Snowy Valleys locals are welcoming news that some of Kosciusko National Park’s most important historic huts that were damaged in the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020 will be rebuilt.įormer Member for Monaro Peter Cochrane was in a helicopter as the bushfires hit and saw the flames engulf the historic structures. Photo: NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, Megan Bowden. In May, Burnham also announced £1.1m funding to train at least 1,140 people in retrofitting at the new Retrofit Skills Hub, hailing it as “the first step in moving towards a greener and low carbon city-region”.Traditional skills like slab splitting will be used with a broad axe. Nonetheless, demand is already outstripping supply in Greater Manchester, where the mayor, Andy Burnham, recently set up a retrofitting taskforce. Afinogenov says it is still a challenge to persuade clients to spend £3,500 insulating wooden floorboards. Without grants, retrofitting a home is expensive. The organisation’s main mission is fighting the climate crisis. We’re not here to exploit people or make a quick buck. “We don’t do the work but we make sure it is done to a certain quality. We’re there to advise, hand-hold, offer specific services like the assessments, the design and the procurement, and then they contract a contractor,” said Jonathan Atkinson, an environmental scientist who set up the Carbon Co-op in 2008. The government scrapped the green homes grant, its programme to install insulation and low-carbon heating, after only six months, during which a fraction of the homes targeted were insulated, and there were widespread complaints of poor service.ĭemand is already outstripping supply for PPR, which provides detailed home assessments for £550 and then guides owners through the often daunting progress of retrofitting in their home. In the north of England alone, more than 270,000 homes must be upgraded every year between now and 2035 to meet government targets and to contribute towards the UK’s net zero ambition, according to the Northern Housing Commission.īut so far any attempt to scale up retrofitting has failed because of a lack of qualified trades people and because of the costs involved. Retrofitting is going to become a huge business. More than 1,000 people attended one of PPR’s webinars during the pandemic last year and 220 people completed their “eco-renovation for builders” course. With the government looking to phase out gas boilers in the coming decades there is also a five-week course in heat pumps for beginners. There are seminars in ventilation, workshops in making a building airtight and masterclasses in using hemp and lime for insulation. PPR’s courses are aimed at existing trades people and DIY enthusiasts keen on carbon-reducing construction, with about 14% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions coming from heating the UK’s draughty housing stock. They plan to scale up to 500 a year, funded by community share issue, launching in September, which will allow supporters to buy a share for £250 for a return of 5% on their investment. It has an increasingly long waiting list, with 60 retrofits currently under way. He was trained by Manchester’s Carbon Co-op as part of its People Powered Retrofit (PPR) project, which retrofits homes and trains contractors to do the work. Ten years on, Afinogenov is now making a living warming up draughty homes in his adopted homeland after leaving his sales job and retraining as a retrofitter, specialising in flooring insulation. “It was much more comfortable than the draughty, mouldy and cold terraces here,” he said, recalling his surprise at the UK’s antiquated infrastructure – “Telephone poles! That’s like the stone age.” So much of Lithuania was flattened in the second world war that the country was essentially rebuilt from scratch, meaning that wires and pipes are all hidden under the ground and homes are much better insulated, he explained. The idea of every home having its own boiler was also alien to him: in his town there were two municipal boilers for the entire population. But in a rambling Georgian property, he quickly found himself missing his cosy old flat. W hen Boris Afinogenov moved to Liverpool from Lithuania in 2011, he knew that most Britons preferred to live in houses rather than the Soviet-era tower block he had left behind.
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