Energy efficiency of existing housing

A lot of work is being done on setting new energy consumption standards for new build housing – such as the 2016 ‘zero carbon’ target for the UK – but relatively little is being done about the existing stock. Because new build adds much less than 1% to the housing stock each year, the majority of the stock will have been built to much lower construction standards. About 40% of the UK housing stock was built before 1945. Although there are many UK Government funded programmes designed to help householders reduce energy consumption, access to these schemes is confusing, bureaucratic and limited, funding is subject to political whim and public awareness is low.

The University of Nottingham and E.ON are beginning a project to develop cost effective measures to reduce the carbon footprint of a typical 1930s semi-detached house to that of the target 2016 house.

The project web page – still lacking detail – further reading