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

23 July 2009 |

The Housing Forum is building a profile of cross industry solutions and issues in "Greening the Existing Stock". The North East's perspective was fully examined and debated at the Regional Conference on 16th July 2009 at Chester-le-Street.

Chris Mills, Principal Consultant, Todd Mills Associates chaired a lively and relevant session and introduced The Housing Forum cross industry panel drawn from contractor, manufacturer and RSL perspectives.

Joining Chris Mills was a specialist panel drawn up from regional industry experts:

Introductions

  • Guest Chair Chris Mills took the debate to the heart of the matter."Greening"-investing in sustainability measures in the existing stock- is top priority and best achieved by keeping the approach simple and working to make the greatest impact by putting in lowest cost items first.
  • The North East has the national lead in tackling energy and fuel poverty issues, with 5 Warm Zones operational in the region.
  • Bob Boal - Kinetics Property Solutions, raised the issue of funding and encouraged the Housing Forum to find out and disseminate more about the potential investment funds held by Utilities, for energy improvements for the existing stock. Funding could be better accessed with more shared knowledge on what the Utilities had available.
  • From a contractor's perspective, practical approaches which keep options open for residents has greater long term value, e.g. retaining hot water tanks gives options for solar heating, which could be combined with loft insulation and ground source heat pumps as a package, but in separate stages to minimise disruption. Previous programmes of installing condensing boilers had taken out tanks.
  • Wilby Meadows - Mitsubishi, referred to the raising of mandatory standards for energy and water efficiency and the shared knowledge of the contribution to carbon reduction that improved housing standards will play.
  • Fuel security is also a key issue as the UK imports 70 % of its gas and coal supplies.
  • Minimising disruption so installations are the least invasive was important with retrofit to encourage take up and air source heat pumps fitted externally with links to existing controls were an answer to this challenge - effective at up to -20C, producing hot water to 60C.
  • Lynda Peacock - introduced 4 Housing Group, as a recognised provider of sustainable housing, currently building at Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4 and beyond and in some instances achieving carbon negative building. The current downturn could be presented as the opportunity to build for higher standards in all tenures.
  • Across the whole stock portfolio; issues are different, ex NHBC stock recently brought in presents major issues for retrofitting. Lynda’s perspective was that a legislative push was needed to guarantee upgrades to the existing stock and a life cycle costing approach would benefit the case.

The North East Conference widened the debate into the following topics:-

Heat Pump/Heat Recovery/Air tightness

Starting from an acceptance of the substantial benefits of insulation, the discussion widened into other solutions.

Heat pumps were known to have greater carbon emissions than boilers, and did the conference feel they had a benefit and would meet a tighter compliance regime? More clear guidance was needed on features- air source, for instance, had worked for 20 years in Scandinavia and with co- efficient of 3.5 upwards is a good solution.

Air tightness as an issue is frequently cited in relation to older properties. Will heat recovery systems work in older homes - and the existing stock consists of a vast variety of house types. To achieve affordable solutions, general solutions need to be found that will work in terms that are deliverable from commercial a point of view.

Scale

The "solutions" e.g. heat pumps, heat recovery, don’t apply/ work in some types of housing stock. To get ahead on these issues, RSLs should map out house types and plan to schedule/group together where possible but overall the very large scale of expenditure required had to be recognised. The challenge of upgrading on this scale was far greater than the Decent Homes challenge. Access to and coverage of grants are patchy. A directory of preferred solutions by house type could be an initiative for The Housing Forum to develop.

Loans v Grants

The traditional "mind-set" in the UK focuses on grant provision; however, Germany for instance, invests €1bn. pa. in retrofit. This is aided by a loan mechanism, which organises repayment over 15 years and in effect; the “gas” bill becomes the "loan" bill. The net effect is that less energy needs to be supplied and paid for - and practically, this approach is cheaper than building more power stations.

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

Industry and investment Some frustration from the Conference that if we wait for Government to lead on this issue and certainly the major departments are holding back - but the housing industry can create a vision and the UK has a track record on inventiveness. The last word was from the Guest chair who summed up with 3 challenges to the conference on Greening the Existing Stock • What will I as a householder do? • What will my organisation do? • What are my ambitions for others to do? The Housing Forum is grateful to the panel for their time and knowledge on this subject.
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