SELFBUILDER SURVEY: BUILDING A LOW CARBON HOME
SURVEYING SELF-BUILDERS
How would you describe your build’s carbon credentials?
as the challenges encountered. We partnered with Edge Insight to ask self-builders a series of searching questions about their journey to low carbon. The white paper reporting on this ‘Selfbuilder Survey,’ which can be found at
www.sbhonline.co.uk/white-papers including sponsors’ case studies, throws a lot of light on where self-builders are in this process, and their thoughts on it. The report should help grow understanding and hopefully provide
W
e wanted to know more about how our readers were pursuing truly sustainable homes in this diffi cult context; to discover their successes, as well
advice to others on realistic low carbon design approaches. Most respondents were hoping to make big savings in their annual energy bills, but cited a range of obstacles in doing that.
Cost of course varies per project, but many professionals in
the fi eld believe that even going to Passivhaus levels of air-tightness and insulation need not be drastically more expensive. With energy prices rising, the payback on investment could be even shorter. And building a very energy-effi cient home doesn’t have to mean it has to look drastically different to what we might expect.
CLIMATE, ENERGY & REGS
S
cientists agree globally that the world is getting warmer – leading to more extreme weather-related events such as fl ooding and forest fi res, and 2020 was tied with 2016 as
the warmest year on record. A report by Ofgem in September 2021 found that the 26 million gas boilers in UK homes each release 3.54 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year; and collectively over double the 41 million tonnes of emissions created by the UK’s 48 gas-fi red power plants. Ofgem also found that gas boilers emit over eight and a half times as much nitrogen oxide, which causes respiratory illnesses. Natural gas was around 50p a therm in January 2021, but by
Christmas it had reached £4.50. As a result, energy companies this April raised their price cap so that projected annual gas (and electricity) bills will be considerably higher. The UK imports only 4% of its gas from Russia, but imports generally provide over half the gas we use, so the country is very vulnerable to fl uctuations in prices.
Part L of the Building Regulations (Conservation of Heat and Power), had already seen a major update in 2013, increasing thermal effi ciency, and air-tightness, to bring a 6% increase in performance, and introducing the Target Fabric Energy Effi ciency Rate as a minimum standard. However the Future Homes Standard will be a much greater jump.
PRODUCED IN ASSOCIATION WITH
24
www.sbhonline.co.uk
may/june 2022
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