Retrofit—the adaptation of existing housing in order to improve its energy efficiency— has moved from being a discussion on the fringes of the building industry, carried out by those with an interest in the environment or in innovative technologies, to something far more mainstream. Housing represents a massive chunk of the UK’s carbon emissions and the government is under pressure to take action at a faster pace if it is to meet its carbon zero targets. Reports and articles on retrofit tend to start by invoking a variety of scary statistics that describe, in dramatic terms, what is required for the nation to meet its targets: “it’s one home every 35 seconds between 2020 and 2050.  Or, if every retrofit takes 4 people 6 months, it’s 500,000 simultaneous retrofits needing 2 million people in the industry” (PH Trust website); “at the current rate it would take well in excess of 1000 years to upgrade all EPC ‘D’ or worse homes across the UK to only . . . [a] modest energy standard” (Retrofit at Scale Report, p. 17); “to achieve the 2050 targets for reducing CO2 emissions, it is often said that 27 million UK homes need to be retrofitted at a rate of one per minute” (https://www.passivhaustrust.org.uk/event_detail.php?eId=554

There are a number of obstacles to retrofit that are slowing adoption. These include lack of community uptake, the lack of trust in people to deliver it, disruption to home life, lack of understanding about the benefits, and the tendency for benefits to be limited due to the “rebound effect.” Athough this is beginning to change, there has also been a lack of a generally agreed approach/standard. According to the Retrofit at Large report, although “there is increasing public awareness and acceptance by householders and owners that their homes need to better contribute to our zero-carbon trajectory, the policy context and the offering from the retrofit industry does not appeal or support them in taking the needed practical action” (11).

Our next few blog posts are going to focus on retrofit of UK housing including the benefits and challenges, new guidance recently issued by the Uk govt and its impact, and some new ideas about how to roll out retrofit on a greater scale.