The energy we don’t use…

Kate Millen - Associate Director, Environmental Engineer

There has been a great deal of noise in the media about energy recently.

The increase in the price cap for domestic energy bills has only just happened, but it seems likely that the effects will be far reaching and very serious for many people across the UK, with campaigners forecasting that millions of households will be pushed into fuel stress or fuel poverty. In response to this, the UK Government have now issued their Energy Strategy. The UK is to aim for energy security by generating more electricity from off shore wind turbines, hydrogen and nuclear power and by extracting more oil and gas from the North Sea; with the exception of offshore wind, these are all high cost and slow delivery sources, so as a response to an immediate cost shock, seem to be a strange set of objectives.

The imbalance in payments from the EU to Russia for oil and gas, compared to the value of their military aid to Ukraine, has been widely criticised in the Press but Russia has been using the threat of increasing prices or reducing supplies of their fossil fuels as a political gambit to keep us onside for many months. The economic cost to the EU of rejecting the Russian fuels could be ruinous – how can we square this circle?

The IPCC’s latest report on the current global response to Climate Change argues we’re not moving anywhere near fast enough to stop using fossil fuels, reduce energy demand and cut carbon emissions. What can any of us do in the face of such huge political, economic and strategic concerns?

What has not changed, is not in any doubt, is that the lowest cost and lowest carbon energy available to all of us is the energy we don’t use. Retrofit of the country’s buildings is not going to happen by Government decree. It will be one building at a time, one home at a time. Technically possible today, quicker and cheaper than a nuclear reactor, quieter than a wind turbine and within the control of each of us, developers, landlords, architects, engineers, builders, businesspeople and homeowners. We need to ignore the noise and get on with it, as fast as we possibly can.

Before and After of 70 Wilson

The existing 1980s office building and adjacent Grade II listed building have been refurbished and extended by astudio to create a highly efficient, future-proof office space with BREEAM Excellent rating based on low carbon standards