Decarbonising heat in buildings is widely recognised as a key challenge in the delivery of net zero carbon emissions in the UK. However, the interactions between various initiatives and measures, including energy efficiency, changing heating systems and wider decarbonisation of supply are complex.
A tool is necessary for landlords to easily assess the relative merits of different interventions across their housing portfolio. Some tools already exist which may provide some of the functionality, however existing housing stock tools do not relate the impacts of energy saving measures to the wider energy networks. This project is taking a new approach by developing where possible the Pathfinder modelling environment further to a dispersed housing stock, linking stock analysis and stock performance to the energy system.
Benefits
This project will deliver a toolset for social housing landlords and local authorities to use before rolling it out as part of the existing Local Area Energy Planning (LAEP) strategy to support the energy transition. This will enable landlords and local authorities to make informed decisions regarding decarbonisation of their housing stock; this has the potential to lower energy bills and carbon emissions than could otherwise be delivered. Depending on how landlords choose to implement changes to their housing stock, they could potentially pass any realised monetary savings onto their tenants.
Learnings
Outcomes
The deliverables of the project were:
- A report (issued on 17 April) detailing the outputs of Phase 1 and 2:
- The requirements and specification of the housing stock decarbonisation toolkit
- Use case illustrations and user journey workflow
- Summaries of our findings from reviewing National Housing Association policy and advice documents, and from reviewing other housing stock decarbonisation tools
- The housing stock decarbonisation toolkit, in MS Excel incorporating user guidance and a simple front-page user interface and customisable output dashboard.
- Handover training session and follow-up call
The toolkit should be useful in engaging other housing associations to understand their future energy use and could lead to many further projects. As housing association data is likely to need ‘cleaning’ (for example dealing with missing data and other low quality data issues), and the toolkit creates a new use case of high-level decarbonisation strategy comparison, we expect it is beneficial for LCP Delta to be engaged and work closely with any initial new housing associations using this toolkit. This will ensure the data inputs are processed correctly and that new users understand the toolkit’s intended uses. Once an established process for on-boarding housing associations with the toolkit has been developed, WWU can undertake this fully more easily.
Lessons Learnt
A key challenge to this project was that there were very few strong opinions from the project partners (ECC) on the form that the toolkit should take. This contributed to project delivery delays as LCP Delta then needed to develop alternative concepts and choices to help stimulate feedback. Future projects could improve upon this by WWU and any third parties spending some time reaching a consensus on the requirements for the project prior to the engagement of the consultancy.
A key learning outcome is that in the development of complex analysis tools, plenty of time should be allocated to allow the end-users to trial the tool and give feedback, and for revision and calibration of the tool in response to this feedback. Iterative improvement of the tool was not part of this project, and so the developed tool is a ‘beta’ product that we expect to require further revision in a future project. Further development will enhance usability in light of better knowledge of the use case of the tool, and ensure the tool always outputs high quality results for the wide variety of input values that can be set.
Another lesson for future projects is that discussion of data sharing agreements should be initiated as early as possible, as this delayed receipt of certain data for this project. To help this, expectations over what data is shared, data cleaning steps that are needed, and the capability of each party to do this, should be set as early as possible.
