Bristol: How should housing departments contribute to councils’ mission to deliver on net zero?

Heat decarbonisation stratgey 

What action, then, is the department proposing?

In September, the housing and landlord services department set out proposals for a new heat decarbonisation strategy, which will be at the forefront of its approach. That made it clear that “within the context of heat and buildings, ‘carbon neutrality’ requires all fossil fuel heating systems to be removed and replaced with low-carbon alternatives”. The strategy acknowledges that the journey to fully decarbonised housing stock will “take us beyond 2030”, but to get there it is “vital that BCC sets out a vision for the future”.

Central to that journey is “an open dialogue with our residents”. From the off, the council has taken steps to avoid a paternalistic approach to change. In 2021, the council commissioned the Bristol Citizens’ Assembly, which brought together 60 residents who reflected the city’s population in terms of age, sex, disability, ethnicity, geography, deprivation and employment. One of the question the assembly looked at was how the council could rapidly reduce the impacts of climate change on the city’s homes. The assembly said the council should take leadership and responsibility for meeting its emissions targets by working with the business, education and community sectors to create a programme of implementation.

“From the off, the council has taken steps to avoid a paternalistic approach to change”

The resulting draft heat decarbonisation strategy divides the steps needed into 10 recommendations. Each of the recommendations falls into one of three broad categories: strategic enabling measures; near-term ‘no-regrets’ actions; and consumer protections and fairness.

This last category is the most important of all, according to Sonia Furzland, executive director for housing at the council. “I feel that consumer protections and fairness has got to be our starting point, in all honesty, because we know that the cost of living crisis has hit our residents more acutely probably than most,” she says. 

“The nature of social housing now is that we are housing often the most economically disadvantaged and vulnerable people within our city. So, we have to start from a point of ensuring that what we don’t do is add to the burden of cost of living.”

The draft strategy makes this explicit, pledging that “before transitioning a property to low-carbon heating, BCC must be satisfied that individual household finances will not worsen as a result”. Impact assessments will be carried out to make sure this isn’t the case.

When it comes to delivering consumer protection and fairness, the report makes three recommendations. The first is to that pledge not to increase energy bills. The strategy says the housing department should drive high-quality installations through a programme of performance monitoring of “all new low-carbon heating installations from 2025-30”. The strategy also says the council should provide targeted advice and guidance alongside all installations of low-carbon heating. Finally, there should be a review of district heating provision across communally heated council homes.

To ensure residents are in the driving seat, the council has set up a resident and community panel. Decarbonising and asset management “will be a key element” of its focus, according to Ms Furzland.

Four measures

If that is the approach to people, what about the two other elements of Bristol’s strategy: strategic enabling measures and more immediate je ne regrette rien actions?

We’ll start with the longer-term strategic plans, because that enables sensible shorter-term ‘zero-carbon, zero-regrets’ decisions to be made. The four strategic measures outlined are: committing to an “electrification pathway” for all homes; embedding space-heating demands within the overall asset management strategy; establishing clear criteria for when low-carbon heating systems can be installed; and clarifying the ongoing role for gas boilers.

For Ms Furzland, who joined the council in April from her role as executive director of operations at Newport City Homes, which merged with Melin Homes to create Hedyn housing association this year, a key part of her new job is “making sure that we understand all our homes” in detail. In part, this springs from the findings of the C3 regulatory judgement, which pointed to the urgent need for Bristol to have more data about its homes. As part of that process, the council told the regulator it “does not have up-to-date survey data on the majority of its homes”, with more than 80% of its surveys conducted more than five years ago. It is important that the council factors in learning that will help it plan for net-zero carbon delivery more effectively.

“We have a range of different build types,” Ms Furzland says. “The starting point [for net zero] is to understand: what are our homes, where are they and how are they constructed? The pathway then is for each of those archetypes. There will be certain build types which will make certain solutions and options for decarbonisation very, very difficult. Essentially, what we need to do is work out and plan for each of those archetypes in terms of how we get there. What’s the investment required? It’s kind of off-the-shelf.”

The strategy states that it is important to “adopt a clear decision-making methodology” to ensure “we decarbonise the right properties at the right time”. What does this mean in practice? “We try and get a little bit of scale and value for money by targeting areas of the city where we know our homes are most inefficient,” Ms Furzland says.

“The starting point [for net zero] is to understand: what are our homes, where are they and how are they constructed?”

As for creating an electrification pathway, the strategy makes clear this means “all our homes will one day be heated through electric systems such as heat pumps and low-carbon heat networks”. In turn, the area-based approach makes it easier to “work with partners to understand what the grid capacity is in terms of when we can do the works, and what will be required to enable it to happen”, Ms Furzland says.

The question of grid capacity means a number of options are currently under consideration, she adds.

“One of the things that we, and I know a number of registered providers, are looking at as well, is [photovoltaic (PV)] battery stores. Often one of the challenges with PV [panels] is the orientation of the roof.” 

Some kind of communal solution might help, she says. “I’m in danger of overselling it, because we are absolutely at the beginning of the journey, but we know the questions we need to find answers to help us get to the end point.” 

While district heating, communal heating, heat pumps and district electric heating are seen as the key solutions, the council is at pains to say that it “does not rule out any type of electric heating. As technologies develop over time there may be an increased role of other heating solutions such as infrared heating and heat batteries”. The city’s climate strategy does, however, “explicitly rule out the use of hydrogen for space heating and hot water in Bristol”.

The housing and landlord services team’s energy-efficiency strategy, published in 2023, commits it to meeting targets though a fabric-first approach. All the council’s homes have been grouped into four categories: low-carbon heating already installed, ready for low-carbon heating, not yet ready and hard to decarbonise.

The long-term planning also stresses that thought must be given to overheating. A study by consultancy ARUP, commissioned by the city’s climate change committee, warned that “a number of building archetypes common within BCC’s housing stock are considered to be at severe risk of overheating”.

The strategy says that when identifying the most suitable low-carbon heating solution for a specific building “consideration should be given to whether that building will need active cooling measures in the future and how that need will be met”. The cost of installing active cooling measures “should be factored into the lifetime capital cost assessment”.

“This step is important because some heating systems, such as individual heat pumps, may be able to provide active cooling, whereas other systems, such as district heat networks, will not,” the strategy adds.

The heat decarbonization strategy identifies three “near-term” actions. These are: assessing the potential to phase out new gas boilers and hobs from April 2026; phasing out secondary gas fires with immediate effect; and, as mentioned, adopting a phased approach to the council’s long-term programme of decarbonization.

“It feels a bit like low hanging fruit,” Ms Furzland states. “Those secondary gas fires in homes feels like something we could do pretty easily without having a major impact on our residents. It just means that we’re not making investments in things which we know will become redundant as part of the delivery of this strategy.”

Speaking of investment brings us to the elephant in the room: money. Councils aren’t exactly renowned for rolling in cash (in the same way that the emperor isn’t exactly renowned for clothing). And while the government has been thinking in an admirably long-term fashion when it comes to housing delivery, the same can’t always be said for net zero.

“I have to say that government funding is really critical to this as well,” Ms Furzland adds. “For the work we have done so far we have been very reliant on the Social Housing Decarbonisation and then the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund [these have been allocated in short-term waves]. I think having some long-term certainty on that and, in particular, how government will support the sector to manage the transition from gas to other forms of heating will be enormously helpful.”

The strategy makes it clear that, as things stand, the cost of upgrading existing heating systems will be met through a combination of BCC funding and grant funding from schemes such as the Warm Homes: Social Housing fund, the Green Heat Network Fund and the Energy Company Obligation.

The road ahead is a long one, but for Ms Furzland, despite the challenges it is one filled with opportunity for the housing department, the council and the city.

“We are in a position now of refreshing our asset management strategy,” she says. “We are looking at all of those competing demands for investment, but not just the challenge of that but the opportunities that presents. I think the decarbonization piece is actually an opportunity for the Housing Revenue Acount, because we have the long-term certainty to build the supply chain.”

In turn, she says, “that is great for Bristol, because it creates jobs in Bristol. It creates a local supply chain that can deliver for us but also some of the other registered providers who are going to be working in this space.”

Go back to the Cities Encyclopaedia