Reduce your property carbon emissions for under 5k

By how much can you reduce your home’s Co2 emissions with a home energy efficiency upgrade costing less than £5k?

Consumers are becoming increasingly more climate-conscious, and the majority are eager to reduce the amount of energy they use in their homes. However, many would say that what has put them off proceeding with the works on their home already is that they are confused about how best to go about a home energy efficiency upgrade. Typically, they have questions over:

What combination of measures is suitable for their home?
What would they cost and is it affordable?
What savings, both in terms of carbon and £’s saved on energy bills, could be achieved?
What is the simplest and most efficient way to go about the upgrade project?

But now, thanks to an excellent new free home energy efficiency web tool launched by Halifax bank Halifax Home Energy Saving Tool | Home Page, consumers can quickly and easily generate a detailed Energy Action Plan which is tailored to their property. This action plan will provide customers with exactly the information they need to be able to answer questions 1 and 2 above. The tool will also give customers an indicative measure of likely carbon savings and savings on energy bills they could achieve from their recommended energy upgrade (however NI consumers should be aware that the tool utilises base data relating only to properties in England and Wales rather than NI). And Refresh NI can then help by offering customers a One-Stop Shop service that delivers and manages all of the energy efficiency measures recommended in their Energy Action Plan.

In this article, we have looked at the Halifax Home Energy Saving Tool in detail and have then put 20 of the most commonly found house types through the tool. Using a standard budget for each house type, we have then analysed the results to show the average level of savings in Energy Bills and Carbon Emissions that can be achieved. We also look at what the average payback period in terms of savings in energy bills is for customers’ investment.

The Halifax Home Energy Saving Tool and Green Living Hub

Recently Halifax (part of Lloyds Banking Group) launched an excellent bespoke home energy efficiency web tool as part of their development of an online Green Living hub. This tool, called the Home Energy Saving Tool, was developed in conjunction with the Energy Saving Trust in England and Wales. The results provide an actionable package of optimum and cost-effective energy efficiency and renewable investment solutions for homeowners. The tool can be accessed here:

Halifax Home Energy Saving Tool | Home Page

The tool is really straight-forward to use and takes no more than 5-10 minutes to complete. All homeowners need to do is enter their Postcode and then answer a short survey consisting of 6 questions about the current energy efficiency make-up of their home. These questions relate to:

Property Type (e.g. Semi-detached house, flat etc)
Year of Build
Number of bedrooms
Type of Roof (e.g. insulated loft, converted roof space etc.)
Type of Wall Construction
Current Heating System

Once the customer has answered these questions, the tool will in the space of no more than 30 seconds generate a bespoke Energy Action Plan for the customer. The customer will then be able to select their available budget – and the plan will then, for the selected budget, set out:

A detailed itinerary of recommended energy efficiency measures that could be completed within the customer’s budget (and the respective estimated costs of each)
The current Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of the property and the potential improved EPC rating that could be achieved should the plan be implemented.
The estimated annual savings in reduced energy bills that the customer could achieve by implementing the plan.
The estimated annual carbon emission savings that the customer could realise if the plan is implemented.

What could homeowners typically achieve with an investment of £5k in a home energy efficiency upgrade?

We have taken 20 of the most commonly found property types and current energy efficiency make-up scenarios and ran them through the Halifax Home Energy Saving Tool.

As noted above, the Halifax tool allows customers to select the specific budget most suitable for them – however for the purposes of our analysis we have taken a standardised budget of £5,000. This is to demonstrate what benefits can be achieved even with only a relatively small investment.

The detailed results of our analysis have been set-out in table 2. Below – however our headline findings are:

Homeowners can reduce their annual carbon emissions by an average of 31% by making a £5,000 investment in a home energy efficiency upgrade. This equates to approx. 3.01 tonnes of Carbon saved per household per annum – this is roughly the equivalent of flying from London to Paris 43 times!
Homeowners can save an average of £334 per annum on their energy bills by making a £5,000 investment in a home energy efficiency upgrade.
On average – the payback period on a £5,000 home energy upgrade is 14 years.
£5,000 spent on home energy efficiency upgrades will on average improve a homeowner’s EPC rating by 2 positions (e.g. from E to C)

Of course, should a customer be able to spend more on their home energy efficiency upgrade – the potential annual carbon savings and energy bill savings which could be achieved are greater. The Home Energy Saver Tool allows you to easily check what greater energy savings are on offer with a larger investment by simply amending the budget for your action plan.

Refresh NI – A One-Stop Shop for Home-Energy Efficiency Upgrades

Consistently the feedback received from customers in Northern Ireland in relation to Energy Efficiency indicates that customers want to be able to engage a single point of contact to manage and deliver their energy efficiency works. Refresh NI can offer customers this “One-Stop Shop” solution.

We can provide customers with a single fixed-price quotation for the completion of all elements of their Home Energy Saving Action Plan – See our list of services to find out more.

The benefits of using Refresh as a One-Stop Shop Solution are:

Refresh will project manage and co-ordinate all elements of the installation.

Refresh will ensure the overall project is completed as quickly and efficiently as possible

Refresh will provide the customer with a single point of contact that the customer can engage with from survey through to completion.
Refresh provide greater value for money and the highest quality of workmanship.

If you would like to arrange a survey or find out more, please give us a call on 02890 993 485 or by e-mail at info@refreshni.com