Article
Energy Performance in the Private Rented Sector
The UK Government recently launched a consultation on improving the energy performance of privately rented homes. 20% of homes in the UK are privately rented, so this sector will be crucial to reducing carbon emissions from the housing stock in general.
The consultation (https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/improving-the-energy-performance-of-privately-rented-homes) is encouraging, showing an intention to adopt a fabric first approach to improving performance of houses which will be crucial in the future as heating is electrified. Improving the thermal performance of the home means that less heat is required, providing the most assured long-term effects to ensure thermal comfort and affordability.
As a part of the consultation, and we believe a key step towards an effective fabric-first approach, the possibility of using the Heat Transfer Coefficient (HTC) of the dwelling as a performance standard is considered.
BTS are firm believers in the value of the HTC and are very happy to see it in the consultation. The HTC gives a measure of the performance of a building, which is the first key determinant in how much energy and cost is required to heat it. The HTC is calculated in all EPC assessments, but currently isn’t recorded or reported, this must be changed as soon as possible.
Given the evidence of a performance gap, whereby the thermal performance of buildings is typically different than the prediction, it’s also vital that we move towards measurement of HTCs. BTS’ SmartHTC provides a scalable and practical method for this transition to measured performance.
