Thread by @peterwsmith101

I had the dubious pleasure of developing a lit review on thermal comfort back in 2010 for DECC so perhaps less surprised than @Adam_Grant_Bell - a few less well set out thoughts in response

https://twitter.com/adam_grant_bell/status/1617538839957979139

First - the reason for the lit review was some top civil servants & Ministers couldn’t seem to get their pointy heads around the fact some folks wouldn’t be able to pay back energy saving measures though bill savings (oh and could be cut off if they didn’t!).

The findings presented a big challenge with the Green Deal’s ‘golden rule’ as theoretical consumption was assumed to be much higher than real energy use (true in most homes but particularly the poorest households).

Incidentally this continues to often be one of the biggest challenges in the accuracy (or otherwise) of the hypothetical savings on an EPC…anyway…I digress….

I’m no expert and have little evidence to back this up but I would imagine that since this lit review was carried out, more and more folks have been reducing their energy consumption. In the case of the poorest households to the point it can be dangerous/fatal.

This means household emissions have been falling anyway (essentially a non traded emission bonus), not really captured by analysts in climate/energy modelling for carbon budgets etc.

Once an EE intervention is made, instead of u starting to ‘iron in ur pants’, in fact it stabilises the previous reduction and locks it in, returning heat to the human as opposed to heating the streets/planet and/or creating some financial savings.

Critically, where financial savings are realised, in low income homes, they are then often spent much more quickly again (stimulating more economic activity compared to affluent households) and often in a much less carbon intensive way.

This means, low income households are healthier, they haven’t consumed any more energy than is already being assumed in macro climate modelling and they are much more likely to not spend any financial savings on high carbon intensive pursuits.

All of this is a long way of saying, #energyefficiency still vital to help tackle #fuelpoverty and reduce needless emissions from buildings!