Coastal Housing, a Swansea based social landlord asked SHIFT Environment to develop an optimised retrofit strategy that would meet the Welsh Government target of Net Zero Carbon Housing. By interrogating Coastal Housing’s property data, the project also offered an indicative assessment of future retrofit interventions required in all social housing across Wales. It also explored potential steps in the development of a local supply chain for Wales.
An examination of the national database of EPC certificates, using Coastal’s Housing property information, identified 2,505 individual EPC ratings and the associated 6,793 individual improvement measures. To achieve net zero, the Welsh Government has an ambition to achieve a SAP 92 rating or better for its entire stock. For Coastal’s stock, our analysis identified that it was not possible to hit this target with the implementation of all the recommended home improvements on the Energy Performance Certificates. Nevertheless, we were able to identify solutions to this problem and provide an alternative route to net zero.
Interventions, outside of the EPC recommendations, have potential to improve the environmental performance of the housing stock and bring the stock closer to net zero. Through a combination of fabric improvements, renewables, new build energy efficiency and carefully selecting future heating technologies we were able to provide a roadmap to net zero carbon.
SHIFT Environment analysed the EPC costing of various scenarios involved with the retrofit solutions. This was combined with the associated SAP performance improvement over a 10-year period. The advantages and disadvantages of deep, staged and triggered retrofit approaches were assessed. With each retrofit solution, cost savings for Coastal Housing were estimated. The retrofit requirements for Coastal Housing were extrapolated to indicate future supply chain requirements across Wales. It was advised that Welsh Government should begin assessing existing supply chains, assess shortfalls, and begin a network development of local, skilled SMEs helping to prepare for future retrofit work.
“We worked with the SHIFT Environment team on an Optimised Retrofit programme funded by Welsh Government. The SHIFT team interrogated national databases to get the interventions and costs of retrofitting our stock and explored different approaches to achieving net zero carbon ambitions.” – Adam West, Programme Manager, Coastal Housing
SHIFT Environment were delighted to have worked with Coastal Housing on this project, which was funded by Welsh Government and successfully delivered an EPC Analysis of their stock. If you are interested in assessing your housing stock retrofit solutions, please contact us at [email protected] or on 07718 647117. See our carbon roadmap service for more information.