The Future of Energy Efficiency

6 FEATURE

www.elmhurstenergy.co.uk

Stuart Fairlie, Managing Director

When coming up with the title for this year’s conference, the team at Elmhurst quickly identified the ‘Future of Energy Efficiency’ as a very appropriate name. Carbon emissions, fuel prices, net zero, heat pumps, hydrogen, carbon capture, fuel security and energy efficiency are seemingly never ‘not’ in the news. To me, times have changed and ‘energy efficiency’ is central to all ambitions whether at the global scale, as at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, and at the national, regional and local level of governments.

The clamour for ways to measure performance of buildings and their occupants' behaviour is absolutely front and centre of the debate. The great news that people often misunderstand is that the UK is blessed with all of the answers. We know how to measure the buildings as we have the relevant methodologies. Many ‘experts’ will argue over the way to do things and in our opinion this doesn’t always help. We always advocate that you can’t criticise a model for failing to deliver the exact fuel bill of the family or business running the building when it is based on ‘average’ occupancy patterns and standard times and temperatures. This is why after understanding the ‘asset’, we always need to provide the occupants with an ‘occupational’ assessment of the buildings, to predict what the fuel bill/emissions/energy use will be, whilst also being aware that this will not be correct either! But fear not, says I. We then need to use the metered data to help understand where any issues lie. It could simply be that we had an exceptionally cold winter, or that the occupants’ patterns changed, for example during COVID restrictions. If the underlying reason can’t be understood, experts can start diving into the detail: was a rogue immersion left on? Are heating programmers working correctly? Has some insulation been missed? etc.

This exploration into how to do this properly leads me nicely to our conference; we have some amazing speakers lined up who will cover all sorts of topics that will help us all achieve more energy efficient buildings. The morning session is really set up around the fuel supply to people’s homes and businesses and how a push is being made use to greener forms of energy. We are delighted to have Jan Rosenow (Regulatory Assistance Project) who will give his expert opinion on the Electrification of Heating, and to give balance we also have Martyn Bridges (Worcester Bosch) who will take us through the future of heating from the point of hydrogen and gas. Another part of the building process there is embodied carbon, and we are lucky to have Tom Scott (Construction Carbon) who will explain why it is vital that we understand that when we build or refurbish buildings, we will use products and materials and use a set amount of carbon. This particular topic is also hot on the political agenda, and an area that needs addressing. We have Chris Ricketts (Elmhurst Consultancy), who will highlight how to use measured energy performance to understand the building and its occupants, taking exciting new tools from academic research and using in real homes around the country. We are also excited to see John Palmer, a representative of DLUHC, deliver an update on the EPC Action Plan, which aims to build upon and improve all aspects of energy certificates. Liz Male, a very wellknown figure in our industry, is taking us through her vision of ‘how to build a sustainable market for green retrofit in 5 easy steps’, which I am sure will be incredibly insightful. The final session will be an update across the built environment focussing on the year ahead for non-domestic buildings, new build and retrofit of existing buildings headed up by the excellent managers from the relevant support teams here at Elmhurst.

If you're not coming to the conference, don't worry. These are the sorts of topics we will be talking about next year where you will be able to learn more about them.

So the scene is set; and it is vital that we now use the data from the energy assessments of buildings, to do something with it, so a neat connection is made between asset, occupation, measured energy and embodied carbon. As we have long stated, we need to use all these for all buildings, get the methodologies updated to be as accurate as we can, and then we can start to make good decisions.

Also, Government targets and polices need to be joined up and not sit in silos. The measurement and success needs to be clear. If fuel poverty is the KPI then use a cost based metric, if it’s net zero use carbon, and if it’s low energy then use these as the KPIs.

The future of energy efficiency is indeed very bright and this is only looking at 2022! We have a long way to go to net zero, but Elmhurst members remain central to the way to achieve this.

...we have some amazing speakers lined up who will cover all sorts of topics that will help us all achieve more energy efficient buildings.