The chairman of Related Argent is part of a trio set to launch a new tool aiming to provide a solution to the UK’s £525billion retrofit market.
Senze is a new measurement and analysis tool which uses sensors to capture live data from all rooms inside a building to reveal the real-time energy performance of homes before and after retrofitting.
The driving forces and co-founders of Senze are Related Argent chairman, David Partridge, Joseph Michael Daniels, the founder of net zero housebuilder Project Etopia, and Tom Fenton, former chief executive and founder of Veritherm.
By deploying live sensors in each room of a house instead of relying on visual inspections or desktop analysis, Senze builds an accurate and real-time picture of the energy performance and health of a building so it can pinpoint exactly where heat loss is happening.
By accurately measuring the thermal and energy performance of a home, Senze can prescribe smaller and more targeted measures to retrofit Britain’s old and cold housing stock more efficiently and cost-effectively.
To date, Senze has deployed its technology and analysis tools in pilot projects for housing and property providers in the UK and overseas, including Bromford Housing, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, The Church of England, Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the New York City Housing Authority, the largest social housing authority and landlord in the United States.
In a pilot project, Senze revealed that one home performed 59% better than its Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating – enabling a social landlord to save £25,838 on the cost of unnecessary External Wall Insulation work (EWI) compared to recommendations based on theoretical analysis.
Across pilot projects undertaken so far, the average savings achieved by Senze per home are:
· £4,890 saving on capital retrofit costs
· £133.90 savings on fuel bills per year
· 1.29-tonne savings of CO2 a year
· Nine hours less time spent on assessment and consultancy by using live data instead of visual inspections and reports
Research shows the UK has the highest proportion of old housing stock in Europe with more than a third of homes (38%) built before 1946 and more than three-quarters of homes (78%) built before 1980. This compares to EU averages where just 18% of homes were built before 1948 and 61% before 1980.
Analysis by the Office for National Statistics shows the age of a property is the biggest single factor determining its energy efficiency with data showing that less than a fifth (19%) of England’s homes built before 1929 are rated EPC C.
In 2021, the UK’s Construction Leadership Council published research estimating that it would take 20 years and cost in the region of £525billion to retrofit Britain’s 29 million homes.
David Partridge says Senze will slash the cost of retrofitting Britain’s housing stock by enabling landlords of large housing portfolios and social housing providers to be more targeted and effective.
He said: “Research shows Britain has millions of old and cold homes. This makes British citizens poorer as they have to spend more money heating their homes, while experts estimate millions of households live in fuel poverty, and cannot afford to heat their home to the temperature needed to keep warm and healthy.”
“Retrofitting British homes to reach net zero is estimated to cost more than £500billion. But what if we could actually do it much more cheaply? Senze is a genuinely game-changing British technology as it will enable the UK to tackle this colossal retrofit challenge at pace and scale.”
“If the UK government is serious about improving the energy efficiency of Britain’s housing stock at scale, then we need to do it as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. By pinpointing exactly where and how homes need remedial works, Senze could save social housing landlords hundreds of millions of pounds, help meet our national de-carbonisation obligations, and most importantly, at the same time lift more people out of fuel poverty.”
The task of retrofitting Britain’s homes is also about to become more pressing, with the government proposing that from 2030 private landlords will need to ensure that all homes let under existing tenancies must meet EPC C standards as a minimum. The deadline is even sooner for new tenancies let by private landlords which must be EPC C by 2028.
Tom Fenton, chief executive of Senze, said: “We have already deployed Senze in commercial buildings and in social housing in New York, but we know Britain faces one of the biggest housing retrofit challenges in Europe, if not the world.”
“Based on our work with Bromford Housing, Wales and West Housing and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, it makes sense that social landlords will be our single largest area of focus.”
“Collectively, social landlords have been the most proactive and effective in improving the energy efficiency of their homes. However, individually, councils and housing associations still have the largest numbers of old homes to retrofit and their finances are stretched. We want to help social landlords go faster but make their budgets go further.”
“The overwhelming majority of retrofit works in the UK currently require contractors to make sweeping changes to people’s homes. What Senze enables landlords to do is to identify how they can make smaller, surgical changes which make homes perform better at less cost.”
“As well as helping with retrofit, social landlords are using Senze as an asset management tool to assess the energy efficiency of homes so they can understand more about their real performance before they make major value decisions on buying or selling housing stock.”
Joseph Michael Daniels, co-founder of Senze and ELIXR, understands the scale of the task in reaching net zero, having delivered net zero buildings on four continents.
Daniels, who led the development of Senze, said: “Tackling the retrofit challenge in Britain is like climbing a mountain. However, mountain climbers do not cover the entire length and height of the mountain – they plan the best route to the top weighing up the cost, duration, severity and safety of their trip.”
“By carrying out sweeping remedial works to homes we are in effect climbing the entire length and height of the mountain. By utilising Senze, landlords can use real data to calculate the most efficient route to the summit to save time and money. If landlords take this route the amount of money allocated to retrofit will stretch further and help more households to live in a warm home.”
