The UK is at the crossroads of boosting home energy efficiency
By David Lennan, Chairman, National Warm Homes Council
The government recently closed its public consultation on improving home energy performance. But do plans to reform Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) go far enough for millions of families across Britain living in cold, damp, and unhealthy homes?
Improving the UK's housing stock is critical to achieving the government's climate objectives. According to government statistics, houses account for around 20% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, with 13% of households in England classed as fuel-poor.
Supporting people to make energy efficiency improvements to their homes will help lower emissions, with the added benefit of significantly reducing energy bills and energy demand.
Leaky, poorly insulated, energy-inefficient homes are, by their very nature, expensive to run, and this in itself should encourage homeowners to upgrade their properties. However, government policymakers should be reminded that the cost of energy for a property impacts consumer decisions when it comes to installing energy efficiency measures.
Rental tenants regularly suffer from poorly insulated and inefficient homes in which emissions and energy bills are high. This is in part because there is a lack of incentives for landlords to invest in energy efficiency measures such as loft insulation protection because they do not benefit from the measures as it would be the tenants paying the costs.
As such, providing a tangible measure of household energy efficiency for those living in rented accommodation will help incentivise bill-payers to push for effective energy-efficiency improvements to their homes, such as protected insulation, which can help reduce emissions and bills in the long term.
That is why it is vital to divert the focus of EPC ratings away from cost measurement and towards a property's energy usage. This would enable consumers to make better choices about their energy consumption and thereby reduce their energy bills without encouraging the use of low-cost but highly emitting energy sources, such as fossil fuel heating systems, which is directly contrary to the government’s warm homes and clean energy goals.
Moreover, the EPC needs to be overhauled to account accurately for the emissions of buildings over their lifetime and not assume that all insulation in lofts and walls is working perfectly just as it was on the day it was fitted, regardless of real-life deterioration.
For instance, 80% of households use their lofts for access and storage. If the insulation is compressed, it results in a 50% reduction in thermal resistance. Clearly, this degradation should be reflected in EPCs.
This will allow consumers to understand the true value of different energy-saving measures and the crucial role insulation protection plays in ensuring the long-term energy efficiency of homes.
Only by demonstrating that better-insulated, more energy-efficient homes use far less energy in the long term can consumers be accurately guided on their choices and encouraged to make the energy efficiency improvements needed to their homes.
Otherwise, the risk we run is that the new Home Energy Model (HEM), which is set to replace the EPC, will be compromised as it will continue to treat insulation and other energy-efficiency measures as a constant. This will diminish the accuracy of and trust in the new model for a lifetime.
Given the EPC will remain a vital component of the Warm Homes Plan target to upgrade five million homes by the end of this parliament, EPCs must be fit for purpose to indeed encourage energy efficiency improvements in existing homes.
Robust data and accurate information are vital if consumers are going to be incentivised to decarbonise homes. Providing valuable information about the energy efficiency of a property at the point when it enters the market will, therefore, offer potential buyers/renters a clear picture of the financial and environmental costs that buying/renting the home will entail.
Moreover, providing this information in advance of a property entering the market will enable the wider supply chain to adapt. Many lenders already offer preferential rates for homes with higher EPC ratings – mandating the availability of this information will enable this incentivising practice to become more widespread and thus support the government’s drive to make homes cleaner and more energy efficient.
The UK is at the crossroads of boosting home energy efficiency. Effective reforms to the EPC taken now for a generation to come could genuinely support people in better understanding and managing the energy performance of their homes while achieving net zero, reducing bills and alleviating fuel poverty.
