Professor Mike McEvoy has led the Innovation for Renewal project to successful conclusion.
10 Dec 2014
A project to find the best ways of retrofitting social housing in order to cut fuel poverty by increasing energy efficiency, led by the University of Brighton’s Professor Mike McEvoy, has just completed.
The Innovation for Renewal Project (IFORE) was financed by the European Regional Development Fund’s Interreg programme and coordinated by the University of Brighton.
The partnership also included two large housing associations, AmicusHorizon from the UK and Pas-de-Calais habitat in France, and building scientists from the Universite ÅL d’Artois.
IFORE has been searching for the most efficient low-carbon methods of insulation by trialing different systems in 100 homes at Rushenden on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, and in houses at Outreau near Boulogne on the northern coast of France. The houses have been retrofitted and then monitored to measure their relative energy consumption before and after the interventions.
The study investigated householders’ interaction with the technologies and involvement with the process and the importance of engaging with these behavioural aspects of the residents' energy consumption has been a major outcome of the project.
IFORE is a large-scale study which has now paved the way for the introduction, and industrialisation, of low carbon solutions, it is guiding the future retrofit of 10,000 dwellings, out of a total of 66,000 homes for both housing associations at the project’s completion.
The full copy of the project report can be downloaded here.
