Home Efficiency in the UK
Thanks to its ageing housing stock, the UK has a higher rate of home temperature loss than any other European country. In fact, 37% of homes in the UK were built before 1946.
In 2020, intelligent home climate management company tado° conducted a study across 80,000 UK homes, finding that a home with an indoor temperature of 20°C and an outside temperature of 0°C loses on average 3°C after five hours.
To put this into perspective, UK homes are losing heat three times faster than homes in Norway and Germany. The faster that homes lose warmth, the more energy goes to waste, amounting to the weighty statistic that nearly 15% of the UK’s total emissions comes from heating domestic homes. With energy prices increasing, energy inefficiency not only spikes our carbon footprint but also threatens our livelihoods, making homes harder and more expensive to heat.
If the country is set to be Net Zero by 2050, then we need to start insulating our housing stock and we need to do it fast.
But how do we understand these old buildings? And where do we start with retrofitting?
Why are UK homes energy inefficient?
The UK has 29 million homes and amongst them the oldest and least energy efficient housing stock in Europe.
Click ‘Learn more’ above to find out why UK homes are energy inefficient.
What is Retrofit?
To tackle the energy crisis, the UK must start with the energy crisis in our homes and on our doorsteps. But how?
We call it Retrofit, and it is a term that is commonly used when people refer to updating the energy efficiency of existing buildings - making them cheaper to heat, able to stay warmer for longer, and powered by renewable energy sources.
Click ‘Learn more’ above to read all about retrofit.