The Economics of Energy Conservation

[drplokta]

They've just finished an eight year programme to refurbish a social housing estate near us, and bring it up to modern levels of energy conservation. http://www.24dash.com/socialhousing/20852.htm for details. The highest annual fuel cost saving they have seen was £278 -- let's be generous and say the average was £200 per household. There are 186 properties on the estate. So the total annual saving is around £37,200 and it will take nearly 300 years to pay back the capital cost. Retrofitting the housing stock to meet modern standards of energy conservation is not worth doing. (If you're concerned about global warming, I think it safe to say that the same amount of money invested in carbon sequestration would have removed a lot more CO² from the atmosphere.)

Comments

[armb.livejournal.com]

With our last house, doubling the loft insulation, adding cavity wall insulation, and replacing the windows that were rotting anyway with double glazed ones was definitely worthwhile (though still wouldn't be up to modern standards, I suspect). With the current house, improving the insulation would mean replacing fibreglass with polyisocyanurate or building new thicker walls and ceilings, neither of which would be likely to be cost effective.