Introduced by the EU in 2007, EPCs provide information on a property’s energy usage, using a ranking system of A – (the most energy efficient) to G – (the least energy efficient) as well as suggesting methods to improve energy efficiency. To paint a picture of the task at hand, 71 percent of UK homes do not meet EPC standard C, the minimum requirement to bring buildings in line with net zero.

Open data and accuracy

While EPC data could prove to be a useful instrument in framing policy ideas centred around a green economic recovery, we should first assess the potential flaws in this data. According to a report by Spec, around 2.5 million EPCs could be wrong because of errors in measurement standards and practices. What’s more, the Property Technology solution states that 90 percent of EPCs lodged use simple averages or standardised values rather than actual measurements.

Another seemingly glaring error is the depth of inspection. If an assessor is unable to see the use of energy efficient measures, such as loft insulation, then the software used assumes an insulation level in line with when the property was built. Meaning, that for a house built over 100 years ago, zero insulation will be assumed, providing an inaccurate portrayal of housing efficiency.

EPC data is publicly available in England and Wales under a UK Open Government license v3.0 with the exception of address data which is provided under a Royal Mail Copyright Notice. Open data access to real-time EPC datasets can improve functionality and enable interoperability between other government owned databases as well as providing value to academia and businesses. The UK government’s ‘Action Plan’ released in September 2020, lays out plans for the creation of a new EPC register by the end of 2020, addressing issues of accuracy and openness while also moving towards EPC ratings that are more reflective of actual household energy use, an important move given the increased number of people working remotely.

A tool for framing policy

Across Europe, EPC data is being utilised for policy making and monitoring. Bulgaria, for example, set its national recovery strategy using EPC data. And, in a pilot scheme run by the Energy Efficient Mortgages Initiative, lenders will be offering lower interest rates on mortgages for both new build homes and renovations based on EPCs. KfW’s Environmental and Energy Efficiency Programme provides subsidies to building owners, including long-term loans with low interest rates and grants. The German development bank uses EPCs to determine the efficiency level of a household, rewarding higher efficiency levels with higher funding.

EPC data can be a critical metric in forming policy and shaping green initiatives. And, with domestic homes alone accounting for around 15 percent of UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, the data provides both public and private owners and tenants with vital information, legal certainty and incentives to improve their household energy efficiency. But, in order for the government to meet its commitment to net-zero by 2050, EPC data needs to be more accurate, reliable and open. 

Find out more

On Monday 16 November 2020, our team will be hosting a session to discuss how policy interventions can help local governments, cities and regions accelerate innovation and drive toward a net-zero economic recovery from Covid-19 at London Climate Action Week 2020. Their remarks will draw on the preliminary findings of our net-zero Covid-19 recovery programme, Project Cygnus. To find out more about the findings which will touch on some of the content elaborated above, sign up for free here.

For instance, CO2 concentrations will continue to rise, even in 2020: despite a 4-8% fall in global emissions since the start of the crisis, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is estimated to still increase this year. Carbon Dioxide is being emitted faster than natural sinks can absorb the carbon; in other words, the fall in emissions is too low to make a real difference. Take this comparison: the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere we would have expected to increase by 0.68% in 2020, compared to the 2019 global average. What is it projected to be this year with lockdown factored in? 0.60%. Looking at the figures, it becomes difficult to say that lockdown has actually been all that environmentally advantageous.

The truth is, fundamental requirements to achieve Net Zero are largely unchanged by the Covid-19 pandemic. We still need to make our homes way more energy efficient. We still need to find some way to reforest large parts of the countryside. We still need to transition away from petroleum-based fuels. Beyond the fact that the environmental impact of lockdown is not as great as reputed, shutting down great portions of society permanently was always going to be a poor solution to the climate crisis.

Having said all of that, there are lessons from lockdown that can be learned for environmentalists. Pre-crisis, commuting and business travel made up around a third of transport-related carbon emissions. While the impact of more people working at home isn’t wholly environmentally positive – a lot more energy is being consumed in homes, to take one big example of a negative impact of home-working on the environment – getting more people off the road has obviously been positive for the environment. Even if people do head back to the office in bigger numbers once the Covid-19 crisis is deemed to be at an end, whenever that might be, trying to limit the number of cars used in commuting would be advantageous. Pre-crisis, more than 50% of workers in Britain used a motor vehicle to commute, whereas only 4% cycled to work. Now that we have confirmed via experience that cutting down on commuting cars is positive, we can try and continue that trend.

Demonstrating that carbon emissions can come down if we actively try and cut them may be the lasting legacy of the lockdown from an environmental perspective. That in and of itself should be seen as a positive.

To drill down a little further, the impact thus far has fallen hardest on small to medium sized enterprises, and correspondingly, the owners and operators of smaller businesses and their employees.

Percentage of companies currently trading, paused trading or ceased trading as compared to the start of the Covid crisis:

Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/coronavirusandtheeconomicimpactsontheuk24september2020

In terms of how this has impacted employment, overall the picture is misleadingly comforting for the UK. The unemployment rate countrywide is 4.1% as of July 2020, which is astonishingly low, all things considering . Yes, furlough would have helped keep this number lower than it might have been, but still, 4% is healthier than you might imagine. The figures are impressive, so long as you dig down only generally and nationwide: unemployment was 3.85% at the end of 2019, so the impact of Covid so far on total unemployment is only to increase it by 0.3%. 76.5% of all people between 16 and 64 in the UK are in employment, which is actually 0.4% higher than this time last year.

The problem here comes when you drill down by age. For 18 to 24 year olds, employment decreased by 146,000 in Q2 of 2020, a record decrease for this age group in a single quarter. Employment numbers by age group is steady for almost every group apart from those under 25. This has me worried that this generation of young people are bearing the brunt of the Covid crisis economic fallout without this even being widely known, never mind something being done to ameliorate the problem.

We need small businesses and young people to be at the forefront of reversing the economic crisis – and if we think about this in sustainability terms, it becomes even more important. It will be small businesses in emerging sectors who will be the innovators in terms of making sure the economic recovery from the Covid crisis is green and sustainable; that 18 to 24 year old demographic will be the ones who in the near future will have to lead the charge toward net zero in the decades ahead.

This is a big problem that isn’t being talked about enough. How can we affect a green Covid recovery that helps small businesses as well as getting more young people back into employment? Project Cygnus is looking at ways to bring this all together.

Judging by the UK government’s first announcement on how to make the economic recovery from Covid as green as possible, we may have to scale down our immediate expectations. On July 22nd, a joint announcement between Number 10, the Department for Transport and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy was made, laying out the government’s £350 million plan to “cut emissions in heavy industry and drive economic recovery from coronavirus” (GOV.UK). Upon investigation, there are several things wrong with the plan.

The first one is obvious and doesn’t require any further digging: £350 million is absolutely nothing. The Lib Dems have laid out a £150 billion green Covid recovery package, and while it is light on specific details, the overall figure is a lot closer to what it will take to get this moving in the right direction. A £350 million pound plan might as well be a zero pound plan in the grand scheme of things.

Worse than that, some of the specific items in the £350 million plan have a very Dominic Cummings vibe about them. For instance, £15 million of the project is dedicated to a “New National Space Innovation Programme” which will “monitor climate change across the globe” and will look to protect local areas from the impacts of extreme weather by identifying changes in the environment. Often the government’s green Covid recovery package has the feel of something played around with in Number 10 and then hastily chucked out; a Special Advisor’s toy to have fun with as opposed to a serious plan for reaching difficult emissions targets.

Trying to be positive about some aspects of the green recovery plan, there is a large chunk set aside for Carbon Capture and Storage that could lead to something positive in the coming years. There is also part of the £350 million set aside for construction tech, which given retrofitting houses to make them more energy efficient needs to be part of any UK green recovery plan, is welcome. The money in there for R&D around electric cars is comforting. Yet again, one has to come back to the paltry amounts we’re talking about here: £10 million for the construction tech and £10 million for electric cars R&D are simply not serious amounts of investment in either important area.

One can try and be as forgiving as possible here and say that the £350 million plan announced in July is simply the government’s starter for ten, and much more will be coming down the pipeline. They will do more thinking and put more resource towards this once the UK-EU trade negotiations are no longer in the way, surely. I can only hope that this is the case.