The UK's first Energiesprong homes

[Mark]

In Practice: The UK's first Energiesprong homes:
https://www.edie.net/library/In-Practic ... 8047a23e12

A pioneering new pilot project in Nottingham aims to make select households ultra-low carbon and fit for the future by renovating them using the 'Energiesprong' techniques used in the Netherlands. Around 2,000 Energiesprong homes have been completed in the Netherlands, of which around 60% were renovations of existing properties and 40% new builds

The Challenge
There is an ambition in the UK to ensure that all buildings are low or zero-carbon buildings by 2050. However, a study by the Association for the Conservation of Energy found that the UK is amongst the highest in Europe for fuel-poverty and has one of the most energy-inefficient housing stocks on the continent. With more than 26,000 homes, Nottingham City Council believes it has a “commercial imperative� to find ways to retrofit existing houses to a near-zero emission standard in a way that is affordable and easily replicated for potential new builds.

The Solution
Last week, 10 homes in Sneinton became the first Energiesprong houses in the UK. Energiesprong is an innovative approach to housing refurbishment that delivers net zero energy performance to existing houses in under a week, without residents moving out, at an affordable cost. The Energiesprong approach upgrades homes with a new exterior, fitting the outside of the building with new walls, windows, a solar roof and new electrical heating systems. Developer Melius Homes and social landlord Nottingham City Homes have worked together on the scheme, with solar photovoltaic roofing supplied by UK manufacturer, Viridian Solar. Around 2,000 Energiesprong homes have been completed in the Netherlands, of which around 60% were renovations of existing properties and 40% new builds. In Nottingham, the process saw each house surveyed externally within a millimetre of accuracy using laser scanners. From there, highly-insulated timber frame cladding is lifted into place by a crane and attached to existing walls. The solar roof is then attached on top of the existing roof. Windows and doors are removed and replaced, while heat pump, solar thermal or electric panel heaters replace older systems. All projects are covered by a 30-year warranty regarding energy performance.

The Benefits
The new fittings will drastically reduce household energy bills and make the homes warmer, although the first set of data on the expected improvements is yet to be published. A total of seven houses and three bungalows have been transformed through the scheme. Instead of paying gas and electricity bills, residents now pay a reduced energy services fee to the social landlords. The guaranteed income, which accounts for savings on planned maintenance costs, can then be used to fund further Energiesprong projects. It is hoped the projects can eventually be carried out without government support, boosting attraction for financial markets. Energiesprong UK, the organisation overseeing project developments in the UK, suggests that the refurbishment process must be carried out at around £40,000 to be self-financing. Currently, the Nottingham scheme was around £75,000 per unit, with additional “top-up� income provided by other organisations. The seven houses were fitted with 21 solar modules each at around 5.46kWp per house. The three bungalows were fitted with 16 modules each at 4.16kWp, this equates to 50.7kWp across the entire pilot.

The Future
The Energiesprong programme is part of the next phase of Nottingham City Councils Greener HousiNG programme – a home energy efficiency scheme that aims to reduce individual household energy bills by £400 annually through subsidised energy saving measures. To date more than 6,000 properties have benefitted from the scheme to improve the energy efficiency of the city’s domestic housing stock. Nottingham City Homes and Melius Homes have an agreement in place to create a further 400 Energiesprong homes. The current pilot is part of a smart city solutions cluster, delivered by Nottingham during a three-year period under the European-funded REMOURBAN project, which aims to showcase sustainability within regeneration projects in towns and cities. Following initial success in the Netherland, the concept is being exported to France, Germany, Luxembourg, the US and the UK. In fact, Clarion Housing Group and Moat Homes have found a set of properties in London and Essex which they have identified for Energiesprong renovations. Clarion has identified 10 properties, five of them in Borehamwood and the others in Bromley, which are suitable for net zero energy refurbishments.

[kenneal - lagger]

This is the sort of thing that we, as a nation, should be doing but if they're only saving £400 per year they haven't been done to a very high insulation standard. I would have thought that houses like that would be spending £800 to £1000 a year on fuel and going for 80% saving to get the Climate Change Act requirement and a cost saving between £640 and £800.

They claim to be near zero emission because they've got 5kWp of pv on the roof and they're offsetting so I would think that they have a heat loss of at least 5kW.

eventually be carried out without government support, boosting attraction for financial markets.

And why the **** should the financial markets add costs to this essential work by profiting from providing money which they themselves haven't paid for. They're getting something for nothing! Bastards!!

[cubes]

Any chance of tell us what Energiesprong is?

edit: Ah nm, I worked it out, it's just a pipe-dream.

[vtsnowedin]

Lets see now if I have £75,000 and I retrofit my house with it I can save £400 a year? Or I could buy USA ten year T bills at 2.85% and Make £2137 a year pretty much risk free. Decisions decisions.

[kenneal - lagger]

Lets see now if I have £75,000 and I retrofit my house with it I can save £400 a year? Or I could buy USA ten year T bills at 2.85% and Make £2137 a year pretty much risk free. Decisions decisions.

I can see where you are coming from and it's looking at it from a personal point of view, VT. The requirement is to save at least 80% of our fossil fuel use as a nation by 2050 to abide by the requirements of our Climate Change Act of Parliament, our obligations under the UN Climate Change Treaties and the moral duty to do something a bout a problem that we've contributed one hell of a lot to over the years, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It may not stack up financially but our problem isn't financial its environmental.

Our houses have been so badly built in the past that we have to do something about them now. Should the people owning them now have to pay for the mistakes of the past? I would say, "No." Yes, the people living in them will benefit so they should pay something towards the changes but the nation decrees the standard of building so perhaps the nation should contribute to the upgrade required as well.

Also for maybe £5000 extra those houses could save £800 or more per year if the insulation fitted was thicker to achieve an 80% saving. The problem is that accountants are making the decisions not environmentalists. They are looking at immediate costs not life time costs which will mean that those houses will have to be revisited at a later date and another £75k will have to be spent to get what would have cost an extra £5k now.

If the government printed the money the cost would plummet but we are fixated on giving *ankers a free ride.

[vtsnowedin]

If the government printed the money the cost would plummet

I don't follow your logic there.
My point was that a £75,000 retrofit to obtain a £400 per annum benefit is a very poor return on the investment and most likely the same savings can be had for much less investment.
On another note the original post has a term that carries different cogitations here in the USA.

To date more than 6,000 properties have benefited from the scheme to improve the energy efficiency of the city’s domestic housing stock.

You use the word scheme where I would use plan or plans. In the US a scheme is always an evil or corrupt plan so a schemer is a crook or villein.
We have retained the word schematics for symbolized drawings such as electrical plans and some still use the words blue prints even though plans haven't been blue background sense about 1960.
It is interesting how languages evolve over time and split when populations are separated.

[Snail]

Quote:

If the government printed the money the cost would plummet

I don't follow your logic there.

----

Modern Monetary Theory (mmt). The money supply can be increased or reduced (spending increase the supply while taxing decreases it for eg.) to achieve specific goals such as more employment. And increasing doesn't automatically lead to inflation.

There's other connected theories also. But mmt is a good starting point to understanding how the Country's finances actually work in reality. And why returning to a rigid system like gold etc has downsides, as does being in the euro with no monetary sovereignty etc .

I'm just commenting because mmt can be automatically dismissed as lunacy (such as in a recent Lord Beria's posted Greer blog post). But it shouldn't be. MMT as a starting point was a big aha moment for me.

[vtsnowedin]

Quote:

If the government printed the money the cost would plummet

I don't follow your logic there.

----

Modern Monetary Theory (mmt). The money supply can be increased or reduced (spending increase the supply while taxing decreases it for eg.) to achieve specific goals such as more employment. And increasing doesn't automatically lead to inflation.

There's other connected theories also. But mmt is a good starting point to understanding how the Country's finances actually work in reality. And why returning to a rigid system like gold etc has downsides, as does being in the euro with no monetary sovereignty etc .

I'm just commenting because mmt can be automatically dismissed as lunacy (such as in a recent Lord Beria's posted Greer blog post). But it shouldn't be. MMT as a starting point was a big aha moment for me.

Yes yes and all that, but how does printing up a lot of money reduce the work required to encapsulate a house and cover it's roof with solar panels. Real materials have to be paid for and equipment brought on site and operated by skilled workers and all that must be paid for. If anything a flush of easy money would raise the price not reduce it.

[kenneal - lagger]

The cost would plummet because there would be no interest payments if the government printed the money. Also there would be economies of scale if the government funded a large scale scheme, or program for our US cousins.

I am surprised at the cost of that scheme because a client of mine paid about £30k to save 80% of his fuel on a four bed detached house and he is getting a better rate of return on his spending than if he had bought an annuity with the pension lump sum that he used to pay for the work.

I just wonder if there was other work done at the same time to upgrade the properties. If they were older Housing Association (social housing) houses they might have upgraded the kitchens, bathrooms and wiring at the same time. They did put in triple glazing which would have added a big lump to the costs.

Scheme does have evil connotations in the UK if used in certain ways but would usually have the prefix, evil, or something like that. Schemer and scheming do have that negative connotation in the UK as well.

Thanks, Snail, for your input. Positivemoney.org is a good place to go for more information on why the government should print its own money for capital investment rather than borrowing from scheming *ankers!

[woodburner]

If the government funds a large scale scheme, it will just reslt in large scale corruption and fraud. It happened with the insulation scheme..............

[vtsnowedin]

I am surprised at the cost of that scheme because a client of mine paid about £30k to save 80% of his fuel on a four bed detached house and he is getting a better rate of return on his spending than if he had bought an annuity with the pension lump sum that he used to pay for the work.

My point exactly.

[kenneal - lagger]

If the government funds a large scale scheme, it will just reslt in large scale corruption and fraud. It happened with the insulation scheme..............

So we sit back in our cold draughty homes, pumping warmed air into the environment, while climate change gets worse still do we? With 25 million homes to improve the only way that it will be done is on a large scale scheme basis and with central funding because for the individual it is not cost effective. But then what is the environment, the world which we find habitable, worth?

[clv101]

If the government funds a large scale scheme, it will just reslt in large scale corruption and fraud. It happened with the insulation scheme..............

So we sit back in our cold draughty homes, pumping warmed air into the environment, while climate change gets worse still do we? With 25 million homes to improve the only way that it will be done is on a large scale scheme basis and with central funding because for the individual it is not cost effective. But then what is the environment, the world which we find habitable, worth?

Spot on Ken. The government's inaction, lack of ambition when it comes to the national housing stock is tragic. Thousands die, millions suffer ill health and discomfort, billions of pounds are *wasted* on imported energy and climate change is worsened.

[vtsnowedin]

Or you could raise the price of fossil fuels enough that tightening up a house was cost effective for every owner and let them make the site specific choices about how to save energy and money.

[kenneal - lagger]

If you raised the price of fossil fuels you would collapse the economy, VT. Remember what $147 did in 2008? And we, in the UK, have high enough levels of fuel poverty and consequent ill health and death, as pointed out by Chris above, at current fuel price levels without making things worse.

And if you did that people would be thinking like you do, about what the economic level of insulation would be. The decision isn't a short term economic one it's an environmental, sustainability one upon which our future on this earth could depend.

The economic depth of loft insulation has gone up every year in this country. When I started designing houses it was 50mm of fibre and it's gradually gone up to 300mm now. The environmental level is about 450mm in the UK so we need to be putting that level into every house now.

We need to stop putting an economic requirement onto an environmental problem.