Making performance-led home retrofit a reality
Building consumer confidence in home energy upgrades by guaranteeing good outcomes
The UK has undoubtedly made solid progress on raising the energy performance of homes over the last 20 years. However, it remains the case that many people’s properties still require significant upgrade work to reduce their energy use and to decarbonise their heating.
We no longer have the luxury of time. There needs to be substantial progress on upgrading homes over the next five years to deliver on the government’s pressing targets to eradicate fuel poverty, cut energy bills, meet carbon budgets, and support the electrification of heat – a major infrastructure project in itself.
Tackling the delivery of these objectives in a way that assures the outcomes householders and the country need is being held back by three systemic issues:
- Lack of drivers for routine checks of actual home energy performance
- Policies assume ‘perfect’, modelled performance of home energy efficiency improvements
- Fragmented, siloed policy frameworks funding insulation and heat pump delivery
Assured heating bill savings for consumers
In order to ‘take people with us’ on the energy transition, the insulation, energy efficiency, and clean heat sectors need to work closely together to ensure we achieve reliably good, proven outcomes for our customers when retrofitting their homes.
Policy should encourage and enable routine checks of the actual in-use performance of a home’s fabric and heat pump system efficiency so consumers can be confident they will get the benefits intended. Such performance checks also actively support retrofit providers in introducing pledges or guarantees to deliver agreed outcomes, such as to ‘meet or beat’ the running costs of the previous fossil fuel heating system when upgrading insulation and switching to a heat pump, even in challenging circumstances when electricity prices are high.
There is broad consensus and support for this clean energy transition…We have to make this work financially for people. That is the absolute pre-condition of taking people with us…Think about heat pumps…take-up is up…but this only works if we can say to people, you can replace your boiler with a heat pump, and it won’t cost you more. If we’re saying to people we’re going to come along and charge you £1,000s extra, we’re just not going to take people with us on the transition. That is my strong view…That is why our Warm Homes Plan is important.
Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, 15 January 20251
In early February, MIMA will publish a detailed discussion paper: Making Performance-led Home Retrofit a Reality, making seven recommendations for UK policy and industry standards, including the upcoming Warm Homes Plan. The recommendations are geared towards building strong consumer trust and confidence in the home retrofit process as we transition to net-zero buildings over the next 25 years. It also discusses insulation’s important role within our proposed framework and the context of the electrification of home heating.
De-risking decarbonisation
If we, as an industry, can commit to checking, verifying, and increasingly guaranteeing aspects of building performance as the housing stock is decarbonised, we take many of the real or perceived risks of the transition off the shoulders of householders and onto ourselves. We can better assure customers of a positive retrofit experience and a great outcome, ensuring the energy savings and emissions reductions aimed for are realised, and people’s homes are comfortable, healthy, and safe to live in.
To achieve this, MIMA is calling for policy and standards to evolve so that by 2030:
- Measuring key aspects of home energy performance has become the norm. Underpinned by three ‘Ms’: measurement, metering, and monitoring of home energy performance, we want all UK households getting a home fabric and/or clean heat upgrade to be able to opt for a service from their retrofit provider which includes checks of the actual performance of the fabric and clean heating system, pre- and/or post-retrofit as appropriate, using accredited methods, technologies, and forms of monitoring.
- An ever-growing number of households can benefit from ‘Outcomes-Based Guarantees’. Fabric upgrades and clean heating systems working together in homes, alongside widespread and routine checks of their in-use performance, will enable and encourage more retrofit providers to innovate and come forward with market offerings we are calling Outcomes-Based Guarantees. These are optional contracts with customers whose terms assure or guarantee certain outcomes of a home upgrade, such as a specified heating system efficiency or agreed energy saving in kWh.
This approach to delivery is based on a simple set of guiding principles:
Sarah Kostense-Winterton, MIMA’s Executive Director, comments:
“MIMA’s vision is for every household getting their home’s fabric or heating system upgraded to be offered a form of Outcomes-Based Guarantee from their retrofit provider. An assurance and proof that retrofit work 'does what it says on the tin'.
"Fortunately, we are now in an era where an increasing number of relatively low-cost, low-disruption technologies and methods exist to measure how homes actually perform in terms of their heat demand, energy use, and emissions. This means retrofit providers and their customers no longer need to rely solely on modelled estimates which can differ significantly from measured results.
"MIMA is calling for such outcomes-focused targets and policies to be woven into the very fabric of the Warm Homes Plan, helping to de-risk the journey for the consumer and the government by creating low energy, low emissions homes.”
The report and summary will be available from Wednesday, 5th February.
For a copy of the report, please visit www.mima.info or scan the QR code:
For further details, please contact:
Sarah Kostense-Winterton, Executive Director
Email: sarah@mima.info
Tel: 020 7293 0870
- See: LinkedIn.
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