Posted by: Philippa Ward
03/12/2009You would think that a discussion on retrofitting in rural Hampshire on a wet November afternoon would not attract many people. In fact, the Retrofit conference organised by Radian Housing Association gathered 150 delegates last Friday, who submitted a slightly intimidating 50 questions for the Question Time session that I chaired at the end of the day.
As well as an enthusiastic audience, we had a great panel: Colin Butfield of WWF, Paul Ciniglio and Lindsay Todd of Radian Housing Association, Andrew Lee of the Sustainable Development Commission, John Doggart of the Sustainable Energy Academy, and Duncan Price of Camco.
The reason that it worked so well is that each of these people and organization have very different approaches to sustainability. Colin is an expert on winning people over, as head of campaigns for WWF. Radian are working on projects at the moment to retrofit their tenants’ homes, in the face of tough financial constraints. Andrew talked about the whole picture of sustainability and how houses can translate to communities. John knows a lot about people power and using interest from consumers, as he runs the ‘Old home, superhome’ project that gets people sharing knowledge. Duncan has the technical and practical knowledge.
There can be a tendency for the social housing world to speak to itself – and it is essential that we don’t on this topic. We need to learn as much as possible form the wider green community. It meant that we had a huge range of suggestions on how a widespread retrofitting campaign would be funded, for example: European funding, Pay as you save, money saved on winter fuel payments, feed-in tariffs, inspirational leaders showing best practice, community pride, government certainty that will let the market find solutions, creativity, clear leadership so people know here they fit in…
We barely skimmed the surface in 35 minutes but it was a rewarding discussion. And one of the best things about it was that Mr Leslie, the tenant I wrote about yesterday who will be living in one of the retrofitted homes, was sitting in the front row and asked a question. We will need everyone’s ideas and views if we are going to solve this.
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Readers' comments (2)
Harry Lime | 03/12/2009 12:04 pm
Hi Phillipa, this is an area I'm increasingly beng involved in - any chance of more details about some of the more pertinent questions asked, or the overal views of the panel on certain subjects? One question we're currently asking involves what is a better use of limited funds. Gor example the large retro fitting project you make reference to. Assuming that costs £30k for example, is that a better use of £30k than to put in 6 x solar hot water systems? There could be greater overall savings in the short term with the "scattergun" approac of little on many properties rather than large amounts on few.
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Paul Ciniglio | 04/12/2009 5:14 pm
Hi Harry - It is Radian's intention to post the questions and the panel member's replies on our website in the very near future. We want to then keep a blog going and add some of the further questions that we didn't get time to consider on the day. Most of the questions asked during the event revolved around the inevitable finance e.g. 'how do we pay for it' and the resident's perspective / behavioural patterns. Please keep an eye on our web www.radian.co.uk
You are right to query what the best approach is and I think often the scattergun method will produce the better carbon savings especially if it is for basic measures like insulation. It is also much fairer as more residents stand to benefit. In honesty I think the only way to be sure is to do some before and after carbon modelling. Ideally using full SAP but using Reduced Data SAP as for EPC's would give a general idea. So much depends on the baseline position of the homes and the primary fuel they use. Solar panels will save much more carbon when displacing electric heating than gas heating for example.
At the moment we are doing whole house refurbishments to align with our asset management strategy where considerable money needs to be spent on improving a home in any event.
With best wishes, Paul
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