Most of the homes in Stoke Newington were built during Victorian times. Victorian homes look great, were solidly built and are long lasting, but energy efficiency was not a consideration in the minds of the architects and builders back in the latter half of the 19th century – it wasn’t until 1965 that energy efficiency became a consideration in the building regulations. It’s worth remembering that back in the 60s, only about a quarter of homes had central heating (6.3 Central Heating Ownership, Domestic Energy Fact File 2008).
The Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has good data on electricity and gas consumption in homes around the UK. It’s available in chunks of about 2,000 homes known as Middle Layer Super Output Area (MLSOA – an area of the UK used in censuses).
This data shows that the average home in Stoke Newington consumes 3,600kWh of electricity and 15,700kWh of gas (MLSOA) electricity and gas estimates 2007: London Government office region). The electricity consumption generates 2.0 tonnes of CO2 and the gas consumption generates 3.2 tonnes giving a total carbon footprint for our homes of 5.2 tCO2 which is a little bit below the national average (convert energy into CO2 using the carbon factors found in Guidelines to Defra / DECC’s Greenhouse Gas Conversion Factors for Company Reporting).
Any home built before the 1930s will most likely have solid walls and these allow heat to pass through quite easily. The cavity in a cavity wall home does a reasonable job of reducing heat loss from a home, even when it’s uninsulated, but solid wall homes don’t have this useful gap between the warm interior and the cold N16 air.
Another way in which our homes lose energy is through having very poor air tightness. The gaps and cracks in the building’s fabric mean that cold air whistles in and the warm air is forced out. Reducing this unwanted ventilation while still allowing some controlled ventilation in order to keep the air in the home fresh is very important.
These two areas will be amongst the most significant if we are to reduce the CO2 emissions in our homes by 80% by 2050, however there is a multitude of other aspects of the home’s energy consumption which must be tackled also and we will be describing how each can be achieved in this blog in the coming months.