The difficulty of making your home energy efficient

When Simon Duffy gets another energy bill, his heart sinks. “It’s crazy expensive,” he says.

Mr Duffy lives in a traditional, stone-walled detached house in Sheffield. He estimates he spends £3,100 a year on heating and electricity.

Although he is someone who cares about climate change, and is keen to update his properties to make them more efficient, there is a problem.

“The whole question of how to better insulate a home is a real mystery to me,” says Duffy, director of the Citizen Network Center for Sustainability Research. “I don’t know where the expertise is in that.” He also adds that he is not sure if he can install solar panels, since he lives in a conservation area.

Millions of homeowners across the country may be facing the same dilemma.

About 29 million British homes will need to be retrofitted by 2050, According to the UK Green Building Councilindustrial body.

Retrofitting may include measures such as improving your home’s insulation, upgrading the heating system, or installing energy-generating devices such as solar panels, or even special wind turbines.

These modifications may cost thousands of pounds upfront, but if done correctly, they can improve comfort and lower people’s bills in the long term.

In addition, increased energy efficiency should reduce carbon emissions from homes, especially if property owners switch from gas or oil-fired boilers, for example.

Nearly a fifth of the UK’s total emissions It comes from residential buildings.

Amy Peace and her husband live in northwest England, near Warrington. The couple work in the sustainability field, advising companies on their businesses The path to net zero.

They were eager to improve the quality of their homes and apply the principles they promoted at work to their own lives—but they also faced challenges when deciding how to do so.

“Even though we have that background, and we’re also engineers, what we weren’t clear on was where the money was best spent,” Ms. Pace says.

The couple spoke to several consultants, but Ms Pace found that the advice they received was often geared towards meeting Passivhaus standards – a type of ultra-energy efficient building.

“There weren’t a lot of people in that practical middle space where you were literally saying, ‘We have this much money, where do we best put it?'” Ms. Pace adds.

However, perseverance over the past three years has paid off, and the couple’s 1930s detached home now has improved insulation, a heat pump and an electric vehicle charging point. Solar panels and batteries will come soon, if all goes as planned.

Recognizing the confusion surrounding retrofitting methods, some organizations are moving to improve the advice available to homeowners. Among them is EcoForb.

“We can design all the different options available, suitable for your home and your budget, and identify a range of measures,” says Liz Lainey, of Parity Projects, the housing data analysis company, which runs Ecofurb.

The company offers this initial consultation free of charge, but full plans, with personal input from a modernization coordinator, start at £470. Ms Lainey says EcoForb can also supervise any works carried out by contractors to avoid “horror stories”.

There are many other organizations that offer assistance to homeowners in planning the renovation process.

The work often involves carrying out a heat loss survey, to identify cold areas that require insulation, and to better understand the heating needs of the property. Experts may also advise on the suitability of solar panels for your home, for example.

there Get a heat pump locationlaunched by charities Nesta and the MCS Foundation, explains what heat pumps are and how they can fit into your home renovation plan.

RICS, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, has also just launched a new retrofit standard for its members – essentially encouraging surveyors with appropriate training to offer their services to homeowners who are planning or undergoing a retrofit.

The RICS website will soon include a range of retrofit advice and a tool to help homeowners find a suitable surveyor in their local area, says Steve Lees, from the RICS retrofit project team.

Gerald Charles, head of housing retrofit at the Center for Sustainable Energy, says improving the energy efficiency of homes is “essential” to decarbonisation, but adds that the current lack of good advice remains a real problem.

“The industry as a whole does not appreciate the importance of good retrofit advice,” he says.

One entrepreneur who has noticed a knowledge gap in the market is James Major, founder and CEO of HubbPro, which helps architects plan energy-efficient buildings. Mr. Major points out that architects don’t always have the latest information on how to incorporate energy-saving technologies into their designs.

“Clean technology is not part of what they do or what they should know — it’s an engineering function,” he says. However, architects’ clients are increasingly asking about this technology when planning a new home or extension.

Through an initiative called MyHubb, Mr Major now provides architects with detailed reports estimating the carbon reduction potential and payback period on modified measures – such as heating systems based on heat pumps or solar panels, for example.

He says these reports cost around £1,000, although he adds that this price has not yet been finalized.

Duffy says he will continue to look for solutions to his modernization dilemma. But he makes another point. Much of the techniques and tips available today are tailored to individual homeowners.

He points out that neighborhood-level schemes, for example to provide solar power for an entire street, might make more sense and could include more people at once.

“That’s what I think is the logical way to think about it,” he says.