Loughborough University academics will be joining a group of the UK's leading energy experts in London on Friday 15 March to consider pressing challenges and questions about making the UK’s homes more energy efficient.  Given the recent launch of the Green Deal, the Government flagship scheme which finances energy-efficiency improvements, this event is extremely timely.

Over one third of the UK’s housing stock poses a challenge to reducing carbon emissions in line with binding international agreements and UK government targets.  These solid-wall dwellings, typically built prior to the 1930s are often described as ‘hard to heat, hard to treat’ and are responsible for about 50% of total UK domestic sector carbon emissions.  To improve the energy efficiency of these dwellings, we need technological solutions that appeal to householders and are easy to retrofit.  These issues have been investigated in Project CALEBRE (Consumer-Appealing Low Energy technologies for Building REtrofitting), one of the largest national research projects to address the domestic refurbishment challenge.

Key findings of Project CALEBRE will be presented at a breakfast briefing at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Savoy Place, London on 15 March, to support refurbishment practices, policy and future research.  The event will see the launch of the CALEBRE Briefing Notes, a set of summary documents that present key findings that include the following:

• Householder perspectives (appetite for improvement, and tolerance for change)
• Heat pumps for ease of retrofit
• Achieving higher levels of airtightness in existing dwellings - how difficult is this?
• Ventilation Heat Recovery systems and airtightness
• Does the order of retrofit matter for energy and carbon reduction?
• Advanced technologies for retrofit
• Mapping occupancy and energy use in homes
• Business case modelling for mass manufacturing

Speakers at the event include Professor Dennis Loveday, School of Civil & Building Engineering, Loughborough University and CALEBRE’s Principal Investigator; Steven Jones, The Department of Energy and Climate Change’s Team Leader, Green Deal Measures and Installers; and Hywel Davies, Technical Director, The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers.  The event will provide an excellent opportunity to network with policy makers, Green Deal providers and installers, consumer groups, housing associations, professionals involved in refurbishment, and academics. 

The breakfast briefing is free to attend.  Guests can register and find out more about Project CALEBRE on the event website.

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