Indoor
Rethinking retrofit: how to secure a low-carbon future without sacrificing air quality Insulating the UK’s housing stock is a crucial component of the nation’s net zero ambitions, but we risk doing more damage to the environment and the air we breathe unless we rethink how we retrofit, discovers Chloe Coules.
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etrofitting the 29 million existing homes in the UK plays a significant role in the government’s plans to achieve net zero by 2050, with energy use in homes accounting for around 14% of UK greenhouse gas emissions according to the Committee on Climate Change. The benefits of retrofitting are indisputable - better insulation means that we need to use less energy to heat our homes, helping to cut our carbon emissions and electricity bills. However, there is concern from indoor air quality experts that the way we are insulating our houses is causing more damage to the environment and risks leaving residents exposed to
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dangerous pollutants. Architect and environmental consultant, Tom Woolley, explains that there is an assumption within the construction sector that you can use any insulation any way you like without incurring risk, but he argues that leaves homeowners in a disastrous situation. He is concerned by the recent waves of protests calling for mass insulation in the UK without stipulating what kind of materials should be used: ‘You cannot just call for buildings to be insulated, you have to say they have to be insulated properly, otherwise you could be making the situation worse.’ But why can insulation be bad news for our indoor environments, and how can we reach net zero without putting
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our health in danger? Hazardous homes Synthetic insulation is the most common product used to improve a home’s energy efficiency in the UK, but it can be a dangerous source of hazardous emissions. Most people know the risks of asbestos, a type of insulation that is now illegal in Europe and still leads to 13 deaths in the UK every day, but what they don’t know is that most of the market-leading synthetic insulations can also pose serious risks for our health. Mineral and glass fibre insulation, commonly known as glass wool,
