Low-carbon refurbishment of homes – a sustainable solution

clipped from www.energyefficiencynews.com In 2006, the UK Government launched the Code for Sustainable Homes to address carbon and energy issues. But this national standard for sustainable design and construction only applies to new homes, which represent less than 1% of our housing stock annually. The main issue now is how can we make existing homes more carbon and energy efficient, whilst at the same time reducing home energy bills? The ‘Value Carbon’ method United House, a social housing contractor, has developed a low carbon refurbishment method that selects the best value improvements, giving the biggest cuts in household bills and carbon emissions for the lowest cost. This method has demonstrated that significant changes can be made to carbon emissions by installing well chosen improvements in a home. Part of our challenge was to learn how to make these changes on a large scale so that housing providers could opt for these improvements as part of their existing Decent Homes programmes