How to tackle climate change through Historic Buildings

In Nottingham we have responded to the climate crisis by setting an ambition to become the first carbon neutral city by 2028. To achieve this goal we need to consider how to achieve energy efficiency and mitigate climate change through the built environment including existing buildings as well as those that are currently being built.

About 35% of all buildings in Nottingham are over 100 years old. Therefore, historic buildings are a huge part of the solution in the Nottingham City Council’s Carbon Neutral Action Plan around carbon reduction the built environment. This guide provides advice on how you can meet the 2028 challenge through your historic home or business based on best practice advice from Historic England, the Institute of Historic Buildings and the Sustainable Traditional Building Alliance.

Context

Our built heritage makes Nottingham locally distinctive and an attractive place to live work and visit. The history of the city can be read within the built environment and its distinctive character and appearance adds special interest to the city acknowledged by the number of Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas.

Incremental changes and poor alterations harm the character and appearance of our historic built environment. For example, the details that create the character and appearance of a place include the materials used for walls, roofs and details, the windows and doors, boundary walls and architectural details. Removing or obscuring these details harms the character and appearance of our built heritage so within changes care should be taken to keep these important features.

There is not a contradiction between responding to the climate crisis and the conservation of our built heritage. Both can be achieved if care is taken when planning changes to historic buildings. The embodied energy contained within historic buildings means reuse and refurbishment cost far less carbon in the whole life of the building than within a new build property. The durability of historic buildings means that if retrofitted responsibly they will be more a third more efficient within their lifetime.

Key facts on the built environment of Nottingham: 

  • 11 Grade I listed buildings

  • 38 Grade II* listed buildings

  • 752 Grade II listed buildings

  • XX historic buildings in conservation areas

  • c. 50,000 buildings built before 1919

Space heating is the largest contributor to domestic CO2 emissions (25% of city’s overall emissions), with 294,000 tones of CO2 emitted for heating and hot water by properties in Nottingham. This demonstrates that the need for a transformation in the way we heat our homes, with 84% of households currently heated by gas, towards low carbon electric heat pumps and heat networks.

From 2005 to 2016, industry and commercial energy demand decreased by 35.5% and domestic by 26.3%. Though industry/commercial and domestic sector energy demand is decreasing, their gas use accounts for almost half of total energy consumption in Nottingham.

Space and process heating contributed approximately 30% of the City’s NOx concentrations. In the coming decade, Nottingham will have to reduce gas consumption, and replace its usage with lower carbon alternatives, as well as improve the efficiency of products, buildings and vehicles to reduce the demand for energy.

Nottingham’s current housing stock poses a key challenge. There are 135,000 homes in Nottingham (27,000 managed by Nottingham City Homes). Many of these were built pre-1980 and over 58.2% are below an EPC rating of C, which is the national target for all homes to be at by 2030. The Domestic Energy Efficiency and Fuel Poverty Subgroup (DEEFP) created the 2018 Fuel Poverty Strategy to tackle this challenge in a low carbon and sustainable approach, with the aim of providing affordable warmth and healthy homes for all citizens.

Significant improvements must be made to Nottingham’s houses, requiring a sustained level of household retrofits. In addition, there will be an estimated 9,400 new build homes by 2028, which should be built to the highest possible standards, be climate smart in their design and affordable to run. There is an opportunity to use work on NCH properties to create improvements in private sector housing.

Nottingham’s non-domestic properties also poses a challenge with 69% of the 8480 non-domestic properties below an EPC rating of C.

Significant new developments at the Boots site, Southside and Eastside Regenerations Zones, and the Eastcroft area of the Waterside Regeneration Zone, provide an opportunity to create more energy efficient and climate smart housing and commercial premises.

How we can reduce CO2 in historic buildings

  • Heating our buildings with low carbon and/or renewable heating and changing behaviours towards energy consumption

  • Monitoring and encouraging energy efficiency standards and improvements

  • Increasing the adoption of energy efficiency technologies and low-cost solutions in both commercial and domestic buildings

  • Minimising emissions in construction of new buildings and through procurement of technologies and materials.

Why we need to do this

  • Reducing energy bills for residents and local businesses

  • Upgrading the quality of housing stock, making homes healthier and creating new sustainable homes

  • Improving the quality of commercial premises, helping make more productive and better working environments

  • Improving air quality by reducing emissions of NOx from gas boilers.

  • Creating new skilled employment and commercial opportunities within the sustainable construction sector.

This is what we’ve done up to 2021

  • Over 40,000 energy efficiency measures in local homes

  • Nottingham City Homes have installed 14,221 boilers, 4140 loft installations and 12,588 cavity wall measures

  • A project called REMOURBAN has involved treating over 400 homes with energy saving measures to make them warmer and reduced energy bills

  • Delivered efficiencies within the District Heating Scheme network to enable new connections to take place

  • UK’s first Energiesprong retrofit on 27 homes, upgrading them with new outside walls and windows, a solar roof, and a state of the art heating system extending the District Heating Scheme.