Elmhurst's message to the Committee on Climate Change

The heart of our message to the committee is:

• A clear road map with milestones to achieve the Clean Growth Strategy targets
• Focus on the 98% of homes that are not ‘new build’
• Raise Awareness – Using existing tools, and self-service tools such as Elmhurst’s Green Check, homeowners should be encouraged to understand their property and the benefits that can be achieved by making low cost improvements.
• Launch a national home retrofit programme which includes focus on the large and uncharted owner occupied sector, as well as rental and those in fuel poverty.
• Increase the trigger points for an EPC to ensure that the estimate 14 million homes without one are understood allowing homeowners and policy makers to focus their attention.
• Guidance and support – Using the established concepts of PAS 2035 provide a government funded Retrofit Plan for very poor performing home to ;
  • To manage what each property needs
  • To agree with the homeowner desired outcomes in an independent manner
  • To predict cost and carbon savings from improvements
  • To ensure quality design and implementation of all measure(s)
• Incentives – provide financial incentives to homeowners with removal of VAT on all energy efficiency projects, grants and incentives for those most in need. Reward homeowners with the best performing home with stamp duty and council tax reductions.
• Provide energy efficiency information on both the home and how it is occupied
• Learn from the food industry when it comes to presenting energy efficiency with its various, sometimes conflicting, metrics – carbon (Co2), cost (£) and energy (kWh).
• Focus and invest in the methodologies to make them as close to the truth as possible.
• Close the loopholes in regulation, such as extended transition periods, that perpetuate the ‘performance gap’
• Reduce the validity period of Energy Certificates to three years to ensure the information reflects the current condition of the property, the latest innovation in technology and up-to-date pricing information.
• Assure the quality of energy assessments undertaken for planning and building regulations compliance
• Design all policy around whole house calculations, assessing the asset, with occupation and condition as part of finding out the right energy efficiency measures for the right people in the right home (PAS2035)