Government net zero announcement lacks action on home insulation
30 March 2023
Aaron Gillich, Professor of Building Decarbonisation and Director of the BSRIA LSBU Net Zero Building Centre, said, “Today’s net zero announcement continues the UK’s pattern of delaying serious action on insulating leaky homes. Demand reduction is the best way to help people through this energy crisis, and one of the simplest approaches to energy security is needing less energy to begin with. We need a national retrofit campaign with serious backing and a long-term commitment from Government.”
- LETI (UK network of over 1,000 built environment professionals) and the UK Energy Research Centre estimate the UK could save up to 50% energy use per home with energy efficiency measures.
- Between 2009 and 2012 over a million homes a year in the UK were insulated, now it’s around a tenth of that rate.
- Overall government carbon budgets are targeting roughly a 12% energy savings through demand reduction, this number should be closer to 50%.
- There are nearly no homes in the UK now that are net zero ready. We need to retrofit all UK homes to a net zero standard by 2050 by aiming to halve energy demand through insulation and fabric measures and then complete phasing out fossil fuels. 30 years for 30 million homes is a rate of a million a year.