Dacorum Borough Council

Dacorum Borough Council is one of many local authorities that have declared a climate emergency. In 2019, they made a pledge for themselves to become net zero as an organisation by 2030, in line with UK targets underpinned by the Paris Agreement¹.

Although wider carbon emissions are outside of their direct control, they have also pledged to support the entire borough, including housing stock, to reach net zero by 2050 by working alongside individuals, community groups, businesses and schools.

Their Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy and Action Plan is currently under development, but required more insight and data for them to pin down exact carbon emission targets and objectives. To define the best route to net zero, including learning what areas and homes are in most need of energy efficiency interventions and support to reduce carbon emissions, they needed a comprehensive report of their domestic housing stock.

Additionally, a large aspect of being able to reduce carbon emissions as a local authority is having the capability to fund the work required. By working on collating this data, Dacorum understood that this would help support them in many future funding applications as well as supporting residents with accessing funding themselves.

Dacorum Borough Council chose Energy Saving Trust to support their project and influence their climate emergency work to achieve significant carbon emission reductions in their domestic residential housing stock.

A team of Energy Saving Trust consultants and experts used Home Analytics, in conjunction with our SAP-based² calculation software – the Portfolio Energy Assessment Tool (PEAT) – to complete the following tasks:

• Benchmarked key attributes and energy efficiency characteristics of Dacorum housing stock against regional and national averages.
• Produced eligibility maps to support the targeted delivery and promotion of government funding schemes (e.g. Green Homes Grant.)
• Assessing the potential costs and savings of different building retrofit pathways to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.
• Modelling a series of uptake scenarios for energy efficiency improvements and low carbon heating from 2021 to 2050.
• Identifying opportunities and challenges for home improvements in Dacorum
• Providing tailored recommendations to help inform Dacorum’s climate change strategy and future decarbonisation efforts within the district.

A comprehensive report detailing the best ways for decarbonising residential buildings in Dacorum was created with stock energy characteristics and modelled data to inform Dacorum’s climate strategies. This included:

• A series of maps and charts comparing Dacorum’s housing stock to national trends
• A series of maps that identify low-income and able-to-pay areas which are likely to be eligible for the Local Authority Delivery Green Homes Grant.
• Multiple calculated scenarios for carbon reduction, including reaching mostly SAP band C, High ambition cost-effective measures and suitability for Solar PV / Solar water heating adoption.
• Key opportunities and challenges that Dacorum face, with a series of evidence-based recommendations.

As requested, we also created an interactive dashboard using Microsoft PowerBI which allows council users to easily analyse and explore Home Analytics data and PEAT outputs for their region.

While decarbonisation and climate change were the drivers for this project, our team of consultants frequently met with 6 to 8 council members who brought different areas of interest to the project, such as investment planning for council owned properties, monitoring andenforcement of minimum energy efficiency standards in the private rented sector and fuel poverty mitigation.

Our final report also included a ‘Roadmap to 2050’, which presented assumptions about uptake rates and accounts for the planned decarbonisation of the UK electricity grid to compare the effect of different pathways of retrofit approaches over the next 30 years.

1. The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 Parties at COP21 in Paris, France on 12 December 2015 and entered into force on 4 November 2016. Its goal is to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.
2. The Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) is the methodology used by the UK government to assess and compare the energy and environmental performance of dwellings.