A detailed analysis of the historical role of energy efficiency in reducing carbon emissions from the UK housing stock

Panel: Panel 2. Comfort and energy use in buildings

Author:
Les Shorrock, Building Research Establishment Ltd.

Abstract

In the United Kingdom efforts to reduce energy use, and hence carbon emissions, which have become the main motivating factor more recently, began in the early 1970s amid concerns about the security of energy supplies prompted by the oil crisis. This paper examines the success of those efforts for the largest energy-use sector in the United Kingdom; the housing stock, or domestic sector. It uses a decomposition analysis to establish the effect of individual factors.

The analysis reveals that the 11.9 MtC/year reduction in carbon emissions between 1970 and 2001 can be explained by (a) increases due to household growth and rising levels of service, outweighed by (b) reductions related to improved thermal insulation, improved heating efficiency, changes in electricity generation, the changing fuel mix and variations in external temperatures. The results indicate that without the energy efficiency improvements that have been introduced since 1970 carbon emissions from this sector would have increased.

The changes have also been examined within three individual decades; the seventies, the eighties and the nineties. The patterns seen in these results suggest that continued reductions of carbon emissions will be more difficult to achieve in the first decade of the 21st century unless efforts to accelerate energy efficiency improvements are significantly stepped up from the rates seen in the nineties.