Energy Efficiency Improvements Too Slow To Help With Cost Of Living Crisis?

An investigation has shown that newly proposed standards of energy efficiency in households would be difficult for a significant number of rental homes to meet.

The investigation, undertaken by the BBC across the UK, has shown that 6 out of 10 rental households across the UK would fail to meet newly proposed energy efficiency standards. 

Properties are given an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), rating its energy efficiency, with a grading scale of A (most efficient) to G (least efficient). A property is assessed on heating, windows and doors, and various structural factors, giving an estimate of the cost to heat and light the property, as well as what its carbon dioxide emissions will likely be. Currently, properties need to be rated E or higher for rental purposes, though landlords can apply to be exempt from the requirement if they’ve been shown to have spent at least £3500 making improvements trying to meet an E grade.

The proposals being considered by the UK government would require that any house intended to be put out to rent must meet at least a C grade standard of energy efficiency. Of the 1.9 million homes inspected that were built in the past five years, over one million failed to meet the standards of a C grade.

These higher standards are currently being considered both as a way to help offset the rising cost of living, and are part of the Clean Growth Strategy the government committed to in 2017. Studies have concluded that by following the recommendations to installing proper insulation, glazing, and heating, private tenants could be saving as much as a third on the energy bills.

However, the research also highlighted that a number of landlords would be unable to bring their rental properties up to these standards even in cases where they want to, with 1 in 20 cases being due to structural issues with the property.

Though the research shows that things are changing positively, with the percentage of properties failing to meet a C grade dropping by 19% since the 2013-17 period, global business advice organisation, Carbon Trust, says that this pace won’t be fast enough to reach net-zero carbon emission targets by 2050. Jonathan Winston, occupier support manager at Carbon Trust, said:
“14% of UK emissions arise from residences and homes. That means the reductions that need to be made there are very significant in order for the UK to meet its legally binding net zero target by 2050. The emissions are quite difficult to tackle, particularly around heating. There’s a major need to decarbonize our heating sources.”

The EPC requirements have received criticism about their simplicity, from climate groups and landlords. Jonathan said:
““As a measure of energy efficiency, EPC is the tool that we have, but it’s by no means a particularly perfect one. It’s a very simplified process of looking at buildings and energy efficiency.”

Some landlords have raised concerns about EPC standards, highlighting both the cost and the lack of clarity in the requirements. Chris Norris, Director of Policy at the National Residential Landlords Association, said:
““I think there’s an awful lot of misunderstanding and uncertainty about what landlords need to do in terms of energy efficiency.

“Landlords are running businesses, so every cost they have has to be met in some way. That means that a particular property might not be viable anymore – they might have to sell that property because they just can’t do the work and still let it at a rate that people can afford to live in. In other cases, landlords are going to have to look at how much they can afford to let the property for and it probably will mean that some rents on some properties are going to increase over time.

“Hopefully, we can avoid some of that by making the retrofit more tax efficient and getting a long enough lead time that landlords haven’t got to do it all at once.”

The UK wide investigation showed a large amount of difference in energy efficiency results between England and Wales: in Carmarthenshire, 73% of the properties inspected between 2018-22 failed to meet a C grade, with 5% deemed unable to ever be improved to that level. 34% of inspected homes also showed tenants using portable heaters in the home. The majority of advice for improving these properties, 39% of the overall advice, was geared towards improving insulation, with only 4% of the advice being about improving windows or doors.

Overall, there has been slow improvement, with the number of properties failing to meet a C grade in Carmarthenshire dropping from 86% in the 2013-17 period, to 73% in the 2018-22 period. 

Unfortunately, many are still struggling with heating their homes, and improvement is happening at too slow a pace to help those who will be most negatively affected by the rising energy costs, as well as being too slow to stop preventable health issues from living in mould and damp affected properties over a long period of time.