Elsevier

Applied Energy

Volume 83, Issue 11, November 2006, Pages 1198-1209
Applied Energy

Can we improve the identification of cold homes for targeted home energy-efficiency improvements?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2006.01.007Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective

To investigate the extent to which homes with low indoor-temperatures can be identified from dwelling and household characteristics.

Design

Analysis of data from a national survey of dwellings, occupied by low-income households, scheduled for home energy-efficiency improvements.

Setting

Five urban areas of England: Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Southampton.

Methods

Half-hourly living-room temperatures were recorded for two to four weeks in dwellings over the winter periods November to April 2001–2002 and 2002–2003. Regression of indoor on outdoor temperatures was used to identify cold-homes in which standardized daytime living-room and/or nighttime bedroom-temperatures were <16 °C (when the outdoor temperature was 5 °C). Tabulation and logistic regression were used to examine the extent to which these cold-homes can be identified from dwelling and household characteristics.

Results

Overall, 21.0% of dwellings had standardized daytime living-room temperatures <16 °C, and 46.4% had standardized nighttime bedroom-temperatures below the same temperature. Standardized indoor-temperatures were influenced by a wide range of household and dwelling characteristics, but most strongly by the energy efficiency (SAP) rating and by standardized heating costs. However, even using these variables, along with other dwelling and household characteristics in a multi-variable prediction model, it would be necessary to target more than half of all dwellings in our sample to ensure at least 80% sensitivity for identifying dwellings with cold living-room temperatures. An even higher proportion would have to be targeted to ensure 80% sensitivity for identifying dwellings with cold-bedroom temperatures.

Conclusion

Property and household characteristics provide only limited potential for identifying dwellings where winter indoor temperatures are likely to be low, presumably because of the multiple influences on home heating, including personal choice and behaviour. This suggests that the highly selective targeting of energy-efficiency programmes is difficult to achieve if the primary aim is to identify dwellings with cold-indoor-temperatures.

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 RidleyLecturer
Tadj OreszczynProfessor
Sung H HongResearch Fellow
Sheffield Hallam University
Roger CritchleyVisiting Research Fellow
Jan GilbertsonResearch Fellow
Geoff GreenProfessor of Urban Policy
Mike GrimsleySenior Lecturer
Bemadette StiellResearch Associate
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Ben ArmstrongReader
Zaid ChalabiLecturer
Jack DowieProfessor
Shakoor HajatLecturer
Emma HutchinsonResearch Fellow
Megan LondonResearch

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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