Urbanism
Environment
Design

info@urbed.coop

Our friends Carbon Coop have recently published a case study report of the pilot 'Community Green Deal' whole house retrofit programme - 'Powering Down Together' - a shorter summary report is also available. URBED were lead designers on the project, were also involved in providing over-sight during contruction, and have worked with Carbon Coop in evaluating its performance post-completion - learning lots of valuable lessons along the way that we hope can be applied elsewhere. 

The report, written by Kate de Selincourt, demonstrates that an approach to deep retrofit that prioritises quality, whilst being aware of context and potential unintended consequences, can achieve significant carbon emissions reductions and alongside big improvements in household comfort: 

• Householders participating in the scheme benefited from whole house assessments using full SAP and zero percent interest loans. Taking in to account some ECO and householder contributions works costs averaged £40,000/house.
• Post-works evaluation documented in the report is extremely encouraging with average gas usage cut by nearly 50% with net bills, taking in to account FIT payments, now £270 per house - net savings averaging £1,000 per house.
• Carbon emission reductions averaged 60% from the pre works condition - our ambitious benchmarked project target, informed by 2050 domestic targets, was to reach 17kgCO2/year and we came very close, averaging 18kgCO2/year.

You can read more about this on a recent Green Register blog by Jonathan Atkinson, project manager at Carbon Coop.