黑洞社区

Standardising retrofit works in privately owned properties is the only way to persuade homeowners to pay for the work, the chair of the National Retrofit Hub has said.

Lynn Sullivan (pictured) said categorising building types to bring down costs would be the only way to get economies of scale.

Speaking at today鈥檚 黑洞社区 the Future Commission conference in London, Sullivan said: 鈥淲e believe that if we can look at the stock in terms of the characterisation and open up new opportunities for economic propositions for privately owned stock, then that鈥檚 the only we can do it to get some level of standardisation and packaging to get economies of scale.鈥�

She added: 鈥淲e鈥檝e got to try and understand where the linkage is in order to make more of the standardisation to retrofit, because that鈥檚 the only way we鈥檙e going to bring costs down, because i don鈥檛 think any of us thinks that any government will pay for all privately owned stock to come up to net zero.鈥�

It comes two weeks after Rishi Sunak downgraded the government鈥檚 net zero goals to make around five million homes which would struggle to pay for energy efficiency retrofits exempt from a ban on gas boilers after 2035.

Sullivan also said there had been an 鈥渆volution of our definition of beauty鈥� in buildings due to an increased focus on energy efficiency.

She suggested that design aesthetics had gone on a 鈥渕assive red herring鈥� in the 20th century following the invention of air conditioning, and that it had 鈥渃ompletely skewed our aesthetic judgement鈥�.

She said: 鈥満诙瓷缜鴖 are much more subtly done now, with nicely integrated shading because that鈥檚 absolutely key to dealing with a warming climate and the health and wellbeing of occupants. So i do see that aesthetic judgement changing and that to me is very exciting.鈥�