainable lives, both in terms of their fuel bills and climate change, the challenge and way ahead are clear.
Although it’s absolutely true that we must each take responsibility for acting as individuals and organisations, by acting alone we will only be able to achieve so much. Only by acting together can we hope to find solutions which are innovative, effective and above all, deliver the sheer scale we need to make a major impact on this problem. Collaboration is the key.
Orbit’s Paul Tennant will be speaking at Ecobuild on Wednesday 2nd March at 16:45, taking part in the discussion Homing in on refurbishment: how to change the housing stock alongside Sunand Prasad, Philip Sellwood (CEO of Energy Saving Trust) and DECC’s Phil Wynn Owen.
This article originally appeared in the February/March 2011 issue of Greenbuild magazine. For a free subscription please click here.
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