Cambridge City Council’s first Cabinet meeting today (24 June) will see councillors discuss plans to expand work to ‘retrofit’ a further 370 council homes over the next three years – a potential £15m project to cut carbon emissions while helping tenants to live in healthier homes, while saving on their energy bills.
Retrofitting work can include everything from replacing gas boilers with heat pumps and solar panels, to insulation to keep homes cooler in summer and warmer in winter, replacing external doors and windows, and enhancing ventilation systems to improve air quality.
These measures support all tenants’ health, but especially those who are more impacted by extreme hot or cold weather or those with respiratory conditions. This work addresses significant performance gaps between existing council homes and the council’s newly built council homes. It also supports the national target for social homes to meet EPC C by 2035.
Cambridge City Council was among the first councils in the UK to declare climate and biodiversity emergencies in 2019, and its work to retrofit council homes falls within its wider work to improve people’s lives while tackling climate change.
Cambridge has recently been named an ‘A’ list city for the second year running in the Carbon Disclosure Project’s global rankings, while also being recognised as a top performing council in Climate Emergency UK’s Council Climate Action scorecards – both of which acknowledge the council’s ongoing work to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
The council has been running a net zero retrofit pilot, through which 50 council households were invited to opt-in to have their homes retrofitted with high levels of insulation and air source heat pumps. This pilot is currently featuring in the Retrofit 25 exhibition in London as a case study of “going much further than the typical social housing retrofit”. The council also recently completed a project to upgrade 185 other council homes to EPC C – through the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund Wave 2.1 – for which it was highly commended at East of England Energy Efficiency Awards.
Alongside the ongoing work to retrofit council homes, the council has helped to establish and lead on the retrofit delivery of the award-winning Cambridgeshire Energy Retrofit Partnership (CERP) – also known as Action on Energy Cambridgeshire. Having just been awarded £8.5 million under the Government’s Warm Homes Plan, Action on Energy Cambridgeshire continues to deliver practical guidance, funding and support for the wider community with finding an installer to deliver energy efficiency and clean heat measures across Cambridgeshire.
The council is also leading on a project with Cambridge University, Anglia Ruskin University, 17 city-centre colleges and Cambridgeshire County Council to create a District Heat Network. Such a network could heat public buildings using Air Source and River Source heat capture, with a goal to expand over time to include commercial and residential connections across the city.
Meanwhile, construction will start in the autumn on a solar farm and battery storage project next to the council’s shared waste service depot in Waterbeach, with the energy generated being used to power the waste service’s electric bin lorries – improving air quality and reducing carbon emissions.
A new Local Area Energy Plan is also being developed in partnership with other Cambridgeshire councils to help ensure that the right energy infrastructure is in place to support the county’s energy transition. The councils are currently surveying businesses, community groups and residents to help develop the plan.
Cllr Rosy Moore, Cabinet Member for Climate Action and Environment, said: “Being recognised as an ‘A’ List City once again is fantastic news and a great testament to the work we’re doing to tackle the climate crisis, both to cut our emissions and also to adapt to the changing climate.
“With 27% of the city’s carbon emissions currently coming from people’s homes, the proposed plans to retrofit more homes in the city will play a really important part in bringing down energy costs, making homes healthier, and reducing household emissions across the city.
“I know it can feel a bit like there’s a backlash against ‘net zero’ and work to tackle climate change, at the same time that we are seeing and feeling the impacts of climate change here in Cambridge and around the world, which can make people feel a bit hopeless because the challenge ahead of us is so big.
“A lot of the narrative focuses on encouraging individuals to make changes and individual actions are of course incredibly important, but I want to reassure people that it’s not all on individuals. It’s on governments, councils and organisations too, and I hope people will take heart that in Cambridge there is already lots going on, and we are not slowing down any time soon!”
