Research aims to up the pace of green home makeovers

The daunting task of renovating 12,500 homes a week for the next 40 years is to be the subject of a major new £3m research project designed to establish whether mass produced building technologies could improve the efficiency of Britain's cold and draughty housing stock.

The project, which is being supported by the Energy Technology Institute (ETI) and a consortium of businesses, including building consultancy BRE, energy firm EDF Energy and property giant Peabody, will address how best to undertake an unprecedented nationwide green retrofitting programme.

According to government figures, the vast majority of the UK's 26 million homes will still be in use in 2050, meaning that huge energy efficiency improvements are required across the housing stock if the country is to have any chance of meeting its goal of cutting carbon emissions 80 per cent by mid-century.

Paul Morrell, chief construction adviser at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: "It would be easy to be daunted by the challenge of having to treat 26 million homes for improved energy efficiency by 2050 – 12,500 a week, every week, even if we take the full 40 years.

"This is way beyond the scale of anything attempted before and it calls for a response from the industry that addresses that scale while acknowledging that, to its occupier, every home is uniquely valuable."

The ETI project will aim to address that challenge by researching whether the mass production and mass customisation of new building technologies could be used to bring down the cost off retrofitting and energy efficiency improvements more attractive to homeowners.

"The main aim is to see if the mass customisation of vehicles that happened in the auto industry can be repeated in the building industry," explained a spokesman for the ETI.

On a practical level, the two-year project will also aim to develop a modelling system that allows building firms to run what-if scenarios for a wide range of different UK house types, allowing them to quickly work out how best to improve the building's energy efficiency.

"The research team will do an audit of what approaches could work," explained the spokesman. "In particular it will look at areas that are common to all homes where mass production could work – that would include things like windows, roofs and house fittings."

Dr David Clarke, chief executive at the ETI, said the project would also analyse how the building industry supply chain needs to evolve in preparation for the mass rollout of energy efficiency makeovers.

"Persuading consumers to take-up refurbishment and technology retrofit opportunities requires us to address the challenge of creating supply chains and delivery routes which consumers trust and which they consider affordable," he said. "With the majority of today's 26 million dwellings expected to still be in use by 2050, the outputs from this ambitious project are absolutely critical to understanding how we can help meet the CO2 reduction targets as set out in the Climate Change Act."