Comments on: Climate Act requires all homes built after 1917 to go zero carbon

By: how did Green Deal lose its way? « carbon limited

how did Green Deal lose its way? « carbon limited — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 07:41:56 +0000

[...] the midst of all this noise, we failed to grasp a crucial fact: Green Deal won’t deliver the carbon cuts we need from existing stock. Not even close. While we’re busy arguing about stealth taxes, cowboy salesmen and mobilising [...]

By: Casey Cole

Casey Cole — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:33:09 +0000

Energy Expert,

You make a very good point and certainly addressing solid wall houses is a necessity. However, it’s cost that is the main barrier. At something like £100+ per m2, external insulation is certainly nowhere near as cheap as filling a cavity wall.

More importantly, insulation only has an effect on the carbon emissions from space heating (and unless you change the heating system too you won’t get to zero emissions from space heating) There’s still water heating and electricity to address. So insulating the walls and roofs as you suggest is an important but limited part of the picture.

By: Phil Clark

Phil Clark — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:16:47 +0000

Energy Expert – Do you have more information on the Hereford house? As an owner of a solid wall house about to commission a new roof I’d be really interested to here the detail of what they did.

By: Energy Expert

Energy Expert — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:46:33 +0000

Am adding this v. belatedly but haven’t you all realised that solid-walled homes are far easier to upgrade than these cavity-walled dwellings that are full of thermal bridges, one-piece steel lintels and trussed rafters. External insulation needs doing but you’re not limited in thickness and you can re-slate the roof and at the time add 400 mm of roof insulation on the outside as one 1870 house near the centre of Hereford has done.

By: Jason Hawkes

Jason Hawkes — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:48:26 +0000

Its a huge task, but its what we face. The Germans have committed to doing almost precisely this over the next ten years. The UK now has a distinctly underemployed construction industry and a fair amount of unemployed sustainability consultants/experts.

It doesnt take a genius to see that one lot could train the other. Green New Deal, anybody?

By: Phil Clark

Phil Clark — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:48:24 +0000

Scary stuff. Nothing underlines the gulf between committing to targets and then actually delivering them than this one.
I would consider it a near impossibility to upgrade every old leaky house without some massively radical action. How could we finance the upgrades for starters then manage the usage of energy in them, as well as control any alterations made to the properties? Carbon taxation? Community energy systems?

By: JP

JP — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:40:30 +0000

Great post

I live in a grade II listed building, what proportion do heritage buildings form of the above graphs?

Buildings probably will compensate for other sectors, transport and manufacturing for example, so the figure of 90% carbon emission reductions could be talked around.

Have you done a similar exercise looking at commercial stock? Is there a breakdown of carbon emissions related to heat and power rather than together?

By: Energy Performance Certificates

Energy Performance Certificates — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:36:54 +0000

Retrofit all homes since 1917 to be zero carbon necessary…

Casey Cole has posted an interesting analysis of the task needed to meet the Government’s recently announced target to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 on his blog, Carbon Limited, which concludes……

By: Jack Kelly

Jack Kelly — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 08:50:30 +0000

Great post. Concisely illustrates the challenges we face.

One small comment: I’m a little worried that some folks might take your post too literally and walk away with the impression that we can ignore the majority of solid-walled houses. i.e. the second graph implies that the route to an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions is to reduce to zero the carbon emissions of all houses built after 1917 and leave all older houses untouched.