Why Retrofit?

The Scottish Government has set targets for 2032 for the residential building sector, including:

80% of domestic buildings heat supplied using low carbon technologies
Homes insulated to "maximum appropriate level", which will result in a 6% reduction in heating demand

To achieve these targets, the housing sector presents some unique challenges. Currently, heating alone accounts for 53% of Scotland's total energy demands. To add to this, 80% of Scotland's building stock in 2050 has already been built. With only 2% of Scotland's homes heated with low carbon technologies and such a large energy demand from buildings, there is a requirement for large scale residential retrofit. Residential homes – and the people who live in them – are the core of Scotland's energy system and it is vital to understand and improve the current building stock.

Energy demand in Scotland from heat

So what is Retrofit?

Our definition of retrofitting is fitting physical measures to an existing building, such as insulation, to reduce the amount of energy it consumes. When it comes to applying this, there are several options that can be considered. For example, we can apply low carbon heat technologies to a building, such as a heat pump, shown in the photo to the left.

We could also apply a 'shallow' retrofit to a building, where only insulation measures are applied. This, combined with low carbon heat technologies, generally represent what currently happens today, and forms a large part of the Scottish Government's energy efficiency strategy moving towards 2032.

Aside from this, we could also apply a 'deep' retrofit to a property, shown below right. As the name suggests, this method goes much further towards altering the characteristics of a building to reduce energy consumption. Aspects that can be modified include fabric, ventilation, heating systems, air tightness and even the renewable capacity of a building. Deep retrofits tend to be much more costly, but can result in a significantly reduced energy consumption.