Energy tech company Sero is supporting Sovereign, one of England’s largest housing associations, in the retrofitting of 1,000 homes across the South of England after it was awarded £9.4m from the Social Housing Decarbonisation Wave 2.1(SHDF).
Founded with the mission to enable net zero homes at scale and pace, B-Corp company Sero has been at the forefront of the Optimised Retrofit programme in Wales. It provides expert services and technology for the end-to-end support for planning, implementing and operation of homes in their Pathway to Zero.
Sero’s collaboration with Sovereign will see them assess the individual needs of each home, determine the most appropriate retrofit measures, and manage compliance with SHDF and PAS2035 requirements. This includes acting as Retrofit Coordinators, and collection of performance and resident data from the homes as Retrofit Evaluators.
All homes will be improved under Sovereign’s “Homes and Places” standard to achieve EPC B+, exceeding SHDF compliance of EBC C.
Retrofit measures will be assessed for each home, and may include the fitting of insulation, heat pumps, battery storage, solar panels, and ‘smart’ home controls and sensors. The homes are expected to approach net zero carbon for their whole energy footprint as the grid decarbonises in future. Initially modelled by Sero tools, this will be proved by in-home monitoring. The resulting homes will provide an improved affordability benefit to Sovereigns’ customers, where bills could be reduced by as much as half post-retrofit.
Sero will also provide each home with a digital “building passport” that tracks all the retrofit measures needed to achieve net zero. The same passport links to ongoing monitoring within each home to evaluate its operation, demonstrating net zero delivery in practice. This ensures quicker identification of faults or poor environmental conditions within homes, such as risk of damp, whilst building learning to continuously improve forecasting the real impacts of retrofit measures.
Andy Sutton, Co-Founder at Sero, said: “We have a lot of experience working on retrofit projects in conjunction with more than 30 social landlords, and are incredibly excited to support Sovereign’s decarbonisation programme. As Sero scales-up, progressive housing associations such as Sovereign provide the perfect partner for our technical and digital services, helping us to help them provide their customers with easily operated, comfortable, affordable homes on their Pathway to Zero.”
CEO of Sovereign, Mark Washer commented: “Improving every home, we own is core to our mission, and this funding will play an important part in expanding our retrofit programme to thousands of customers.
“At a time when people are struggling to pay their bills and when the quality of social housing is under scrutiny, we have an important role to play in helping to make our customers’ homes warmer and more energy-efficient.
“We will work with our customers to explain every step of the journey, what the outcomes will be, how this will benefit them and how newly installed smart-home technology will help to reduce their energy bills.”
Lord Callanan, Minister for Energy Efficiency and Green Finance, said: “This investment will help thousands of households to heat their homes for less, keep them warm for longer and could save hundreds on their annual energy bill. The green energy sector is growing, and this funding will support green jobs and provide the training needed to deliver these vital upgrades to homes.”
This SHDF Wave 2.1 funding round is part of the UK Government’s commitment to a £3.8bn Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund over a 10-year period to improve the energy performance of social rented homes. The SHDF strategic objectives are to deliver warm, energy-efficient homes, reduce carbon emissions and fuel bills, tackle fuel poverty, and support green jobs.
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