I wrote in October about the problems of switching away from fossil fuels to more environmental solutions for our housing. I also noted the impending problems with future price increases to gas and electricity.
The country is now gripped in a perfect storm of rising energy bills, inflation, interest rates and impending national insurance increases.
I think the essential issues remain; that we need, more than ever, to be designing and building low energy buildings.
It sounds obvious doesn’t it, so we must find immediate ways to unburden the nation from our utter reliance on gas supplies. There are huge, short-term issues for large sectors of society and how they heat their homes. Sadly, I don’t have the mandate to solve it all!
I would encourage all politicians, councils and statutory bodies to look at how they can improve our housing stock in the short, medium and long term.
For short term measures, I would remove the green levy from bills. We need to separate these essential measures from the costings on energy, so that the public don’t associate the long-term costs as a burden on current energy prices.
I would then extend the current incentives – Renewable Heat incentives (RHI – will cease to exist on March 21), re-introduce the feed-in tariffs (FIT) on PV panels, and in fact take this forward with a re-introduction of the failed Green Homes Grant of 2021.
The basic premise was a promising idea, offering £5k grants on a range of measures to improve house insulation, install air-source or ground-source heat pumps, biomass boilers and other measures. As ever it was rushed and failed, due to lack of approved contractors and approvals.
We need to incentivise every house in the country to improve its energy systems and insulation, but the average home can’t afford this when they are paying larger energy bills and other cost of living increases. In fact, it will reverse the ability of people to improve their homes.
In the medium term, other incentives include better mortgage rates for houses with a higher EPC rating but let’s follow America with tax breaks on houses with PV and home batteries. Our home countries offer different grants which seems irrational.
Longer term national improvements to building regulations must make sure that new build, home extensions and all redevelopment work undertaken shows real, sustainable change to our building stock. It’s said our homes in the UK are the worst insulated in northern Europe. As a country and society, we need to really plan ahead on all our energy sources and work out the approach that encourages and assists homeowners to do the right thing. We all vote with our wallet, so the benefits must be obvious.
I have been amazed to see that heat pumps, home batteries and thermal efficiency have all become part of mainstream news. I hope that organisations like RIBA and RICS can advise the government on how to improve buildings and set better targets that will ultimately avoid the 2022 energy storm repeating again and again.
