Energy Conservation – Governments Home Insulation Scheme

The domestic housing market in the UK presents opportunity to achieve the 20% of carbon emissions that were targeted by the government.

Carbon emissions remained stable since the 1990s, houses accounted for about 30% of all the UK’s carbon emissions since 2004.

One f the rating schemes by the government was by the Economies rating. This is used mostly in the public sector of housing and only applies to new or refurnished properties. They measure the sustainability issues which energy efficiency is the one. This replaced the Governments code for sustainable homes in 2007.

With the Home Energy Conservation act of 1995 the local authorities were required to consider the different measure to improve the energy efficiency of all residential homes in their areas. Though they were not required to actually implement any measures. They must provide free advice on energy conservation and conduct some home visits, by targeting those in the social housing and fuel poor.

In 2005 the Select committee on environmental audit voiced their concern that there was a lack of funding for research and developing the sustainable construction methods to help with the building research establishment.

Even if all the houses became zero carbon by the year 2016 the energy efficiency with the remaining of houses would need to be addressed.

The building regulations of the energy efficiency requirements are:

• 0.35 for walls
• 0.25 for floors
• 0.20 or 0.25 for pitched roofs (depending on the construction)
• 0.16 for flat roofs
• 2.2 for metal framed doors and windows
• 2.0 for other doors and windows
• The limit on window area was raised again to 25%