Teaching Homes To Be Green: Smart Homes and the Environment
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- Added:Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
- Writer(s):Scott, Faye
- Publication Date:November 1, 2007
- Publisher:Green Alliance
- Abstract:Smart homes crop up far more in conversations about the latest gadgets than they do when talking about energy saving or environmental benefits. But as well as having a place in the futuristic new homes imagined by science fiction, smart technology may help to lower the environmental impact of the homes we live in today. With energy efficiency becoming an increasing preoccupation, smart technology’s potential to help will be just as welcome as its ability to make our lives easier. The government aims to reduce UK carbon dioxide emissions to 60 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050. The domestic sector is responsible for 27 per cent of the UK’s emissions, so it is vital that its environmental impacts are addressed as a key contribution to meeting the overall target.1 Ambitious plans are in place to improve the sustainability of new homes, but improving the environmental performance of existing ones will be more difficult. Three quarters of the 2050 housing stock is already standing and addressing its environmental impact is as important, if not more so, than improving the sustainability of new homes. But existing homes present greater challenges. Forty three per cent of them have features that are difficult to treat from an energy efficiency point of view, such as solids walls, and even measures that achieve significant improvements have diminishing returns.2 Will making homes smarter be the solution? To answer that question, this report looks at smart features and the impressive claims made about their energy and resource savings. Some companies already promote the environmental benefits of smart features but the area is still relatively unexplored and many claims vary greatly or are hard to verify. This report provides an overview of relevant smart features and explores the nature and extent of their environmental benefits. It is clear that there are questions to be answered before smart features can be meaningfully incorporated into policy mechanisms that aim to improve the environmental impact of homes. But it is equally clear that smart features do have a role to play in improving the performance of homes and there are already grounds for seeing them as a useful addition to the range of options on offer. With this in mind, the second half of the report makes recommendations for action. The first recommendation acknowledges the need for a robust evidence base and calls for the government to recognise the environmental potential of smart features and support research to better understand their benefits. Once that is in place, there are various existing policy mechanisms that can support smart features. The report explores these different mechanisms and the changes that are needed in order for them to recognise and promote the environmental benefits of smart features. Some smart homes will be the kind imagined by the technology industry, with an extensive home network and a raft of intelligent appliances. But meeting the UK’s carbon emission targets requires us to tackle the environmental performance of the draughty, inefficiently heated homes that we live in today. Smart features may have a significant role to play in this decidedly un-futuristic setting and this report aims to shed some light on what that role will be.
- Tags:energy savings, smart homes, UK