A new report into energy efficiency in homes is calling for sweeping changes in both new and existing homes.
The UK Housing Fit for the Future report is set to have major implications for the entire residential property industry, including those who will be valuing and marketing homes in the future.
The report in particular sounds a death knell for gas central heating.
New homes would have no gas boilers or radiators within six years, and gas hobs would also be banned.
Instead, new-builds would have heat pumps and induction hobs.
The report, from the Committee on Climate Change, calls for all new homes to be built to be as thermally efficient as possible.
But there are also huge implications for the 29m existing homes across the UK, which it says should be retrofitted as a national priority.
As such, this would be supported by the Treasury.
Existing homes would be upgraded to use low-carbon technology that has widely been regarded as ‘alternative’, such as heat pumps and heat networks.
New homes, wherever possible, should be timber-framed and triple glazed, as well as have no gas. The report calls for no new homes to be on the gas grid by 2025 at the latest.
The report is highly critical as to the quality of new-builds, and wants the ‘performance gap’ between how homes are designed and how they actually perform to be closed.
It says an immediate improvement would be to enforce current building standards.
It wants to see construction skills improved, particularly in relation to low-carbon building, and to see that low-carbon heat and mechanical ventilation systems are properly designed and installed, and householders trained in their use.
On retrofitting existing homes, the report calls for the roll-out of heat pumps in houses that are off the gas grid as an early step.
Its findings and recommendations suggest that estate agents would have to take a property’s energy features strongly into account in their valuations.
The report is at https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/UK-housing-Fit-for-the-future-CCC-2019.pdf
Comments (4)
At present 34% of all electricity used in the UK is produced by renewables, wind, solar and hydro.
We recently constructed two apartments for rent.
At the last minute Northampton Borough Council insisted on a 1kw solar panel system, as I had not fitted gas heating to the new build with all the insulation that is now required by building regulations.
I knew that new gas connections will be phased out by 2030. Most supplies will have to come various countries around the globe.
Retro fitting of insulation, which we have done, is both messy and expensive.
The tenant will benefit from lower energy bills.
Sadly, there are no incentives for landlords to even contemplate undertaking this level of refurbishment, plus the loss of rent whilst the works are being done.
Time for government to “join up” their thinking and regulations.
Natural gas is a limited resource and will get very expensive at some point in the future.
Electricity can be generated via renewables indefinitely.
This will happen at some point.
Moreover, how will this be funded; Monopoly money?
Ridiculous , just as we were “told by government that diesel cars were the way forward so this will prove the same, as I suspect will the current electric cars!
The fact is, we do not have the capacity to produce enough electricity now let alone in the future.
Electric heating is seen as inefficient and it will be nigh impossible to change people’s minds.