Residential Retrofit

Chapter 4

The Retrofit for the Future competition was a response to the challenge laid down by the UK Government’s target to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80% by the year 2050. The competition sought retrofit strategies that might achieve very significant reductions in CO₂ emissions and primary energy consumption.

Three targets were set:

• 80% reduction in CO₂ compared to 1990 emissions
• CO₂ emissions limited to 17 kg/m²/yr [20 kg/m²/yr for PHPP]
• Primary energy limited to 115 kWh/m²/yr

These targets were extremely ambitious as prior to this programme only a few retrofit projects in the UK had ever claimed a similar level of energy efficiency. One such project, Grove Cottage (featured in this book) was shown to participants ...