Low Carbon Homes

Low Carbon Homes

One quarter of our greenhouse gas emissions come from home energy use. At the same time, one in three Scottish households are fuel poor. Tackling our leaky, damp homes will cut emissions, tackle fuel poverty, cut fuel bills and boost green jobs.

While building regulations for new houses are improving, they are only a tiny proportion of the bulding stock. 85% of the homes we have today, will still be lived in by 2080 – so we need to make all our homes low carbon.

WWF Scotland believes that Scotland must increase the scale and pace of home energy improvements. We need an ambitious national retrofit programme which aims to deliver at least a 42% reduction in emissions from the housing sector. It should be a balanced package which combines neighbourhood approaches, attractive finance, quality advice, all backed up by regulation.

What is WWF doing to make it happen?
WWF has started up the Existing Homes Alliance Scotland to join forces with health, fuel poverty, building and housing organisations to urge government to do more to make our homes warm homes.

WWF recently published a report Maximising the Minimum, which explores the options for introducing such standards and how it can be done effectively, fairly and with least burden to the homeowner and government.

We helped influence the government home insulation neighbourhood schemes, taking a street by street, house by house approach, offering free insulation to all. Our conference on street by street programmes sets out best practice recommendations for future schemes.

We are working to ensure that UK programmes like the Green Deal will work for Scotland’s different houses and weather conditions.

We work with local communities such as Sustainable Uist to make sure their green retrofit know-how is made available to other communities and government programmes.