Can we improve the identification of cold homes for targeted home energy-efficiency improvements?
Introduction
Poor energy-efficiency of housing is one of the principal factors contributing to fuel poverty [1], low winter indoor-temperatures [2], and cold related morbidity and mortality in Britain [3], [4]. It was thus welcome that in 2000 the UK government launched a new Home Energy-Efficiency Scheme for England, now known as Warm Front. To date, the scheme has funded the energy efficiency up-grading of over 600,000 dwellings, with apparent benefit to the health and well-being of many grant recipients [5].
Eligibility criteria for a Warm Front grant ensure that the scheme is targeted at low-income households. However, a 2003 National Audit Office report highlighted concerns that the scheme is not effective in reaching the very fuel-poor who might benefit from it most [6]. This has raised questions of whether targeting can be improved.
In 2001, a national evaluation of the health impacts of the Warm Front programme was initiated, part of which entailed the collection of detailed temperature data from a subset of dwellings in addition to information about each property and household. These measurements were made in dwellings which were awaiting or had recently received Warm Front improvements to the heating system, home insulation or both. In this paper, we present an analysis of the relationship between property and household characteristics on the one hand, and low indoor-temperatures on the other. Its results have bearing on the issue of whether cold-homes can be more effectively identified for inclusion in the Warm Front programme.
Section snippets
Methods
The Warm Front health-impact study included dwellings undergoing grant-funded improvements over the winters of 2001–2002 and 2002–2003 in five urban areas of England: namely Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Southampton. The only dwellings included in this paper are a subset of 470 dwellings which had both indoor-temperature measured and had not yet undergone heating-system improvements (i.e., ‘pre-improvement dwellings’).
Results
The distributions of standardized living room and bedroom temperatures for pre-heating system improvement dwellings are shown in Table 1. Overall, 97 (21.0%) of the 463 standardized living-room temperatures were lower than 16 °C, and 209 (46.4%) of the 450 standardized bedroom-temperatures were less than 16 °C. These proportions appear to be fairly high by comparison with previous research on fuel poverty [10].
Univariate tabulation and logistic regression showed that indoor temperatures were
Discussion
This analysis provides new insights into the targeting of grants for energy-efficiency improvements such as those offered as part of England’s Warm Front scheme. Its evidence suggests that even quite detailed information about a property and its occupants provides only a moderate indication of how cold the dwelling will be on cold days. In consequence, there appears to be no reliable way to identify the coldest dwellings (if that is an important aim of targeting) unless there is direct
Members of the Warm-Front Study Group
Bartlett School of Graduate Studies,University College London Ian Ridley Lecturer Tadj Oreszczyn Professor Sung H Hong Research Fellow Sheffield Hallam University Roger Critchley Visiting Research Fellow Jan Gilbertson Research Fellow Geoff Green Professor of Urban Policy Mike Grimsley Senior Lecturer Bemadette Stiell Research Associate London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Ben Armstrong Reader Zaid Chalabi Lecturer Jack Dowie Professor Shakoor Hajat Lecturer Emma Hutchinson Research Fellow Megan London Research
Acknowledgements
This study was undertaken as part of the national evaluation of the Warm Front Scheme (i.e., England’s home energy-efficiency scheme). It was supported by the Department of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Welsh Assembly under contract with the Energy-Saving Trust (EST contract number M47). The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the funding departments. Paul Wilkinson is supported by a Public Health Career Scientist Award
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2018, Energy PolicyCitation Excerpt :Five years later, some of them are still open, in particular those regarding the proper definition of energy poverty and the right methodology to obtain a comprehensive indicator. Although the most relevant contributions come from the UK (Boardman, 2012; Hills, 2011; Moore, 2012a; Guertler, 2012; Healy and Clinch, 2004; Hutchinson et al., 2006; Day et al., 2016) some other assessments can be found in the literature coming from other European countries as well (Bouzarovski et al., 2012; European Commission, 2015; Brunner et al., 2012; Fabbri, 2015; González-Eguino, 2015; Lacroix and Chaton, 2015; Santamouris et al., 2013; Scarpellini et al., 2015; Thomson and Snell, 2013; Tirado Herrero and Ürge Vorsatz, 2012). In addition, projects like EPEE, INSIGHT-E, or the EU Fuel Poverty Network and the recent report by Trinomics (Rademaekers, 2016) have also contributed significantly to the understanding of this complex issue.