More energy-efficient homes in London

I am a retired engineer. 

We are now zero carbon in a 200m2 maisonette in a 1850s Victorian terrace. We replaced our old gas boiler with a 40kWh  Tepeo ZEB, zero emission electric boiler that is a modern day storage heater or thermal battery. It heats up on Octopus-Go tarrif of 9p/kWh between 00:30H and 04:30H  so just a little more costly to run than gas. Our hot water tank also heats up at the same time. We have installed a 12kWh house battery that supports our daily electricity needs for lighting, cooking, washing machine etc. It too charges on the same tarrif. Our daily cost for power is £6 when temperature outside is above 5degC. About £10 when closer to zero DegC.

We have rain water harvesting suppling toilet cisterns and washing machine. Annual water bill is £220.

The tech is out there folks. 

My biggest practical concern is where to get impartial and accurate advice and then to find reliable and efficient contractors. At the moment I hardly need to use a fridge - my kitchen is so cold. Without a full kitchen refit external cladding is the only answer.

Surely planning permission should be the same across London. I viewed a Sutton Council project on the St Helier estate with external cladding and an added porch to accommodate a heat pump. Could this sort of thing receive blanket approval across the GLA?

As pensioners on a limited income, we could not pay for a greener type of heating for our house (we have a fairly recent gas boiler). We would like to, but the cost makes it out of the question. The only way we could upgrade would be with a very generous grant. I suspect many other people are in the same boat.

Would Westminster City Council, or any other council, really be able to fit the old Victorian Peabody blocks with the plumbing from a district heating system? Is this realistic?   What would make a huge difference to my home would be to have insulation fitted in every room, and triple glazing. These should double up as acoustic insulation, making the flat much much healthier to live in. All rooms in my flat are on external walls. One is also on the staircase wall, and the staircase is open to the air. The wall between my flat and the staircase is not as thick as the external walls, and is not insulated. We now do have dry lining on that wall, so it no longer gets mouldy.  The other walls are all cold all winter, with some mould.  The landlord installed new windows on the estate a few years ago. The wood the frames and surrounds are made of is not the same as the old Victorian window frames. It is a wood that is less of an insulator, so we now have colder window frames, with condensation and mould on them. We did not have this with the old windows. And when they did the installation, the workers did not put enough foam insulation around the windows, so now we have more mould than before, and higher heating bills.   The mould is nothing like as bad as that seen on ITV news last week, on a south London Peabody estate, but you can smell it, and it needs constant vigilance to keep it in check.  
So, for us, a major difference to our health and heating costs would be interior insulation and another glazing layer.   As the landlord is never going to go to the expense of insulating the tiny cavities in the external walls, or putting it on the outside of the building (conservation area, anyway).  I would like to have an alternatively powered 'power station' battery, and flexible solar panels and vibration generators to feed power to it, to hang outside my windows.

I have already applied to have a heat pump fitted in my home by Octopus Energy. I was not allowed to as a result of the noise regulations saying that the pump would be 4dB too noisy (46dB rather than 42dB). Heat pumps are much quieter than anything else at all that goes on around my house and I think these regulations are far, far too stringent. Planning rules for fitting heat pumps should be relaxed as soon as possible. 

I imagine, If I was doing a major restoration on a crumbling Victorian house and had a big bank balance I would insulate then put in air source heat pumps with electrical heating as a top up. Or if I was doing a loft conversion maybe insulation and solar with that. The physics of heat pumps is sound and their energy efficiency is superb. A water tank is essential and electric top up for bit extra radiator temperature more than 50 deg C and using the shower a lot. I have stayed in a house with this setup and it was perfect. There seems to be a lot of mistrust about this technology but it’s not the tech that’s the problem. It may not fit your current circumstances - mine neither, but I think one of the main obstacles may be a shortage of reliable and affordable heat pump expert installers and designers. I have heard there’s a lot of resistance from traders who trained on gas boilers and really believe in gas. It seems a bit pioneering to take this on. I don’t think you would unless you wanted to have a more sustainable lifestyle and have enough money.

Make installing a heat pump permitted development. Currently they are only permitted development if installed a meter from a boundary. This is not possible in a 4 meter wide terrace house. Permission does get granted for them in terrace houses so why not just allow it to be done if certain conditions are met. Currently I have to pay a lot for a noise survey to be done, why should I pay this when I’m already spending my money contributing to council climate goals. 

No space for anything but solar - which could be the case for most Londoners. 

For almost 17 years we have had the pleasure of living in an energy inefficient Thatcher era built 1-bed terrace house in Lewisham. To be cooler and able to breath in summer or not wrapped in blankets in order not to freeze in winter, it would probably be more cost effective to knock down and rebuild the place as it doesn't encompass enough space for a heat pump, or a battery and TfL/Network Rail, all around us, would no doubt have major objections to anything resembling community heat installation. We do, however, have a roof so solar energy could be a solution and help us acheive energy independence as well as security. 

As a caveat to Mr Khan, and without going full "Woke/Hippy" here, you must know that energy is the one most significantly important global issue and that by doing what you can to give control of energy back into the hands of individuals, puts you firmly in the cross-hairs of fossil fuel financed Big Energy and those political parties that stand to gain from their dealings. I hope you're aware and ready to deal with the repercussions of moving forward with any carbon dioxide emission lowering plans and applaud anyone who helps you.   

Ideally the journey to heating would start with insulation. This is where the availability of large scale contracts could be negotiated for specific types of insulation. Allow home owners to buy into the contracts and gain scale to upgrade housing in a uniform way, perhaps that scale may negate some of the need for subsidies. Update planning application rules to require a certain look and technical spec to any insulation work and get building control to supervise the overall job. Make sure the average home is well insulated and start saving energy and hence reduce emissions immediately. An alternative approach is to make the raw materials very cheap and have a trained and certified workforce to install insulation in a rapid and economical way..

Communal heating looks interesting and a sample implementation of one fitted to a neighbourhood of terraced houses would be welcome as an example. We already know that works in flats. But understanding how that would work with existing homes with the wide variety of systems would be interesting. An interesting point is whether this scheme would be attractive enough to switch all houses at the same time, or does it instead attract an opportunity carbon cost as people connect ad-hoc to it? Thus reducing suitability for houses?

There is a lack of material on what "good" looks like in the space of heating and energy systems. Pick standard housing types and get the suppliers to package their solutions into those at an advertised efficiency, footprint, cost, etc. Make it so we can select our house type and see what optimal solutions are available for that. Avoid turning every conversation into onerous personal quotations. Simplify that initial decision to start considering. Perhaps involve local councils and energy providers so planning is taken into account.

Some form of cost incentivised automated energy management deal with the electricity provider is needed to allow the entire solution to balance needs with availability.

In Enfield there are a lot of un-tarmacked back alleys running behind all the houses. I wonder if it would be possible to drill lots of ground source heat holes along these that people could tap into - If the cost were shared out or the council commissioned the drilling it may not be so expensive. I'd be up for trying to get a group together tho not sure how interested my immediate neighbours would be - but the disruption shouldn't be that bad i would have thought.

While the USA rejoices in high technology for energy transmission and is going to colonize another planet, we English play with outdated and useless technologies, and we still lose energy, lose money trying to reinvent the wheel.

I didn't see any attractive energy supply alternative. If there is communication, and data transfer via WiFi, radio, satellite etc. Why is there so much reluctance to accept energy transmission free of paraphernalia such as cylinders, pipes and wires?

Why do we ignore the technology we already use on our cell phones every day? There are companies already working with this, free, efficient energy that meets everyone's demand and budget.

"What are the main challenges or barriers you could think of? What would help mitigate these? "

Open your minds, start with your eyes to see, and you will be able to see efficient solutions to the population's problems.

You all know this, you just need to want to work with it.

I already have an Economy 7 tariff, and use dishwasher and washing machine at night, but the daytime rate is disproportionately high so I will be better off switching to a standard tariff and use appliances whenever. No real incentive to switch to using overnight electricity…

Hard to see how any of this is going to work in a small flat, where extra space can't be found. A heat networks perhaps? What would make the biggest difference to our block, I think, is if the open fire venting in the communal landing areas were to be replaced with auto opening vents, since these areas of the block are currently outside-air temperature. And if freeholders on large blocks were compelled to install solar panels on the flat roof.

As I live in a flat the idea of a system turning on the washing machine during quieter times sounds worrying. According to my smart meter my washing machine uses just a small amount of electricity. What would need to be installed and run for little advantage and saving.

I have heard that heat pumps are not only large and unsightly and very expensive but were designed to back-up a central heating system, not to be relied on completely as they take around 24 hours to heat a home. 

We are told to get a smart meter to help reduce our use of electricity then encouraged to buy electric vehicles. These mixed messages do not encourage trust. The whole thing feels rushed and desperate, like ULEZ.

It feels that the rush to be "carbon neutral" could be to the disadvantage of many, especially for someone like me who lives in an flat in an older building. Any plans should put people first and improve their lives, not put a burden of cost and possibly less efficient system that cannot be individually controlled.

Living in council owned flat on a medium sized estate my opinion would be of minimal weight in any decision but I would strongly prefer a local heat network as this would provide the best option for carbon reduction if green electricity and storage batteries were the chosen fuel. The benefit would be shared across the whole community and it would be possible to compel leaseholders to comply and pay towards costs.

Section L of the London plan includes energy efficiency standards.  These standards could further be tightened by improving shade from wide balconies, the eaves of roofs and thicker wall and roof insulation of half a metre.  Underfloor insulation is already there in my home but for new homes there is no excuse but to put the maximum amount because the long term benefits would be greater.  New builds should also reduce the amount of heat bridges for instance post boxes, locks, door-knockers, and copper pipes.  Heat bridges are part of the design of homes so I am hopeful that new builds will have the most energy efficient design.  The only reason we are even having this conversation is because of the work of Green Party members of the London Assembly over 20 years ago.