Photograph: Frank Hanswijk
A group of housing associations led by the National Housing Federation (NHF) has teamed up with the Department of Energy and Climate Change to bid for £7.8m in EU funding to emulate an innovative scheme in the Netherlands that gives social housing sustainable low carbon retrofits – with an emphasis on style and offsite solutions.
In the Netherlands, contractors including BAM are participating in the Energiesprong, or Energy Leap programme, which wraps the homes in insulated bolt-on panels.
According to a report in The Guardian, the houses are also given new clip-on roofs that incorporate solar PV panels, while heat pumps, hot water storage tanks and ventilation units are stored in garden sheds – allowing ease of access for ongoing maintenance.
The first pilot projects cost around €130,000 per home, but the programme aims to reduce that to €40,000 once economies of scale are achieved.
In the Netherlands, the government-run scheme has ambitions to retrofit 111,000 new homes, aiming to bring them to zero carbon status. The government offers contractors 30-year maintenance contracts, but in return they have to offer:
- an insurance backed energy performance guarantee
- a 10-day delivery timetable of all work
- affordability, with the investment financed by the resulting guaranteed energy cost saving
- aesthetic attractiveness, improving residents’ quality of life and the appearance of the house.
"The goal for the UK, which the Dutch are on target to achieve, is to get the costs down to something in the region of €40,000 per unit for a terraced house. Furthermore, we expect to see a higher energy saving level at the lower cost once economies of scale are realised."
Steve Cole, NHF
A “social bank” lends the upfront capital, which is then parceled out in loans to housing associations. These then bill their tenants for their rent and energy bills combined, until the debt is repaid.
According to The Guardian, the initiative led to a “reindustrialisation of the Dutch building sector, with construction companies taking 3D scans of houses to offer factory-produced refurbishments tailored to each house’s dimensions”.
BAM director Joost Nelis told the paper: “We have to think like a manufacturer. We want to shrink the garden power units like Apple did the iPad.”
The NHF’s project coordinator Steve Cole explained the concept in a blog posted on the UK Green Building Council’s website.
He explained that the NHF-led group is now leading a joint bid to the EU’s Horizon 2020 funding programme with their counterparts in France (USH) and the Netherlands (AEDAS) to expand the programme in all three countries.
The aim is for both the UK and France to have 100,000 improvement deals in place by January 2018, with the first step being to establish an independent “Energiesprong” team in the market, which would help housing associations and contractors move the market in the right direction.
Cole wrote: “The goal for the UK, which the Dutch are on target to achieve, is to get the costs down to something in the region of €40,000 per unit for a terraced house. Furthermore, we expect to see a higher energy saving level at the lower cost once economies of scale are realised and any teething problems are worked through.
“Crucially, the ability to deliver deep retrofit at scale via a single intervention rather than via a series of more piecemeal actions (eg a boiler replacement one year, new windows five years later) doesn’t only support landlords. Residents are not only able to live in more energy efficient homes, reducing the risk of fuel poverty, but there is minimum disruption to their lives.
“Energiesprong stipulates completion of all works within 10 days with the residents in the property for most of the time. That’s 10 days every 30 years. And with the installations moved so that they are accessible from the outside of the house, the contractor can service it without the occupant ever having to be home.
“Compare that to the cumulative disruption currently caused by insulating, replacing windows, repairing roofing, annual servicing of boilers, etc. and the saving is huge.”
As well as DECC, the NHF is also working with the Greater London Authority and the financial intermediary The Housing Finance Corporation.
