A new paper co-authored by Jan Rosenow, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre on Innovation and Energy Demand (CIED), looks at evaluations of low carbon building technologies in the UK residential sector and identifies the policy implications of the gap between the predicted and actual impact of these technologies.
The article highlights that the so-called performance gap is an ongoing problem in the UK, reviewing some of the causes of this gap as well as making recommendations to policy makers on how best to address the issue.
The researchers argue for a set of high-level principles for evaluation, industry standards, programmes rewarding actual measured energy savings based on metered energy consumption (‘pay-for-performance’) and innovative retrofit programmes using performance guarantees (such as ‘Energiesprong’ in the Netherlands).
The study is a retrospective summary of six of the most recent grey literature evaluations of low carbon technologies in the UK residential sector carried out by a range of organisations, including the Energy Savings Trust.
Read the full paper.
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