NEA welcomes Ofwat’s recognition of affordability issues with water bills, highlighted by the 3 million customers in England and Wales saying they struggle to pay their water bills. Ofwat’s interventions to ensure bills are reduced by over 12% before inflation will make a significant difference to customers who are struggling to, or at risk of struggling to, pay their bills.

The evaluation consortium has been working together on evaluating the impacts of the Warm Homes Fund (WHF) over the winter of 2019-2020 and has heard first-hand of the very significant and positive effects that the funding has had on the lives of many families and households.

Learnings from NEA’s Technical innovation fund field trials

This project used airtightness tests to identify sources of uncontrolled ventilation and cold spots in poor energy efficiency (SAP bands D G) properties in a rural area of Wales, highly exposed to sea winds, often solid walled or other hard to treat (HTT) construction, and most not being served by mains gas. Results of the tests highlighted appropriate airtightness measures which could be installed to address and reduce uncontrolled air exchange, to provide energy savings and improved comfort to the residents, vulnerable to fuel poverty.

The Health and Innovation Programme was a £26.2 million programme to bring affordable warmth to fuel poor and vulnerable households in England, Scotland and Wales. The programme launched in April 2015 and has delivered energy efficiency advice and measures to over 9000 households.

Ceredigion comprises of a series of isolated rural communities, with 82.4% of homes not connected to mains gas – the highest number of off-gas properties in Wales. Tregaron, the area targeted for the project, falls within the top 30% most deprived, and the rural areas around it fall within the top 10%, in terms of access to services.

Solar PV combined with battery storage is a relatively new but fast developing technology. The aim is to store excess power generated by the solar PV system which would otherwise be exported to the grid. When the electricity consumption of the property is greater than any power generated by the solar array then at least some of the extra demand can be supplied from the charged batteries.

The Technical Innovation Fund has been groundbreaking because it enabled us to get an insight into how many new technologies can help households in vulnerable situations to reduce their energy bills and improve the comfort of their homes.

NEA commissioned this report to help stimulate debate on the policy options we must consider as we seek to decarbonise heat alongside delivering fuel poverty strategies across the UK. It helpfully draws out some of the tensions and challenges we face in changing the way in which we heat our homes, and the authors help us to consider the cost implications and distributional impacts of different funding mechanisms.