Reducing CO2 emissions through refurbishment of UK housing

Recent research by the Tyndall Centre in the UK has suggested that a 70% reduction in CO2 emissions will be required by 2030 to mitigate the worst impacts of global climate change. In the UK, approximately 30% of CO2 emissions are attributable to domestic buildings. Of the UK housing stock that will be present in 2030, 80% will have been constructed before 2005. Consequently, refurbishment of existing housing is likely to strongly influence whether these emissions reduction targets are met. This paper catalogues interim research outcomes from a research project (TARBASE) whose aim is to identify technological pathways for delivering a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions of existing UK buildings by 2030. This investigation describes the approach as applied to the domestic sector. The approach taken was to describe a series of domestic building variants, chosen due to their prominence in the stock as a whole and also by their ability when taken together to describe the range of construction methods found in UK housing. Technological interventions, grouped by building fabric, ventilation, appliances and on-site micro-generation (of both heat and power) as applied to the building variants were investigated. Their applicability was determined with respect to energy and CO2 emission savings. The interdependence of the technological interventions was evaluated allowing a series of intervention sets to be depicted for each variant.