It’s the time of year where we all sit back and take stock of what we’ve been up to. With energy efficiency continuing to hit the headlines, it’s been exciting for us to reflect on a busy year for Energiesprong UK – with big wins and valuable lessons learned alike. We see both as a success!
Here’s a short round-up of our favourite moments from 2022, as we continue in our quest to make a functioning, self-financing whole house retrofit sector a reality. With huge thanks to our colleagues, partners and funders who have made them possible.
It’s heartening to see the Energiesprong model grow in the UK. There are now 173 pilot homes using the approach, with a further ~1,500 in the pipeline.
This includes 8 projects with Notice to Proceed as part of the Mayor of London’s Retrofit Accelerator - Homes Innovation Partnership. Huge credit to our partners for the determination to get these schemes over the line at a time of rising costs and uncertainty – including breaking ground in Ealing!
We’re also now leading the innovative Interreg NWE-funded Mustbe0 project. It’s kickstarting the market for net zero energy (NZE) retrofits for apartment buildings with schemes across Europe, with 3 projects in the UK.
And - with the first Energiesprong new build project in Plymouth getting the green light as well as securing funding to test the Energiesprong model on non-trad buildings in Kent – we’re only going to see more homes benefitting from the approach.
We firmly believe that the retrofit sector will only be successful if it brings in new people, new ideas and new solutions. With this in mind, we ran our first hackathon back in February, which resulted in 5 new ideas for cracking the retrofit challenge.
Advertised widely, it welcomed 40+ attendees (more than 50% women) including architects, virtual reality students, and a former Vogue journalist. The winning teams showcased their solutions at Futurebuild 2022.
In November, we were excited to welcome two innovative UK suppliers to present at our Mustbe0 partner days in Germany. BowTie Construction and Ultrapanel showcased their new net-zero retrofit products - for energy pods and manufactured insulated panels respectively – to a wide European audience.
Ultrapanel and Langley, another new entrant to the retrofit sector, are also taking part in our Mustbe0 design competition to develop a new offsite multi-storey fabric system. Stay tuned for their progress!
After a quiet two years for seeing projects in person, our partners were champing at the bit to get back onsite and see some real-life examples of whole house retrofit.
With an ambition to make iterative and honest learning the industry standard, we were only too happy to oblige - from a factory visit to see Innovaré’s insulated panels being manufactured to a Netherlands study trip as part of the RAH-IP Collaboration Hub to get inspired by the originators of the Energiesprong model.
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In total, these trips helped almost 200 people get front row access to insights into what’s working, what’s not and what we need to do next to get to where we want to be.
While we’re on the topic of honest learning, we were delighted to launch our first performance report of 69 Energiesprong retrofitted properties in the UK. It revealed that they are having a massively reduced impact on the grid compared to local homes – using 70%+ less energy on average.
As performance is at the heart of the Energiesprong model, it’s important to dive deep into this data, so the report outlines where things are working as well as areas for improvement – including heat pump performance and resident engagement.
We all know that there’s still far to go in terms of delivering whole house retrofit schemes at scale and at the costs required. We hope that by sharing this learning openly and widely – as well as what our next steps are – we and our partners can play a part in speeding up this process.
We have an opportunity as a sector to change the way we retrofit to meet the scale, speed and cost required for the climate emergency and millions of people experiencing fuel poverty. But we need pioneering organisations to take the first steps.
Our new #RetrofitDisruptors campaign highlights how the organisations of the Mayor of London’s Retrofit Accelerator - Homes Innovation Partnership are working to unlock a functioning, self-financing market across the whole of the UK by shaking up the sector.
From collaborating with competitors and pioneering industrialisation to guaranteeing energy performance long-term, we’ve loved sharing how they are doing things differently.
Check out more of their insights, stories and calls to action: bit.ly/RetrofitDisruptors
Here’s to 2023 – may it be filled with more learning, more action and more energy behind one of the industry’s biggest opportunities to be a part of a better future. Wishing you and your loved ones a restful festive break!
