Eighty seven social housing projects across the UK are set to benefit from a share of £17 million of government funding to test low carbon building technology.
Science minister Lord Drayson and Housing Minister John Healey recently announced a new programme, entitled ‘Retrofit for the Future’, the first of its kind in the UK, which will see social housing units across the country retrofitted with new, innovative technologies. Understanding and implementing best practice retrofitting is key to meeting the government’s CO2 reduction target of 80% by 2050. The results of the projects will be shared to help show how the UK’s current housing stock could be made more energy efficient.
In the initial design phase, over 190 organisations – including housing associations, architects and construction companies – received up to £20,000 each to carry out full feasibility studies and devise innovative proposals. From these proposals, 87 have now been awarded proof of concept development contracts to carry out retrofits on current social houses.
The retrofit prototypes will each receive an average of £142,000 to demonstrate deep cuts in carbon emissions and exemplar energy efficient measures in UK social housing. The level of funding is specifically designed to stimulate the implementation of innovative, proof of concept demonstrator houses that may offer cost effective solutions for wider role out across the UK. Each demonstrator house will therefore be carefully evaluated by the Energy Saving Trust for at least 2 years and the potential for lower cost implementation in volume across the remaining UK social housing stock assessed.
More detail on the implementation of energy efficient measures for social housing UK wide will follow in the government’s Household Energy Management Strategy, which will soon be released.
Lord Drayson, Science Minister in Department for Business Innovation & Skills, said: “Innovative businesses have a crucial role to play in the low-carbon economy. This £17 million investment by Government will give companies the chance to grab a share of the significant potential retrofit market.” Housing Minister, John Healey, commented: New homes are 40 per cent more energy efficient now compared to 2002, but we must and can do more. The programme means that many of the homes owned by councils and housing associations – almost a quarter of the UK’s housing stock - will have a make-over using innovative ideas from the competition. This will make them warmer, greener and cheaper to run. ” Funding for the testbeds increased from an initial £10 million to £17 million through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skill's Strategic Investment Fund (SIF) David Bott, Director of Innovation Programmes, Technology Strategy Board added: “At least 60% of the houses we’ll be living in by 2050 have already been built. So it is critical that we look at ways to dramatically improve the performance of our existing housing stock. Retrofit for the Future provides the testbeds we need to ensure the development of long term, mass solutions. This initiative has seen the retrofit market come together, with social landlords, local councils, architects and other specialist suppliers developing a range of high perfomance and cost effective prototype solutions.” The Energy Saving Trust, a leading independent organisation set up to provide energy saving advice for the public, will work in partnership with each of the projects to collect data from each of the retrofitted houses, including internal and external temperature, humidity and CO2 levels. This data will then be assimilated to form a database which will be made available to researchers, social landlords and energy companies to ensure that the most cost effective technologies are employed in future retrofits. Fraser Winterbottom, Chief Operating Officer, Energy Saving Trust said: “The Retrofit for the Future project offers huge potential and will help us to make much more informed decisions. We are monitoring the trials and will collate essential data that will enable us to create an open database for industries – a real asset for UK plc. Paul King, chief executive UK Green Building Council said: “We need to deliver a retrofit revolution across our entire housing stock, turning our leaky homes into comfortable places to live and cheaper places to run. The challenge is to learn from exciting research projects such as Retrofit for the Future, taking the innovations that are generated and translating them into cost-effective solutions that can be rolled out at scale. I welcome the TSB initiative and look forward to seeing the results.” Retrofit for the Future has been delivered in two phases. Phase 1, the feasibility and design phase, saw £3.5 million awarded to 180 organisations covering 193 separate projects, enabling them to work with suppliers to devise solutions to make cuts in carbon emissions produced by social housing. Phase 2, the build phase, sees 87 projects awarded contracts to build ‘demonstrator’ houses in 2010 with £13.5 million funding, £7 million of which was supplied by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’ Strategic Investment Fund. |
