The Housing Forum South East Regional Conference Topical Debate - Greening the Existing Stock

01 July 2009 |

The Housing Forum's regular regional conferences continues across the country, visiting Dorking in Surrey on 24th June 2009. Our panel of senior industry figures debated the Greening of the Existing Stock and concerns over funding with Jim Martin of Martin Associates as Guest Chair.

Joining Jim Martin, Partner at Martin Associates, a specialist panel was drawn up from regional industry experts:

The Panels opening views, from different industry perspectives were set out first:-

Guest Chair, Jim Martin, opened the debate by questioning whether or not "Greening”"is simply about carbon reduction. If this is the case then even cutting carbon emissions by 10% would tick the box for sustainability. If we are to push for higher standards in sustainability then we firstly need to set a definition for greening the existing stock. Jim instigated a discussion on our National Energy policy and suggested that this was as important for us to focus on as building fabric and functionality. He put forward the suggestion that nuclear energy could be the solution and will become a very political issue, in the near future. However, the government is currently investing more capital in clean coal technology than any other form of energy which is not compatible with our targets for cutting carbon emissions. The proposed £5bn per year investment in greening the existing stock is a fraction of the amount that is needed. 56% of homes in London are over 100 years old and by 2059, that figure will rise to 65% which demonstrates how our housing stock is ageing faster than we can attempt to replace it.

On the subject of National Energy, Dr Neil Cutland opened by discussing current anecdotes such as "a level of spending equal to the Olympics needs to be spent on an annual basis for the next 40 years to achieve carbon neutral status for all current housing stock by 2050". This may or may not be accurate, but is certainly an indication of the scale required; it is unrealistic and will not be Government funded. Financial packages tied to a property should be introduced as an incentive for property improvement. This issue requires considerable scale and we should use "every tool in the armoury" (including the recently-ditched consequential improvements in Building Regs).

Abigail Ellis pointed out that many RSLs are at the forefront of the sustainability issue being some of the first to test new and innovative products. However, insufficient guidance was a key problem as the industry as whole needed to understand the process. The industry needed to work through a process, as examples of the fitting of certain items, e.g. P.V Panels showed the supply chain not fully integrated.

Gary Foord considered that Polypipe favored a holistic approach to greening the existing stock where they work closely with partners and tenants to ensure that all involved are educated appropriately on new systems and the benefits of retrofitting existing homes. Gary also considered that it was important to look at how different building products fitted together. For example, putting in a very efficient boiler, but connecting it to older pipe work might be less efficient than expected.

The Conference then debated the following topics:-

Local Energy Sourcing

There was support for local energy suppliers - less waste, and whilst technology will help local sourcing of energy "scale-up", the housing industry needed to realise how much expectation the Government is putting on them to deliver national targets on sustainability.

Education and Understanding

All stressed the need for simple and easy to use systems. The success of sustainability in the home is very dependent on users and if users don't get the value of reduction in costs from new measures, negative reactions could occur. Targeting young people, more open to dialogue, but also keenly aware of environmental issues could be successful.

Retrofitting

The panel's view was we should learn from the Decent Homes Programme how to make retrofit work. There was support for exempting "Sustainable" work from the voids performance targets for rapid turnaround time in order to take advantage of a window of opportunity. A reduction in cost was raised by several delegates as a key incentive. To offset the upfront cost of improvements, energy distribution companies could, in effect, become administrators of loans for sustainability works, which could be gradually repaid as benefits accrue even after a change in ownership of the home.

Renewables

The experiences of delegates gave insight and experiences of practical issues causing problems. Ground source heat pumps have lower flow temperatures, causing residents to use the "Boost" button; air source pumps and under floor heating are combined but not made by the same manufacturers; solar thermal panels are cheap and easy but plumbing into the overall system can be a problem. The quality and amount of monitored data coming back from live schemes is insufficient to help with decisions on which systems to specify. Service contracts are essential. Practical advice is to specify "future-ready" systems, eg. dual-coil solar-ready DHW cylinders even if no panels are initially installed.

The Housing Forum is grateful to the panel for their time and knowledge on this subject.

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