Background

The energy used in our homes is a major source of greenhouse gases. There is no pathway to Net Zero without decarbonising heat in domestic buildings. This requires existing fossil fuel heating systems to be replaced with ‘clean’ (electric) heating and new construction to have such systems from the outset.

Heat pumps are the best solution for the majority of houses, with heat networks playing an important role for flats/higher density areas. Direct electric systems (e.g. storage or panel heaters) may be an attractive solution for some due to their lower upfront costs but these risk leaving occupiers with much higher running costs. Photovoltaic panels (PV) and batteries also have a role to play, generating power locally and reducing pressures on the grid.

Despite national and devolved government targets for domestic heat decarbonisation, the UK lacks authoritative, transparent indicators of progress.

We will produce better measures of uptake by combining data from multiple sources. By enabling tracking at local authority levels and below, the data will provide new insights into barriers to or enablers of uptake, and into new social inequalities emerging in the transition.

Evidence of house price premiums for the different renewables technologies (‘green premiums’) could act as an important incentive for owners to take more rapid action but is currently very weak, especially in the UK context.

Combining our data on uptake with data on house sales, we will produce new evidence on how different combinations of technology are valued and how green premiums vary across the housing stock.

Aims and objectives

This project aims to support heat decarbonisation goals byproviding better evidence of the uptake of renewable technologies in UK housing and the varied impact of these on property values.

Funded by the ESRC, the work will be led by Nick Bailey, along with Michail Georgiou, David McArthur and Qunshan Zhao.

Objectives include:

· Developing new measures of renewables uptakethrough a novel combination of administrative and ‘smart’ data sources.

· Modelling variations in uptake in relation to property,social and locational characteristics, adding to knowledge on barriersto/enablers of uptake.

· Identifying ‘green premiums’ for different renewable technologies, estimating variations by property type/location and over time.

Existing work and next steps

This project builds on previous work on progress with improving energy efficiency in the UK housing stock and estimating the ‘green premiums’ associated with energy efficiency.

We have a Github page where further details on project plans and outputs will be posted.

Lead: Prof Nick Bailey

Research Team:

Michail Georgiou

David McArthur

Qunshan Zhao‍