Should we, and how can we, "Insulate Britain"?

[Bletchleyite]

The problem with insulation is that retrofit of insulation is laborious in the extreme (and we don't have the staffing for this, the labour requirement estimates for retrofit programmes are utterly huge), and new builds are being built at less than 1% of the housing stock per year - the climate issue will be decided one way or another before new construction can significantly change the heating intensity of the housing stock.

One way this can be made better is to remove the "renovation of a thermal element" stuff from Building Control for houses, as that serves to effectively block DIYers providing that labour themselves due to the massive "hassle factor" and cost of Building Control applications.

A great example of this is that adding primary earth bonding to electrical systems used to come under Part P, and so while I knew my house had it missing I did nothing about it, less because of the cost but more because of the faff of sorting a tradesman or Building Control. A few weekends after it was removed from Part P I fitted it, it cost a roll of earth cable, some conduit and an afternoon.

 

[Trainbike46]

To answer the trhead title, YES

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Jun 2022 ==

Regarding new builds, we need to update our building codes to reflect that energy use needs to go down. Building a well insulated from new is not that much more expensive or laborious (fitting double the thickness of insulation isn't more work, provided it is designed that way, for example)

Regarding existing builds, ideally we should try and combine insulation works with other maintenance work, to make it more efficient both financially and in terms of worker hours

 

[najaB]

One way this can be made better is to remove the "renovation of a thermal element" stuff from Building Control for houses, as that serves to effectively block DIYers providing that labour themselves due to the massive "hassle factor" and cost of Building Control applications.

Certainly, they need to separate the stuff that genuinely needs a tradesman (e.g. replacing/upgrading exterior insulation or installing cavity wall insulation) from things that can be done by a semi-competent DIYer such as adding loft insulation or other interior work.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Certainly, they need to separate the stuff that genuinely needs a tradesman (e.g. replacing/upgrading exterior insulation or installing cavity wall insulation) from things that can be done by a semi-competent DIYer such as adding loft insulation or other interior work.

Yep. It may be one of the most ignored things in the book, but technically upgrading loft insulation requires a building regs application!

This is beyond stupid.

 

[StKeverne1497]

With regard to new builds, my unfortunate experience is that while the Building Regulations themselves are not at all bad (though they could be better), traditional British building practice leaves a lot to be desired. In particular there is a lack of attention to detail, which means even in a cavity block wall (for example) with the requisite 75mm of foam insulation, a lot of the benefit of that insulation is lost because of haphazard cutting of sheets, no taping of joints, the use of steel wall ties instead of fibreglass (or similar), not "closing" the cavity properly in places, laying floor joists "in" the wall, rather than on joist hangers and multiple, badly-made openings in the wall for the likes of sink drains, cable entry, external pipework etc. All these things allow draughts and although the Air Permeability Test is done, it is fudged to allow a particular house just to pass.

I also suspect that large housebuilders get one or two "prototype" houses signed off, and then build the rest of a development however suits them.

What to do? Well there are some incentive schemes out there such as Ecology Building Society's mortgages which are only given on well-built houses and the better the EPC, the better the discount off the mortgage rate.

 

[Devonian]

For starters the Energy Performance Certificates need overhauling fast, as they are not sufficiently tailored to different housing types - particularly older stock - or reflective of new technologies. Heat pumps, for example, can worsen the EPC score because gas is cheaper than electricity, so the EPC system actively prefers more polluting gas boilers.

Rented properties need to be tackled: they have often been excluded from insulation (and boiler grant schemes) unless the tenants are on means tested benefits. Landlords have no incentive to shell out for insulation since they don't benefit from decreased fuel bills: tenants often don't have the right to carry out the work needed and anyway won't pay for work that could take decades to pay off when they have no guarantee of tenure. This catch-22 needs to be sorted.

The regulations regarding minimum energy standards for rented homes are not doing their job. Regulations now prevent homes with an EPC of less than E being rented out, even to existing tenants. But the EPC system makes it so hard to make incremental improvements that it sometimes encourages no improvements at all.

For example, I was recently talking to a tenant whose EPC recommends two insulation improvements that are almost impossible: wall insulation on stone walls that would pretty much require the whole property to be stripped out to allow false walls built inside the exterior walls, and floor insulation when the solid floors are only seven feet below the ceiling, which would require the whole ground floor to be stripped, dug up and relaid, and the kitchen and bathroom refitted. Both measures would make the house uninhabitable while work was going on.

The landlord is obliged to spend up to a maximum of £3500 on improvements: but if the cost would exceed that, then an exemption can be registered. Any attempt at the insulation in this case would certainly exceed the threshold. But the landlord can only consider these specific, impractical, works if they want improvements to count towards the minimum energy score: if the landlord paid for better draughtproofing or double glazing - which would actually help without being invasive or ruinously expensive - this would not be counted as a contribution towards the £3500 cap because they were not listed by the assessor. Result: no insulation improvements at all, rather than limited improvements.

 

[Bletchleyite]

For example, I was recently talking to a tenant whose EPC recommends two insulation improvements that are almost impossible: wall insulation on stone walls that would pretty much require the whole property to be stripped out to allow false walls built inside the exterior walls, and floor insulation when the solid floors are only seven feet below the ceiling, which would require the whole ground floor to be stripped, dug up and relaid, and the kitchen and bathroom refitted. Both measures would make the house uninhabitable while work was going on.

The landlord is obliged to spend up to a maximum of £3500 on improvements: but if the cost would exceed that, then an exemption can be registered. Any attempt at the insulation in this case would certainly exceed the threshold. But the landlord can only consider these specific, impractical, works if they want improvements to count towards the minimum energy score: if the landlord paid for better draughtproofing or double glazing - which would actually help without being invasive or ruinously expensive - this would not be counted as a contribution towards the £3500 cap because they were not listed by the assessor. Result: no insulation improvements at all, rather than limited improvements.

If we are serious about this, of course, we will need to have that kind of improvement done. Not immediately, but it will need to be worked towards. It will involve relaxing listed building/conservation rules, too, because energy efficiency is more important than looking nice.

I would agree however that help should be provided to do smaller incremental improvements as well. Even if we have to increase taxation to fund all these grants - because reducing carbon emissions and energy waste is important to everyone.

You do have a good point regarding single glazed windows. London is full of buildings with single-glazed sashes. They look nice and historic, but they are about as well-insulating as a piece of cling film. While it would probably make sense to require the replacements to be sashes to keep the look (there's nothing worse-looking than a row of Victorian terraces with mucky white uPVC windows with narrow top openers, as you see all over Liverpool, Manchester etc, though I'd concede that wood-effect or grey in halves with fake leaded lights at least looks reasonable), modern double or triple-glazed sashes don't look old. But they do keep the heat in. Double glazing was probably the best thing to ever happen to home energy efficiency*, and it's ridiculous that it isn't installed on every single building.

* If you've never experienced a single glazed house, go for a bus ride outside London**, ideally upstairs, on a cold, damp day. Yes, houses were all like that, particularly the bathroom and kitchen. Grim, isn't it?
** TfL specify air circulation which avoids the effect.

 

[StKeverne1497]

For starters the Energy Performance Certificates need overhauling fast, as they are not sufficiently tailored to different housing types - particularly older stock - or reflective of new technologies. Heat pumps, for example, can worsen the EPC score because gas is cheaper than electricity, so the EPC system actively prefers more polluting gas boilers.

The EPC score has nothing to do with cost - it's all to do with efficiency and CO2 emissions. We had exactly this problem and the root cause is that when we had ours done two years ago (I believe they might have updated it very recently) the EPC calculated Carbon emissions based on the UK generating mix in 2012 - when there was far more coal and a lot less renewable. It cannot take account of an "all renewable" tariff (because you might change your mind next year) so at that point electricity produced more Carbon than a new gas boiler. So our EPC was worse if we had all-electric heating than if we had gas-powered heating. It's just co-incidence (in a way) that electricity is so much more expensive than gas.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The EPC score has nothing to do with cost - it's all to do with efficiency and CO2 emissions. We had exactly this problem and the root cause is that when we had ours done two years ago (I believe they might have updated it very recently) the EPC calculated Carbon emissions based on the UK generating mix in 2012 - when there was far more coal and a lot less renewable. It cannot take account of an "all renewable" tariff (because you might change your mind next year) so at that point electricity produced more Carbon than a new gas boiler. So our EPC was worse if we had all-electric heating than if we had gas-powered heating. It's just co-incidence (in a way) that electricity is so much more expensive than gas.

That "you can't guarantee they won't go back" thing, interestingly, resulted in non-standard light fittings in many early-2000s new builds to force the use of awful CFLs and make it harder for people to just swap them back to tungsten. With the coming of LED, only a real zealot would swap them back (and you can't even buy them new anyway), so the issue goes away.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Of course it is worth saying that some homes (especially more modern flats) are absolute ovens in the summer and so can cause increased energy usage due to the effective need for air conditioning in some of these places. Granted that is likely required for much less of the year than heating is though, and ideally we should be looking at dual use heat pumps that can provide both heating and cooling when needed.

Rented properties need to be tackled: they have often been excluded from insulation (and boiler grant schemes) unless the tenants are on means tested benefits. Landlords have no incentive to shell out for insulation since they don't benefit from decreased fuel bills: tenants often don't have the right to carry out the work needed and anyway won't pay for work that could take decades to pay off when they have no guarantee of tenure. This catch-22 needs to be sorted.

Another linked issue isn't around insulation itself but around the actual means of heating. It seems way to common these days for a flat to just have basic electric panel heaters that cost an absolute bomb to run. If you are "lucky" you may get a storage heater too but these aren't much better and are often much more fiddly to actually use. How you heat water also has the same issue with so many flats just having an old poorly insulated immersion heaters. Hell for both I've seen flats where they didn't even have any timing circuits so you had to manually turn it on and off every single time you wanted heat or hot water. That just leads to people leaving them on way longer than needed and wasting money, or not using them and living in suboptimal conditions.

 

[Trainbike46]

If we are serious about this, of course, we will need to have that kind of improvement done. Not immediately, but it will need to be worked towards. It will involve relaxing listed building/conservation rules, too, because energy efficiency is more important than looking nice.

I would agree however that help should be provided to do smaller incremental improvements as well. Even if we have to increase taxation to fund all these grants - because reducing carbon emissions and energy waste is important to everyone.

You do have a good point regarding single glazed windows. London is full of buildings with single-glazed sashes. They look nice and historic, but they are about as well-insulating as a piece of cling film. While it would probably make sense to require the replacements to be sashes to keep the look (there's nothing worse-looking than a row of Victorian terraces with mucky white uPVC windows with narrow top openers, as you see all over Liverpool, Manchester etc, though I'd concede that wood-effect or grey in halves with fake leaded lights at least looks reasonable), modern double or triple-glazed sashes don't look old. But they do keep the heat in. Double glazing was probably the best thing to ever happen to home energy efficiency*, and it's ridiculous that it isn't installed on every single building.

* If you've never experienced a single glazed house, go for a bus ride outside London**, ideally upstairs, on a cold, damp day. Yes, houses were all like that, particularly the bathroom and kitchen. Grim, isn't it?
** TfL specify air circulation which avoids the effect.

Wooden, traditional design window frames for triple glazing also exist, if you (or the authority for listed buildings) so preferred. In some cases the existing window frames can also be adapted, but usually only if they're in a good state of repair, and aren't too thin

 

[Bletchleyite]

Of course it is worth saying that some homes (especially more modern flats) are absolute ovens in the summer and so can cause increased energy usage due to the effective need for air conditioning in some of these places. Granted that is likely required for much less of the year than heating is though, and ideally we should be looking at dual use heat pumps that can provide both heating and cooling when needed.

One issue with flats is that typically, unless you're a corner flat, flats in large buildings only have windows on one side, so it's impossible to set up a through draught. My house gets rather warm in summer and it's only tolerable because you can open the windows on both sides and prop the doors. Moving hot air is much more comfortable than stationary hot air.

By the way, an air conditioning unit is a heat pump - it moves heat from inside the building to outside it. So is a fridge, it "pumps" heat from inside to outside. They aren't made more economical by renaming them!

Another linked issue isn't around insulation itself but around the actual means of heating. It seems way to common these days for a flat to just have basic electric panel heaters that cost an absolute bomb to run. If you are "lucky" you may get a storage heater too but these aren't much better and are often much more fiddly to actually use. How you heat water also has the same issue with so many flats just having an old poorly insulated immersion heaters. Hell for both I've seen flats where they didn't even have any timing circuits so you had to manually turn it on and off every single time you wanted heat or hot water. That just leads to people leaving them on way longer than needed and wasting money, or not using them and living in suboptimal conditions.

Passivhaus doesn't require heat pumps, for the simple reason that they aren't needed! The tiny amount of heat you may need to add in the dead of winter can economically be added using the sort of panel heater you describe.

In a poorly-insulated block, I'd agree, they're inadequate, but in my observation newer blocks tend to have individual gas boilers per flat in most cases.

With flats, a better solution is communal heating, but then someone has to maintain it...

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Jun 2022 ==

Wooden, traditional design window frames for triple glazing also exist, if you (or the authority for listed buildings) so preferred. In some cases the existing window frames can also be adapted, but usually only if they're in a good state of repair, and aren't too thin

They do, but they're still obviously not original. A triple glazed window looks different from a single-glazed original, largely because it's thicker. They are a reasonable compromise.

 

[Trainbike46]

Of course it is worth saying that some homes (especially more modern flats) are absolute ovens in the summer and so can cause increased energy usage due to the effective need for air conditioning in some of these places. Granted that is likely required for much less of the year than heating is though, and ideally we should be looking at dual use heat pumps that can provide both heating and cooling when needed.

Dual use heatpumps are the way forward. Insulation and sensibly-designed blinds are the way to keep heat out (and then ventilate at night to keep the flat cool)

Another linked issue isn't around insulation itself but around the actual means of heating. It seems way to common these days for a flat to just have basic electric panel heaters that cost an absolute bomb to run. If you are "lucky" you may get a storage heater too but these aren't much better and are often much more fiddly to actually use. How you heat water also has the same issue with so many flats just having an old poorly insulated immersion heaters. Hell for both I've seen flats where they didn't even have any timing circuits so you had to manually turn it on and off every single time you wanted heat or hot water. That just leads to people leaving them on way longer than needed and wasting money, or not using them and living in suboptimal conditions.

My current flat actually has this exact issue! We don't use the immersion heater at all, it's simply too expensive and impractical. We have an electric shower so not really a problem though. The panel heaters are actually fine, if the place is well insulated (plus I'm on the top floor, so less need for heating anyway)

 

[Bletchleyite]

Dual use heatpumps are the way forward.

Aircon is a heat pump. It'd be best to design buildings not to need it at all. The only benefit of reversible air source heat pumps over a separate one for heating and aircon is fewer ugly boxes outside the house.

The immersion heater issue can be fixed by whacking on the insulation on the cylinder, though not as a tenant to be fair to you. It is possible, and fairly cheap, to put a very thick jacket of foam on a cylinder so it basically won't lose heat other than when you use it. I used to rent a flat with a cylinder which was heated overnight on Economy 7, and it never really caused an issue other than (due to the very hard water round here) needing the elements replaced every few years. The storage heaters, on the other hand, I hated, and I bought some free standing electric radiators instead. The main problem with the flat, though, was that it lost heat like nobody's business - it was the "flat on a bridge", so a first floor flat you drove underneath to get to the car park, which was fine in and of itself but the floor was totally uninsulated so the bottom foot of the room was always freezing.

 

[Trainbike46]

Aircon is a heat pump. It'd be best to design buildings not to need it at all. The only benefit of reversible air source heat pumps over a separate one for heating and aircon is fewer ugly boxes outside the house.

I know, and I agree. In addition to the fewer boxes advantage, and having one installation is typically cheaper than having two (or at least it should be!). I was thinking that my flat would do well with reversible air conditioning, and if I owned the place I would definitely look into it. It's not hard to beat panel heaters!

The immersion heater issue can be fixed by whacking on the insulation on the cylinder, though not as a tenant to be fair to you. It is possible, and fairly cheap, to put a very thick jacket of foam on a cylinder so it basically won't lose heat other than when you use it.

Given that it doesn't have a thermostat or a timer, so requires switching on and off manually, and doesn't really serve much purpose beyond the kitchen and bathroom taps (shower is an electric shower), I don't think there would be much point unless it was part of a broader refurbishment of the flat, which isn't happening anytime soon

 

[Bletchleyite]

I know, and I agree. In addition to the fewer boxes advantage, and having one installation is typically cheaper than having two (or at least it should be!). I was thinking that my flat would do well with reversible air conditioning, and if I owned the place I would definitely look into it. It's not hard to beat panel heaters!

Panel heaters are a perfectly decent piece of technology - dead simple for one and really cheap. You can get control systems for them (you could even wire them up to the likes of a Tado/Hive controller with a relay if you wanted). The fundamental issue with them is that electricity is very expensive, and that in a poorly insulated building you need to run them too often.

Given that it doesn't have a thermostat or a timer, so requires switching on and off manually, and doesn't really serve much purpose beyond the kitchen and bathroom taps (shower is an electric shower), I don't think there would be much point unless it was part of a broader refurbishment of the flat, which isn't happening anytime soon

I'd personally rather a pumped shower from the tank than a rubbish electric shower (they tend to be very low-pressure in my experience) but each to their own. But if just supplying taps, it'd be more efficient just to have small on-demand water heaters (basically an electric shower with a tap outlet rather than a showerhead) above those two sinks.

 

[gg1]

Dual use heatpumps are the way forward. Insulation and sensibly-designed blinds are the way to keep heat out (and then ventilate at night to keep the flat cool)

The most effective passive measures for keeping heat out are external blinds/shutters, something not commonly seen on British properties but which should IMO be seriously considered as legal requirement on new builds.

 

[WelshBluebird]

You can get control systems for them (you could even wire them up to the likes of a Tado/Hive controller with a relay if you wanted)

I think that is part of my problem with their current use though. In many flats they aren't wired up to anything other than a switch. IMO given the normal standard for heating in this country is for radiators to be linked up to a central heating solution which is usually a boiler that has a timer on it and in some cases a thermostat too, any alternative heating system should at the very least also have a timer component (and preferably some kind of thermostat, but at least a timer would be a start!).

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think that is part of my problem with their current use though. In many flats they aren't wired up to anything other than a switch. IMO given the normal standard for heating in this country is for radiators to be linked up to a central heating solution which is usually a boiler that has a timer on it and in some cases a thermostat too, any alternative heating system should at the very least also have a timer component (and preferably some kind of thermostat, but at least a timer would be a start!).

Current building regulations actually require a thermostat and timer to be provided on any device which makes up the primary heat source in a dwelling, so there won't be any such new installations (most post-2010-ish flats seem to have their own gas boiler anyway). Usually it's a fairly basic digital affair on each heater, though that's not necessarily a bad thing as once you've set it up you are only heating the rooms you are using at a given time rather than the whole house.

It's not unduly hard to wire one up to a programmable thermostat capable of taking the current they draw. Before I got a radiator put in there when I got a new boiler, I used to have one in the kitchen, and I wired a programmable thermostat in between the plug and heater and screwed it to the wall, it did the job fine and cost about £30. Not all such devices can switch a full 230V/13A load but plenty can. So I could see a case to make it a legal requirement on landlords to retrofit this.

 

[AndrewE]

Wooden, traditional design window frames for triple glazing also exist, if you (or the authority for listed buildings) so preferred. In some cases the existing window frames can also be adapted, but usually only if they're in a good state of repair, and aren't too thin

They do, but they're still obviously not original. A triple glazed window looks different from a single-glazed original, largely because it's thicker. They are a reasonable compromise.

They come pretty close nowadays.
Triple glazing is a pointess expense in older buildings as there are so many other heat losses that the third pane is not going to make any significant difference. IMHO there is no point reglazing old sashes as a) the wood is already 100 yrs old, and lots of it is decaying if the maintenance and painting hasn't always been top-rate, b) retrofitting draught excluders to the old sashes is not very effective, c) the massively increased weight of new double-glazed units - 2 panes and thicker glass - can't be accommodated by bigger cast-iron weights, but I guess you could look for lead replacement weights, or change the support system altogether, d) they still have to be painted to maintain weather protection. The worst thing we ever did was strip off all the old paint including the lead primer and put on a modern microporous paint system... it ruined the weatherproofing of the wood and accelerated the pre-existing decay.

I wouldn't fit modern wood replacements either, the grain is very open and I doubt that many will last 25 years, let alone 125 which ours (almost) did. "Hardwood" isn't justified either, it doesn't take paint effectively.

There are at least 2 companies making uPVC sash window relacements which are accepted by Building or Planning Conservation Officers (or whatever their title is,) we fitted Quickslide windows ourselves and the neighbour asked "what was wrong with the new ones? why had we put the old one back in?!"
The picture shows one of the neighbours' new ones, plus one of our new ones and the rest old. The mirror finish on the new glass gives it away, but if you are in a conservation area you can get rippley glass... We have finished the job off now, you have to look hard - or have an experienced eye - to notice the change.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Top left the new one? You can, as you say, hardly tell.

 

[AndrewE]

Top left the new one? You can, as you say, hardly tell.

Exactly.

 

[Mojo]

The difficulty with retrofitting to existing properties is that there may simply not be the space to comply with modern standards. Earlier this year I took the opportunity whilst removing some salt contaminated plaster in my spare room to fit insulation to the skeilings that run around two sides of the room - as they did not have any insulation whatsoever before, it was simply just plasterboard attached to the bottom
of the rafters! Because the rafters are only 100mm and the need to ensure an air gap of 50mm between the underside of the roof and any new insulation to prevent condensation, it was only possible to install 50mm insulation boards. On top of that I used foil to prevent any moisture getting through, and then secured 27mm insulated plasterboard. This is well below the standards required but any more would not have been possible without compromising on head height, or possibly raising the height of the house!

 

[Bletchleyite]

The difficulty with retrofitting to existing properties is that there may simply not be the space to comply with modern standards. Earlier this year I took the opportunity whilst removing some salt contaminated plaster in my spare room to fit insulation to the skeilings that run around two sides of the room - as they did not have any insulation whatsoever before, it was simply just plasterboard attached to the bottom
of the rafters! Because the rafters are only 100mm and the need to ensure an air gap of 50mm between the underside of the roof and any new insulation to prevent condensation, it was only possible to install 50mm insulation boards. On top of that I used foil to prevent any moisture getting through, and then secured 27mm insulated plasterboard. This is well below the standards required but any more would not have been possible without compromising on head height, or possibly raising the height of the house!

Better of course to do that than nothing.

 

[plugwash]

Panel heaters are a perfectly decent piece of technology - dead simple for one and really cheap. You can get control systems for them (you could even wire them up to the likes of a Tado/Hive controller with a relay if you wanted). The fundamental issue with them is that electricity is very expensive,

The fundamental issue is that a fair proportion of our electricity, comes from burning gas and afaict gas is generally the marginal energy source (the one that will be turned up or down based on changing demand) at present. Burning gas to produce electricity, distributing that electricty through a grid and then using the electricity to run resistive heaters will be substantially less efficient than just burning the gas directly.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The fundamental issue is that a fair proportion of our electricity, comes from burning gas and afaict gas is generally the marginal energy source (the one that will be turned up or down based on changing demand) at present. Burning gas to produce electricity, distributing that electricty through a grid and then using the electricity to run resistive heaters will be substantially less efficient than just burning the gas directly.

True, but we need to move - and are moving - from burning dead dinosaurs for power generation. That changes the balance.

 

[Trainbike46]

The fundamental issue is that a fair proportion of our electricity, comes from burning gas and afaict gas is generally the marginal energy source (the one that will be turned up or down based on changing demand) at present. Burning gas to produce electricity, distributing that electricty through a grid and then using the electricity to run resistive heaters will be substantially less efficient than just burning the gas directly.

However, burning gas to produce electricity, which you then use to run a heat pump is significantly more efficient than burning gas directly.

To be honest, panel heaters are probably one of the first places to start fitting reversible airconditioning (usually the cheapest and easiest to install form of a heat pump!), because that would lead to almost instant savings, and you can somewhat undersize the system if you keep the panel heaters as a back-up.

And as @Bletchleyite already pointed out, fossil fuels are an increasingly small part of electricity generation, with more wind/solar/hydro coming online every year, and with hinkley point C coming in a few years. Officially, the government has even promised fossil free electricity in 2035, so within the lifespan of any electric heating installed today

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 Jun 2022 ==

For 2020, GB* electricity was:
Renewables 43.2%
- Wind & Solar 28.4%
- Hydro 2.2%
- Other 12.6%
Gas 35.7%
Nuclear 16.1%
Coal 1.8%
Oil & other fuels 3.3%

And this is continously moving to more renewables

* NI is treated as part of ROI for electricity purposes, so not included here

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 Jun 2022 ==

Going back to insulation, one thing that really should get priority is a big upgrade of all existing social housing, funded by the government, to insulate all social housing properly. This would help reduce carbon emissions and reduce fuel poverty at the same time

 

[StKeverne1497]

One issue with flats is that typically, unless you're a corner flat, flats in large buildings only have windows on one side, so it's impossible to set up a through draught. My house gets rather warm in summer and it's only tolerable because you can open the windows on both sides and prop the doors. Moving hot air is much more comfortable than stationary hot air.

Something which could potentially be retrofitted and would help with this sort of scenario is a mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery (just an example). Warm, stale, humid air from rooms such as bathrooms and kitchens is extracted via a heat exchanger and fresh air from the outside is brought in. Units with "summer bypass" mean that in the winter you hold on to the warmth while in the summer it alternates between bypassing the heat exchanger (if the inside is too warm and the outside is cooler) and not bypassing it (if the inside is warm enough but the outside is warmer), thereby effectively retaining the "coolth" inside. (It does work, but I have no idea how - I'm going to have to take it apart and have a look)

I say potentially retrofitted because the ducting takes up a lot of space which if you don't have access to an attic can mean building a false ceiling, you need at least two openings in an ouside wall (or roof) for the inlet and outlet, placement of the fan unit needs careful consideration because it runs constantly (though on normal background speed ours is inaudible unless you are standing next to it) and because the systems work at their best if there are no stray draughts - so you need good windows and external doors.

Ours was installed in a new-build. We used open web floor joists which means ducting can run (with a bit of thought) without compromising ceiling height. It does seem to make a difference, though training certain members of the household that when the summer air outside is warmer than the air inside it's best to close all windows and let the fan get on with it has proven rather difficult!

 

[thenorthern]

A friend of mine has a stone house where the cavity walls have been filled with rubble, for cavity wall insulation she has been quoted £14000. In a lot of older buildings it's difficult.

1960s buildings are also difficult as many have flat roofs, single glazing, thin walls and other things. I was once told that in the 1960s/1970s buildings were very inefficient as energy so was cheap it didn't matter. Anything built after 1995 I am told has relatively good insulation as people started watching the pennies and cared more about the climate. Also we could see that the peak in North Sea gas was coming so it made sense to insulate new homes for the future.

 

[Dent]

Insulation is important, but it is also important that any changes are properly thought through and not made as as a political kneejerk based on flawed simplistic arguments.

One example of this is the misguided installation of external wall insulation, which if not done properly can cause condensation problems and in some cases even a fire risk.

Another issue is the recent obsession with excessive ventilation, in particular leaving windows permanently wide open, which renders any insulation pointless.